Photos, The Case Interior
The last time I used a case it was blinged out with windows, LED lights and tons of other over the top features. Personally, I find the P280 to be much more appealing. Other people may like lights and all of that but the sophisticated no nosense look of the P280 really appeals to me.
The silver door contrasts nicely with the black on the rest of the case. But if you are one of those people who are a perfectionist you might want to keep a rag handy to wipe down any fingerprints that pop up on that silver door. It is much like having silver appliances in your kitchen. They look fantastic, but once dirt gets on there you can notice it from a mile away.
Mounting a 5 1/4″ drive is easy as pie in the P280. The tool-less design means that adding a drive is as simple as clicking it into place using the built-in drive mounts.
3.5 and 2.5″ drive mounting is a little more complicated, but not a large ordeal like with some cases. In fact, it is as simple as removing a drive rail. Taking your hard drive or SSD and screwing it in place. Then sliding the rail back into the case. For people that swap hard drives often it makes doing so quite easy. But I do wish antec would have included a few thumb screws for drive mounting instead of standard screws.
If you are worried about this case being too small for the latest and greatest video card. A Radeon 7970 Lightning was fit into the case with no issues at all. Unless you are running a video card with something huge hanging off the back of it there is no reason at all why you will not be able to use any retail video card with the P280.
Like many modern cases, the P280 includes watercooling grommets at the back of the case for those who wish to use watercooling but do not want to mount the radiator internally.
Out of the box three fans are included with the case. Two more fans can be added to the drive bays if you are inclined to do so. As-is the P280 only has fans blowing out of this case so it runs with what is called “negative pressure” since all of the air is blown out and there are no fans blowing air in. Negative pressure cases are usually associated with lots of dust. But thankfully Antec includes a couple of dust filters around the case so cleaning the dust is as simple as taking a couple of minutes to wash off the dust and stick the filter back into place.
