When it comes to computer enclosures, it’s hard not to mention Antec. Known for memorable designs like the original P180 and the recently unveiled Skeletion Open Concept Case, they definitely aren’t scared of breaking new ground, but seem to do it in such a way that the products look just as good today as they would five years from now. Although the company builds very high quality and timeless performance enclosures, one area where they haven’t been particularly aggressive in is the gaming case market. In order to get more serious about the gaming market, Antec follows up the successful Nine Hundred with the Twelve Hundred.
Like the Nine Hundred, the Twelve Hundred goes hardcore with tons of drive bays; twelve drive bays on the Twelve Hundred vs the nine drive bays of the Nine Hundred. The Twelve Hundred retains the plexi side window and LED fans which is a signature trait of most gaming cases these days, but increases the fan count by two, adding another 120mm front intake fan and another 120mm rear exhaust fan over the NIne Hundred. There are also two extra optional fans to add to the side window and to the interior. Antec has also built the Twelve Hundred with watercooling in mind. Basically, it’s a bigger and badder Nine Hundred.
Features and Specifications
Antec loads up the case with lots of extra capacity and enough fans to make your fans levitate…
- 12 Drive Bays
- Perforated front bezel for maximum air intake
- Washable air filters reduce dust build up in your system
- Advanced Cooling System:
- 1 top special 200 x 30 mm blue LED exhaust fan with 3-speed switch control (LEDs can be switched off as well)
- 2 rear 120 x 25 mm special blue LED exhaust fans with 3-speed switch control
- 3 front 120 x 25 mm special blue LED intake fans with front speed control
- 1 side 120 x 25 mm fan to cool graphic cards (optional)
- 1 middle 120mm fan to cool CPU or graphic cards (optional)
• Water cooling platform for reservoir or pump
- 7 expansion slots
- Top mounted I/O ports for easy access
- Power and reset button with blue LED
- 2 x USB 2.0
- 1 x eSATA
• HD Audio In and Out
- Convenient top accessory tray for a personal media player
- Motherboard: Up to standard ATX
- No Power Supply included: To optimize performance of your Twelve Hundred, your choice of power supply is crucial. Antec strongly recommends choosing from our NeoPower or TruePower series.
- Dimensions:
- 22.9″ (H) x 8.4″ (W) x 20.2″ (D)
• 58.2 (H) x 21.3 (W) x 51.3 (D) cm
For more specifications and features, go on and check out the product page. After you’re done there, read on to find out how this case performs in the real world.
What’s In The Box?
The Antec Twelve Hundred comes with more hardware than you’ll ever need to build up a top notch gaming system. The case does use a lot more hardware than most tool free cases as it isn’t totally tool free except for the generous use of thumb screws. Other finishing touches include a 5.25 to 3.5 inch bay adapter for people that still use floppy drives or it can be used for a card reader.
Antec provides decent instructions for reference and resuable straps for tidying up cables, though I tend to prefer zip ties as they seem to clean up a lot neater despite their single use characteristics. Although our case came with two additional fans, they are not included in regular retail packages, but can be purchased seperately. I do highly recommend them as they are high quality and easy to adjust due to the inclusion of a small switch that gets you from low to high with a click.
First Impressions
After pulling the Antec Twelve Hundred out of its box, we were pleased with what we saw. The flat black paint job definitely means business. Antec isn’t typically known for using bright colours in their design and I’m glad to see them stick with their signature understated style.
The front panel jacks are tossed up top are are easy to reach when perched underneath a desk. Antec has also used flush mounted reset and power buttons to prevent accidental activation when reaching for your media player or your beverage seated in the top accessory tray.
Directly behind the accessory tray is the grill for the massive big boy 200mm fan. The fan has adjustment settings (L-M-H) and the ability to disable the blue LED built into it in case it starts ruining your pitch black gaming atmosphere. It does get quite bright.
The back of the case reveals a built in fan speed adjustment panel that first appeared in the Antec P182. From this panel, you can adjust exhaust fan speed from the 200mm big boy, to the two rear mounted 120mm fans. The switch to the disable the blue LED lights in the big boy is also here. Front panel fan adjustment is done using small individual aluminum dials which are blended in nicely to the existing front grill fascia.
The plexi side panel is also ventialted and includes the option to attach a 120mm Tri-Cool or any other one of your favourite 120mm fans. Let’s undo the thumbscrews and have a look inside…
Breaking Into the Twelve Hundred
Unlike some of its other gaming case brethren, the Twelve Hundred doesn’t use any fancy quick release mechanisms. It’s no CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 or even an NZXT Adamas when it comes to releasing the case panels. Standard thumb screws are used to secure both the left and right side panels and are liberally employed in the retention of the drive bays.
The bottom nine drive bays are grouped in threes and are removable once you take out the eight thrumb screws that hold each one of them in. This takes quite a bit of screwing and unscrewing and there were a few times where I was worried that I would wear the threads out. Each set of three bays is cooled using a 120mm intake fan. Antec has included filters in all these bays that quickly release and can be removed easily allowing you to clean them when they get really dusty.
Inside, we get a good look at the water cooling featues built into this case as well as the seven expansion slots. A really nice touch that Antec has built in is the addtion of pre-ventilated slot covers to allow maximum air flow between your hot cards. Unfortunately, no thumb screws for the expansion slots.
The power supply mounting area is suspended by four rubber feet that keeps your PSU from sitting on the floor the case. Based on this configuration, it would appear that Antec built this area specifically for one of their Quattro power supplies that use a rear mounted fan instead of a larger top mounted fan. If you look closely, you’ll see that Antec has used attached a plate to shrink the mounting hole to accomodate a regular power supply. Antec has done this to make this case ready for their new line of power supplies that use a non-standard tall profile that will only fit in cases built in this fashion. Removal of the plate will allow you to install one of these new style of power supplies due later this year.
The Twelve Hundred Comes With Its Own Cheering Section…
Or rather, a whole whack load of fans!
Antec has totally loaded up this case with massive airflow employing up to three 120mm front intake fans, and three 120mm exhaust fans including the top mounted 200mm big boy. If that’s not enough, an additional side panel and front intake fan can be added as an option, which we’ve done here.
We slid an optional Tri-cool fan into this brakcet that also employs a filter that easily slides out for cleaning. This fan is placed approximately where an SLI or Crossfire video card setup would sit on most motherboards. You can actually use any 120mm fan you wish, but the Tri-Cool is easy to adjust for noise and thermals.
The last optional fan can be attached to back of any of the existing drive bay trios that works in concert with any of the existing front intake fans. This allows you to ingest an even greater amount of air, targeted to where you need it, be it a pair of hot video cards or at an overheating chipset. Use of this fan does take away three of your drive bays, but leaves the remaining six open. Again, any 120mm fan will work, but I do like that you can adjust theTri-Cool unit we used to suit your needs.
In order to make sure that air flow is optimum, Antec has employed the back of the motherboard tray to route cables away from the inside of the case. This should, in theory keep the inside of the case relatively clutter free, and as a result, maximize air flow to all the components. Cable tie downs are preinstalled to get you started and additional loops can be employed to make use of more cable ties while cut outs give you places to poke your cables through.
Test System Setup
In order to test out the ease of installation of components in this case and the noise and thermals, we installed the following test system into the Antec Twelve Hundred Case.
- AMD Athlon X2 4200+ CPU (Provided by Geeks.com)
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 CPU Cooler
- DFI LANParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G Motherboard (Provided by DFI)
- Super Talent T1000UX2G4 2GB DDR2 Dual Channel Memory Kit
- EVGA 8800GTS 320MB Video Cards in SLI
- Seagate 250GB SATAII Hard Drive (Provided by Geeks.com)
- Antec Quattro 850Watt Power Supply (Provided by Antec)
- LG DVD Writer (Provided by Geeks.com)
Our operating system of choice was Windows Vista Home Premium 32BIT. We used 3DMark06 to give the system its workout and we took readings using nVidia’s nVmonitor for temperatures and a decible meter to grab noise level readings.
Building With The Antec Twelve Hundred
For the most part, we were impressed with the build quality and attention to detail in the Antec Twelve Hundred Case. All sharp surfaces were rolled or cleaned up to prevent cuts and injuries and the overall fit and finish quality was extremely high. These are traits that exist in all of Antec’s cases from their entry level to their top of the line.
The cavernous interior was a joy to work with. There was always ample room to move around. One thing that I really liked was how Antec included non-conductive washers so that the screws don’t accidently become a source of a shorting problems with the motherboard. High quality brass stand offs were also used all around, with the most common ones preinstalled. A bunch of extras are included just in case you need more.
Hard drive installation was a tad tedious. First, you need to remove eight thumb screws before you can remove the drive bay. Then after that, you have to use more screws to mount the drives. The screws themselves aren’t standard either which means if you lose the package of goodies that come with the case, you’ll have to go hunting at the local hardware store for more. Once they are installed, you’re good to go, but compared to the easy click and go tool-free systems that most cases have these days, I found this method slow and somewhat inconvenient.
What worked extremely well in this case was the cable management. In fact, the Twelve Hundred is one of the cleanest builds that I’ve ever done thanks to the great cable routing behind the motherboard. Although the back of the motherboard tray looks like a dog’s breakfast, the interior is totally clutter free. Most importantly, it was fairly easy to accomplish making it easy for a novice, but with a skilled builder, you could totally create a stealth cabling setup.
Performance
As you can see, we’ve got a pretty great looking setup here that is clean and clutter free. Let’s see how this plays out in terms of thermals and noise levels.
We took noise level readings with all the fans turned all the way down and then turned all the way up using a decibel meter. This included the two optional fans that we were given that we mounted in the case. Readings were taken six inches away from each surface and results are expressed in dBA. Here are our findings:
The Antec Twelve Hundred is definitely no quiet computing case with the fans wide open, but with them all turned to low, it’s pretty reasonable especially with such a large number of fans. That being said, it was time to see if these two settings did more than just make noise. We took temperature readings at idle with fans at both high and low settings after windows was settled and booted to the desktop for at least 30 minutes. We then loaded the system for half an hour running a looping demo of 3DMark06 and took readings at both high and low fan settings again. Here’s what we got:
Although there is a drop in temperature by going with all the fans ablazing, you still get great performance with the fans running in low. Depending on your system setup, you may want to tweak the cooling in different areas of the case based on need. For example, if you have a super hot SLI system, you could turn those fans up there, and leave the other fans at a medium and low setting depending on how thermally challenged the other components are.
Final Thoughts…
Overall, Antec has done a fantastic job with taking their Nine Hundred case and improving on it in the Twelve Hundred. The cooling performance is definitely strong and with the ability to customize fans speeds to suit your needs, you can game on with as little noise as possible. If that’s not enough, the case is also pre-plumbed to accept your hard core watercooling system.
The other area where the Antec Twelve Hundred is strong is in the cable management capabilities. Although it was only as simple as providing a ton of room and some holes behind the motherboard tray, this simple design really made clean up easy, further enhancing air flow as no large clutters of cables were in the way of the fans. This simplicity however takes the Twelve Hundred down a notch in ease of use as the sheer number of thumb screws made assembly a very manual affair. There is nothing wrong with thumb screws, but with so many cases sporting excellent tool free construction, the Twelve Hundred seems archaic in this respect.
Finally, we get to the way it looks. It has the lights, the plexi window and the cooling, but the design and execution are clearly built towards getting the job done. The case is burly and the flat black paint means all business. This case will look good now and still look good in five years. I highly recommend this case to anyone that is looking for a solid enclosure to house that hardcore gaming rig…and the next one…and the next one. You simply can’t go wrong with the Antec Twelve Hundred.
Pros
- Timeless good looks for today and tomorrow
- Excellent cooling that is customizable to suit your needs
- One of the cleanest cases for cable management that I’ve run across
- Interior provides lots of room to work in
- Quality construction
Cons
- Silent Computing users need not apply
- Thumb screws are totally old school. How about some tool free quick release action?
Overall Rating: 8.9 / 10.0
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