Antec Nine Hundred

Conclusions

Antec clearly defines gamer as one thing - a person requiring a ludicrous amount of cooling. All in all, there are mounts for five 120mm fans in the case, as well as the 200mm monster at the top. That's all well and good, but the size of the case means that any more efficient type of cooling - such as water cooling - is prohibited. So, if you're an enthusiast just looking to throw more and more fans at the problem of case temperature, this is certainly the case for you.

In our testing, we found that our super-hot Pentium 4 rig was easily cooled down to moderate temperatures with all the fans installed and revved up, but then we would expect no less. However, especially given the fact the entire case is covered in mesh rather than any kind of sound-dampening material, it sounded like a wind tunnel if you had the fans running on anything above their lowest setting. This wasn't at all pleasant.

In a bid to create a case that is chock full of cooling potential, Antec has forgotten to do anything else. There are far too many screws and fiddly bits to the case, with the bog-standard PCI expansion slots almost unforgivable in this day and age. Having to remove eight thumbscrews just to get a drive cage out is taking the mickey, especially when that doesn't actually remove the drive itself!

Having the PSU at the bottom is fine, but is really only a jammied solution to allow you to have the big fan at the top. We have never encountered a rig that is so hot it requires a fan of that size - in fact, recent component trends have been to cooler, more efficient hardware, so we can hardly see it becoming necessary either.

These things could have been forgiven had the case sported a design or build quality out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, this just isn't the case - it could be any generic steel case from any generic manufacturer in black steel.

The case comes in at £75 from eBuyer, for which you could pick up a far nicer case such as the all aluminium Gigabyte 3D Aurora or Cooler Master Mystique. Unless you are a total air cooling freak, we'd advise that you give this one a miss.