Antec P8 Mid-Tower Chassis Review

A Closer Look – Exterior

Immediately, I’m quite taken back by how nice this chassis looks. Sure, it’s not the bling covered gaming chassis I know many of you like, but it’s not exactly drab either. If I were to put this up on my desktop in the office or in a LAN gaming hall, it’s not going to make people say “wow” but it’s not going to disappoint or look out of place either.

The huge glass side panel looks stunning, and it’s crystal clear too, giving you unobstructed views to show off your hardware. The front panel is neat too, with no 5.25″ bays cluttering up the cover, and the I/O shoved over to the left so not to break up those clean looks.

The front I/O is compact and tidy looking, but those putting the chassis on the floor may not want to have larger flash drive poking out here, as you could easily kick them off while walking past.

Airflow comes in from the left side, and through a full-height dust filter on the interior. Indirect and clean airflow means less noise, and a nicely cooled system.

Down the right side of the chassis, it’s all pretty boring really. The blank panel does look neat and tidy though and matches up nicely with the front panel design. Again, boring, but it’s clean and functional.

Back

Around the back, things are pretty much as you would expect. There’s a pre-installed 120mm fan at the top, 7 expansion slots and the ATX PSU mount at the bottom.

The expansion slots come with a screw over guard for easier mounting. The top slot has a reusable cover, which is great. Unfortunately, the bottom 6 are those awful snap-off covers. I guess Antec had to make some sacrifices to keep costs down.

The top has a lift-off magnetic dust filter, which is very nice. There’s room for 120mm and 140mm spacing fans, and possibly a radiator. Antec does state radiator support is “limited” and that’s most likely due to conflicts with larger motherboard VRM heatsinks.

On the base, things are looking good, as we see there are four large feet giving good ground clearance to the PSU dust filter. It is a cheaper clip-in mesh filter though, and I would have liked to see a slide out and washable filter used instead. There are four screws with long slots, these are used for moving the HDD bays forwards or backward inside the chassis.