Antec P190 + 1200 Mid-Tower

[Rob Williams]

Planning a new build and don't know which chassis to choose? Does the idea of having a feature-packed mid-tower intrigue you? Well, the P190 is just that, with its intuitive design and two pre-installed power supplies, offering you a total of 1,200W of overkill pleasure. Is the case a true winner? Not exactly, but it's still worth a look.

You can read the full review here and discuss it here!

This case looks outstanding. The only problem is, where to buy? The sites I usually hit don't carry it, and newegg has this item "deactivated", whatever that means.

[Rory Buszka]

It would be a shame if they've discontinued this case for some reason -- it's really well set up, and it makes the functionality and styling of the P182 available to Skulltrail systems, and any other type of system that uses E-ATX motherboards. Much of Antec's famous case design know-how is present in the P190, and I anticipate it'll become somewhat iconic as Antec's 'ultimate' enthusiast case, even if it does get the axe from Antec's product line, for the crime of simply being overkill.

That said, the number of E-ATX motherboards hasn't exactly skyrocketed, with AMD canning their own dual-processor enthusiast platform last year. So unless you really just need the ultimate ATX case, there is a question of whether the P190 is worth it. In addition, the dual-module Neo Link 1200 power supply seems just a tad half-baked, given the fact that Antec already has their own 800W and 1000W single-module power supplies.

[Kougar]

I don't think it is overkill, I simply don't like how they combined 550w and 650w NeoHE power supplies into one linked PSU.

People run into issues with split 12v rails or unbalanced power distribution on power supplies all the time, so a set up like this with an actual split PSU design just seems asking for trouble.

Have had one of these cases since October last year, the fact its heavy isnt really an issue as my PC does not get moved around much (at all).

No issues so far with the power supplies, you just have to be mindfull to split the load as best you can, as the review said you can pickup new cables to run a 2nd video card off the smaller PSU (Personally I dont consider this going agianst the grain at all). I beleive I read another review of this case somewhere a while back that tested the power supplies, and they performed well above either 650+550 ratings (total tested was close to 1400 if i recall) - another thing to keep in mind.

The only thing that really did annoy me was the extreem limitation on cpu coolers - having a MASSIVE case and still being limited to esentially HTPC air coolers is frustrating (had to go with a scythe ninja mini(which does perform perfectly well enough)) - but the easy solution here is to just use water cooling - problem solved. The side fan is great for blowing air over everything though, especially things like RAM that is often neglected for its own cooling.

Lastly, while the price tag is high compaired to other cases, you do have to consider the price of 1200w+ of PSU and a tonn of fans into that and it works out pretty damn well.

I would recomened it to anyone who can live with the CPU cooler issue (as all the others are minor I feel)

[Rory Buszka]

I agree, having to pull out the Big Boy 200mm fan just to fit a tower-style cooler would suck. I wonder if one of Scythe's flat-topped coolers would work in this case.