Antec P380 Full-Tower Chassis Review
Peter Donnell / 10 years ago
Final Thoughts
Pricing
The Antec P380 Performance Series Windowed chassis is available from Overclockers.co.uk for £159.95. This is obviously expensive, but it’s comparable to the NZXT Phantom 820, Corsair 780T, Thermaltake Level 10GT and just about everything ever made by Lian-Li, to name but a few. When it comes to ultra high-end chassis that are capable of housing extreme systems, the P380 price and spec is on par with the competition.
Overview
I’ve fallen in love with the design of this chassis. It’s one of those products where photographs don’t really do it justice. The finish on the aluminium front and top panels, with its inky black surfaces and silver edges, just oozes premium quality. The side panels and interior of the chassis are robust steel and while they’ll work wonders for stopping unwanted noises from escaping your system, they’d likely also stop a bullet too; this is one seriously strong and rather heavy chassis!
With radiator support in the front, top and back, you’ve got extensive options for installing custom loop water cooling in this chassis. Air cooling support is well catered for as well, with high-quality speed-adjustable fans pre-installed, washable dust filters throughout and a 6-port fan hub behind the motherboard.
465mm graphics card clearance is very impressive, you’ll easily fit even the longest graphics cards into the P380 with no issues. In the rare circumstance that you do have an issue, you can always remove some of the hard drive bays for extra clearance. The same can be said for the CPU cooler clearance as 180mm should be more than enough to accommodate virtually any enthusiast grade air cooler.
The only issue I have with this chassis is the dust filter configuration. On one hand, we have the PSU dust filter which slides out from the side, this is very practical and makes cleaning the filter a very easy task. Then we have the huge front panel dust filter, which slides out from the bottom. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to remove this for quick and easy maintenance.
This chassis is expensive, but it’s also one of the nicest chassis I’ve ever seen or worked with. Antec used to make some of the most popular chassis on the market and I’m very happy to say that the P380 is a return to form. This chassis has some of the best build quality and durability of any chassis on the market.
Pros
- Exceptional build quality
- Huge side panel window
- Excellent GPU clearance
- Cable management
- 6-port fan hub
- Speed switchable fans pre-installed
- Washable dust filters
- Aluminium top and front panels
- Extra thick side panels
- PSU dust filter slides out from left side
- Excellent water cooling support
- Removable HDD bays
- Reversable I/O panel and dual power/reset buttons
Cons
- Front panel dust filter slides out from bottom
“Antec have gone all out on the Performance P380 and it really shows, as this is a great looking product. Those who invest will not be disappointed. The P380 s is by far one of the best looking and most capable chassis on the market today.”
Thank you Antec for providing us with this sample.