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.