Antec offers some of the cleanest yet abstract enclosure designs on the planet. It’s like one department is always keeping professional while another keeps it interesting. Every so often we see something that doesn’t seem to make sense at first glance. The Antec LanBoy Air enclosure is one of those special creations. Built for gamers and enthusiasts with hot and power hungry performance components, air flow is of vital importance in this fully modular design. Throw in nothing more than a frame work while removing all of the conventional panels and we’ve got an Antec that’s truly special. Let’s find out if we can hold it to that standard.
Features and Specifications
To compare this to anything in the conventional Antec arsenal just wouldn’t be right. Like the bold Skeleton Open Air Chassis, the LanBoy Air is designed to make an impression. Have a look at the unique features in our unboxing video to see just how special this case is…
Regardless of the LanBoy Air’s fully-modular design, the chassis is pretty solid. It doesn’t flex or bend when handled which is important given the accumulated component weight once fully operational. It’s really interesting to see that all the panels and doors are easily removable. Without them all in place, the LanBoy Air actually looks kind of like a cool Lego project mod.
About the only notable issues users might run in to are the two 120mm fans on the right panel that might interfere with rather ridiculously large CPU or video card coolers out there. The standard sized tower cooler is still the safest choice. The two bottom slots intended for SSDs will require a little dexterity in order to connect wires and cabling because they sit so low within the front drive bay. We’ll see if that’s an issue in our installation impressions.
Whether it’s blue, red, or yellow, the ANTEC LanBoy Air can be found for $199 US MSRP. Some stores have even offered them for as low as $99 US after rebates, making the proposition of such a unique chassis even more attractive. As mentioned in our video, the price includes plenty of extra AirMount HDD bungee straps of sorts that allow you to properly suspend as many drives as you like.
Let’s move along and see what sort of performance and value your hard earned dollar nets you.
Test System Setup
We’re still using our proven semi-nuclear powered AMD Phenom II system with the retail AMD cooling fan. It’s been used in countless other reviews on Futurelooks where thermal dynamics performance was tested. Here is the break down of what will be riding inside the LanBoy Air for this evaluation.
- Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
- Motherboard: ASUS M4A89GTD Pro USB3
- Graphics: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 8800 Ultra
- Memory: Patriot Memory ViperII 2000MHz 4GB DDR3
- Storage: Seagate 500GB SATAII Hard Drive
- Power Supply: Antec Signature Series 850 Watt
- CPU Cooler: Retail AMD Cooler
- Comparison Case: Raidmax Mid-Tower w/120mm Fan
The cases cooling fans were plugged directly into the matching PSU cables. No special fan controllers or wire adapters were used to ensure that it’s all about the LanBoy Air when it comes to cooling performance. Let’s look at some of the installation notes that we’ve made on the LanBoy Air next.
LanBoy Air Installation Notes
Overall impression is that it really helps that so many of the panels are removable. It eliminates most of the obstacles any full sized or larger hands might encounter. However, the motherboard tray is a bit too flexible which makes the video card PCI bracket look as though it won’t line up. Since the tray flexes so much, it doesn’t take much to orient it properly though. Just make sure your video card isn’t being pulled out and you’ll be fine. In terms of the video card installation(s), there is ample space between the case’s extra side panel fans and the largest of our video cards, including the monstrous old skool 8800 ULTRA.
Large power supplies like Antec’s Quattro TPQ-1200 will quickly fill up the PSU bay. ANTEC includes an interesting mounting mechanism that allows slightly outboard mounting of longer PSUs while mainting interior space. With a little dexterity and the extra space behind the motherboard tray, power cables from this area are quickly organized. As mentioned in the video, the LanBoy Air does not support ANTEC’s CP series power supplies, which may upset some die hard ANTEC users that have invested in them.
Mounting the hard drives on the HDD bungee cords is actually both simple and a unique. Being suspended and flexible completely removed any and all vibrations. And, while system integrators might be a little nervous about using them, they do not fall off. Keep in mind that mounting the mini-panel fans will take up some HDD space and you may need to re-orient the direction your drive faces in order to accommodate all the drives to work with them. This is also the case if mounting longer GPUs as things may need to be moved around or removed to accomodate all your parts. Luckily, the modular design is conducive to customization.
Water cooling is a different story. Being able to mount a radiator or fans in the top of the chassis is going to depend on the motherboard you are using. Because the chassis isn’t very tall, the radiator or fans will sit down over the motherboard. Taller VRM/PWM heat sinks can and usually do pose a problem. Many boards also have DIMM slots that sit closer to the edge which means further conflicts in set up. The slimmer the radiator and fans, the better chance of success. Otherwise, I would recommend a fully contained system like one of Antec’s Kuhler H20 units or the CORSAIR H70 which shares a common pedigree.
Test Objectives
Because the LanBoy Air is so open and easily ventilated, we have a hunch that cooling is not going to be a problem. On the other hand though, designers don’t design cases to channel air with shrouds and panels for nothing. The clumsy special-forces-super-ninja-3D-gamer standing next to the system may be a bigger problem. His choices of sugary caffeine drinks may pose an even bigger problem still, due to the amount of mesh in the case. The test system we’re using is the worst case system scenario because it gets loud and hot if poorly cooled so we are definitely going to give this system a run for its money.
With that in mind, we have average temperatures recorded from having the system stowed in a Raidmax generic case with a single cooling fan. We will compare those temps to the LanBoy Air system with the fans off to give us a baseline and the fans on to reveal any active cooling benefits. At the same time, we’ll be monitoring system noise using a noise level meter, and recording those to see if the extra exposure to the elements will create any annoying effects.
Antec LanBoy Air Thermal Performance
In order to test the thermal resilience of this chassis, we ran a combination of OCCT and Furmark to torture the two things that get hot in an enclosure, namely CPU and GPU. Idle temperatures were taken at rest after the system booted.
As you can see, the generic case is for the most part, a sad environment for a high performance system. It moved very little air and therefore allowed the system to get very hot and very loud. This is no place for a high performance gaming system. The LanBoy Air improved everything right away even without the fans going. This means that the case could potentially offer good performance to a passively cooled system. When the system fans were turned on, temperatures dropped even further.
Let’s see what the noise penalty is of having no panels and all mesh.
ANTEC LanBoy Air – Noise Level Performance
Since thermal performance was reasonable, our next step was to see what effect having mesh instead of panels would have on noise levels. Running our two torture tests, we set out to find out if the LanBoy Air could still provide a reasonable acoustic performance.
In terms of noise, the case in passive cooling mode resulted in the CPU and GPU fans having to work a bit more to keep air moving. As thermal dynamics took over and heat naturally began to rise, the noise began to decrease, nearly matching the lower fan speeds at idle. With the fans on high, the cooler air directly hit our noise video card thus causing noise levels to drop even further, rarely going past 30 dB(A) according to our noise level meter, which was pointed about a foot away from the side panel.
Keep in mind that on the average, you won’t be running any artificial benchmarks for fun. Both Furmark and OCCT push CPUs and GPUs to hell and back. You can expect however that a reasonably loaded system even under extreme gaming or video editing could survive in the LanBoy Air without being in danger of overheating.
Final Thoughts
Based on our testing, we can safely say that the Antec LanBoy Air is well ventilated and offers the best system cooling possible. It’s a lot like an open air test platform except you can actually carry it around without things fallout off or out of it. The lack of panels also means that your loud components will be heard as you demand more of the system. Like an open test platform however, the lack of coverings does attract dust so be prepared to do some additional dust bunny patrols.
As far as system setup, the right thing to do would be to use low RPM fans with a high performance CPU tower cooler. This should provide great cooling performance with minimal noise. With the right CPU and GPU, it could be a very quiet system while being extremely high performance. It’s also very unique looking.
You can see through the mesh that hiding cabling is still a priority and makes the view a bit more attractive to onlookers. The AirMount HDD bungee harness is another nice touch for eliminating any hard drive vibrations and noises. Water cooling ports are always handy but the enclosure’s limited space up top makes it a challenge when mounting any dual 120mm radiators, or for that matter, even a couple cooling fans. An extra couple inches in a LanBoy Air II would fix that and allow more options.
Overall, the LanBoy Air enclosure hits a unique niche for gamers and enthusiasts. It offers modern feature and refinements that are important today. Built it up with low noise components and this could be a pleasantly quiet system sitting next to you at the next LAN event. It’s price tag at $179 USD may not easily be swallowed, but recent price drops and rebates allow you to have this very innovative chassis in your hands for far less than the asking price. It’s not for everyone, but it could be if you want to be a little different than the rest of the black boxes.
Pros
- Unique and innovative design
- Excellent cooling performance
- Handles well suited for transporting
- Lightweight yet sturdy
- Modular construction
- Good cable management
Cons
- SSD mounting location is not optimal
- Cooling options limited due to lack of case height
- No ANTEC CP Series PSU Support
Overall Rating: 8.0 / 10.0
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