Antec Plus 1080

Author: Eric Portelance
Published on: 21-09-2002
Views: 71930


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Installation

Antec Plus 1080 installation issues

No real issues during the installation. This is an extremely roomy case, and you’ve got tons and tons of room to work. It would have been nice to see the inclusion of a removable motherboard tray, as that would have made it even easier than it already is, but we need something to look forward to in the next revision.

 Rear of case (fans and ports)

I also miss the thumbscrews that Lian-Li smothered over there 6085T. It takes a bit longer to unscrew, I’ll let it slide since the side panel is just so easy to remove, you don’t even need the thumbscrews.

Performance

How the unit performs

The case itself is built like a tank, with 1mm thick steel. You could probably drop this from a building, and there would only be a dent on it (except for the plastic front panel, of course). This is, however, also a downside. The fact that it’s built like a tank means it weighs a ton. It’s backbreaking work lifting this thing up, and I wouldn’t really be too thrilled if I had to haul this baby to a LAN party. For portability, the Lian-Li is king. If you plan on keeping it at your house, this one is fine.

Next, I want to bring up the subject of the power supply. This has to be the best power supply I’ve ever had the pleasure to deal with. 430W of raw power and all the voltages are dead-on (except for 12v, which is only off by .5, and that’s nothing). It has wire loom around the standard ATX power plug, so you don’t see all those wires dangling around, a nice touch that goes a long way. The power supply has two fans on it (one in the back, and one on the bottom), so that contributes even more to the cooling of your case.

I was also impressed by the “fan only” connectors on the power supply. There is built-in circuitry which will automatically monitor the heat inside your case, and reduce the speed of your fans in order to keep the noise level down. It will up the speed when it’s getting too hot, as well. This is definitely a unique feature, but you wouldn’t want to accidentally connect anything else than a fan on there, as it might start feeding it lower voltages, and I don’t think you’d want you hard drive to be fed power that’s out of spec.

I decided to install two extra fans to the front of the case, which Antec supplied, and it was incredibly easy to install them. They snap in as easily as they come out. The cooling of this case was excellent, even running stock. Of course, it was improved with the side-panel fan plugged in as well as my hard drive fan and the front fan.

Antec also thought of a interesting concept along the way. The hard drive cages are removable, which makes hard drive installation a breeze (you just need to push a little lever to the left and pull out). Also, there are drive rails that come with this case. This makes it incredibly easy to snap out your 5.25” drives, but that feature is nothing new, Antec cases have had it for a while now.

Finally, it’s important to note that you can in fact lock the front panel of the case so that nobody can power down your machine, or steal any of your drives without first unlocking it with the key. The keys themselves are all the same for Antec cases, but nevertheless, it should serve to thwart the casual robbers at LAN parties. The side panel is also lockable, which is nice. Nothing prevents someone from prying open the front panel, though.

While on the subject, one complaint about the front panel in the first Performance cases was that it felt really cheap and flimsy. This has obviously been addressed in this revision, as it feels a little more resistant now.