So this isn't exactly a "new" system... it's 2-3 year old hardware. My old HAF922 was getting pretty long in the tooth and I wanted something a little more modern. Having owned a P180 back in the day I decided I'd go with Antec's latest update.
There are plenty of reviews out there (including one on AT) that cover the features and performance of the case pretty well so I'm going to focus on my individual experience setting up water cooling in the case.
Here's a picture of my old setup:
As you can see, there are two rads: a 2x120 and 1x120. That's an Apogee XT on the CPU and a MCW60 on the GPU. I have an XSPC dual bay res with a Liang DDC pump. Tubing is 1/2" ID 5/8" OD Tygon. I'm using IC Diamond cooling paste.
Unlike my HAF, which had a fan mount on the bottom, the only fan mounts on the P280 are the two at the top and one on the back. I was worried this wouldn't work and I would have to mod the case or mount fans on the outside. The fan mounts are fairly close together and there is also a built-in fan controller right above the rear fan.
Here's a look at the empty inside:
And the rear area with the fan controller:
As it turns out, the rad/fan combination did indeed fit. It's tight, and the back fan overlaps one of the top fans a bit, but it works.
One thing I want to stress is that if you want to use this built-in controller, WIRE IT UP FIRST. You'll need to plug a 4-pin molex into it. I forgot to do this at first and had to move the top rad after the tubes were all hooked up to access it. So I moved it, got everything put back together, and then found to my great annoyance that two of the four 3-pin headers on the controller did not work. So I had to move the rad AGAIN and break out my old Scythe fan controller.
Board in place and tubing hooked up:
Note the position of the 8-pin 12V connector: it just barely clears the bottom of the fan. This has two implications: first, the case is so tall that the cable from my PSU is not long enough to reach it when run behind the motherboard, thus requiring an extension. Second, because it is so tight, in order to plug the cable in I needed to cut the little clip piece off the cable so that it would plug in. This is obviously a motherboard-specific problem, though. It's also a vast improvement over my old 922, in which it didn't clear the fan at all, requiring that I mount the fans outside the case.
After leak-testing I had constant problems with the GPU block, which is the only thing in the loop that wasn't using compression fittings.. Turns out the MCW60 doesn't have standard G 1/4 threads (who knew! I sure didn't, somehow it didn't leak in the past two years ). I ended up buying thread adapters and compressions for the GPU, which solved that problem.
Here it is fully wired:
Front
Back
Another thing worth noting is the 5.25" mounting system. The plastic clips line up with the screw holes on your peripherals and it just kinda snaps in. This will work fine on standard things like optical drives, however it did not work at all on either my fan controller or my bay res. There are also no screw holes on the back. I couldn't see any obvious ways to remove the clips without breaking them, so the fan controller and res are just sitting in there.
I thought the thumbscrews felt cheap. :hmm:
There are plenty of reviews out there (including one on AT) that cover the features and performance of the case pretty well so I'm going to focus on my individual experience setting up water cooling in the case.
Here's a picture of my old setup:
As you can see, there are two rads: a 2x120 and 1x120. That's an Apogee XT on the CPU and a MCW60 on the GPU. I have an XSPC dual bay res with a Liang DDC pump. Tubing is 1/2" ID 5/8" OD Tygon. I'm using IC Diamond cooling paste.
Unlike my HAF, which had a fan mount on the bottom, the only fan mounts on the P280 are the two at the top and one on the back. I was worried this wouldn't work and I would have to mod the case or mount fans on the outside. The fan mounts are fairly close together and there is also a built-in fan controller right above the rear fan.
Here's a look at the empty inside:
And the rear area with the fan controller:
As it turns out, the rad/fan combination did indeed fit. It's tight, and the back fan overlaps one of the top fans a bit, but it works.
One thing I want to stress is that if you want to use this built-in controller, WIRE IT UP FIRST. You'll need to plug a 4-pin molex into it. I forgot to do this at first and had to move the top rad after the tubes were all hooked up to access it. So I moved it, got everything put back together, and then found to my great annoyance that two of the four 3-pin headers on the controller did not work. So I had to move the rad AGAIN and break out my old Scythe fan controller.
Board in place and tubing hooked up:
Note the position of the 8-pin 12V connector: it just barely clears the bottom of the fan. This has two implications: first, the case is so tall that the cable from my PSU is not long enough to reach it when run behind the motherboard, thus requiring an extension. Second, because it is so tight, in order to plug the cable in I needed to cut the little clip piece off the cable so that it would plug in. This is obviously a motherboard-specific problem, though. It's also a vast improvement over my old 922, in which it didn't clear the fan at all, requiring that I mount the fans outside the case.
After leak-testing I had constant problems with the GPU block, which is the only thing in the loop that wasn't using compression fittings.. Turns out the MCW60 doesn't have standard G 1/4 threads (who knew! I sure didn't, somehow it didn't leak in the past two years ). I ended up buying thread adapters and compressions for the GPU, which solved that problem.
Here it is fully wired:
Front
Back
Another thing worth noting is the 5.25" mounting system. The plastic clips line up with the screw holes on your peripherals and it just kinda snaps in. This will work fine on standard things like optical drives, however it did not work at all on either my fan controller or my bay res. There are also no screw holes on the back. I couldn't see any obvious ways to remove the clips without breaking them, so the fan controller and res are just sitting in there.
I thought the thumbscrews felt cheap. :hmm:
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