Antec P190

Dan_D

Extremely [H]
Joined
Feb 9, 2002
Messages
63,018
Well I purchased a P190 and received it yesterday. Here is my mini-review of it and suggestions for Antec. (Hopefully someone from Antec eventually reads this.)

Initial impressions and praise

After pulling the case from the box, the whole thing screams of quality just as the P180 series does. Included are all the familiar accessories we've come to expect from Antec. The improvements over the P180 and P182 design are immediately evident and it's clear alot of thought went into the design of this case. I'd also like to say that I am precisely the market for this type of case. I prefer steel cases and no Lian-Li offered what I wanted or felt I needed in a case and this was really the best option I could find so far. (Aside from certain CM Stacker models that would have worked just as well.)

I'd like to congratulate Antec on a number of improvements over the design of the P180 and P182. First, the increased size is exactly what I needed. The noise in this case is acceptable but obviously not as quiet as the P182, and that's fine. The 200mm fan, the dual 140mm fans and all that are great. Cooling is really nice in this case which is a must for me. Installing a motherboard in this case is super easy, the fit and quality of most of the case and the accessories are fantastic. The snake light built into the top of the case is a real nice touch as well. The design layout of the case is excellent and asthetically the case is very pleasing to look at. I'm so glad that the fan spoiler is gone. All the accessories and small touches are great too. I like the pre-drilled and grometted holes for water cooling, (I made good use of those.) One nice improvement I didn't mention concerns the P190's side panels. They don't have the stupid plastic clips that the P180 and P182/SE have. The side panels have a solid metal ridge on the top and bottom of the panel that helps hold it in place and both panels secure from the back. Unlike the P180/B and P182/SE both side panels have thumbscrews now and are much easier to remove and replace.

Building your PC in the Antec P190.

Well, the first thing I did when I pulled the side panels was to check the bottom chamber and the PSU areas. First off I pulled the two Antec PSUs out of there. I plan to make use of at least one of them elsewhere and install my Thermaltake ToughPower 1200watt beast. First thing I noticed when pulling the Antec PSUs out is what a tight fit everything was down there. Not a problem I thought. So I got those out of the case by pulling them up through a supplied hole in the top of the lower chamber leading up into the motherboard area. First thing I noticed is that you can't get PSUs in or out any other way. Second thing I noticed is that you can't remove or install a PSU with cards installed in the machine. They do have to be removed in order to make room for the power supply to clear this area.

Quick commentary on the Neo-Link PSUs themselves

For one thing, these PSUs seem to be of reasonable quality and the finish is excellent. The first thing I looked for is how they would link together. This is where it gets a little ugly, the link is proprietary. This is unfortunate and the CM Stacker solution was far better in that you could link any two PSUs together. Also these units are cooled only by an 80mm fan in the back of the unit. This isn't the best design and everyone damn well knows it. The Neo 650Watt and Neo HE 550 watt are unique versions marked Neo-Link and are a little different than their retail counterparts would be. The NeoHE 550 isn't as modular as it's retail cousin. The retail unit has only two non-modular wires while this one has a handful that are modular and several that are not. The Neo HE 650 on the other hand isn't modular at all. I don't like this at all. With modular PSUs it should damn near be everything or nothing at all. Instructions on distributing the PSU load would have been nice as well. The wires are all left there unlabled to do with as you please. Thier site suggests using the Neo HE 550 for your motherboard and the 650 for peripherals. However there are no visable markings on the PSUs that can be seen without removing them and therefore when working on the machine you wouldn't ordinarily know which was which unless you took the PSUs out of the case like I did.

Back to the business at hand

Next I tackled the installation of my Thermaltake ToughPower 1200. Holy shit it doesn't fit. No way no how does this thing fit. I looked at my situation and I was pissed that a case this highend won't allow you to (easily) install a PSU over 7 inches in length. This is quite frankly unacceptable. Not everyone that is interested in this case wants two smaller PSUs. They want to use the big boys. Not just because they are so powerful but because they are superior to the Antec PSUs that have been out there in the marketplace for the last couple of years. Anyway I considered my options. Drilling out the rivets and taking the case apart in a way not intended by the manufacturer was one option I was sure would work. I didn't exactly want to go this route so I looked more carefully. After several test installations I found an angle I could use and decided the metal was flexible enough to allow me a hell of a good chance to get this sucker in there. Well after much screaming kicking and flexing of metal I made it fit. Fantastic. The metal of the upper chamber was flexible enough as I thought and isn't any worse for wear. I just hope I don't have to remove the PSU anytime soon.

On to my next problem. I only wanted to use the one PSU so I had to find something to cover the hole that was left by the departed PSU. Unfortunately I found nothing. I tried the plates from the Lian-Li and Stacker STC-T01 and none of those will fit without cutting, drilling and possibly welding. So right now I opted to throw the mostly modular Neo HE 550 into the vacant slot, and I tied up all the wires. There is now a lack of symetry on the back of the machine, but screw it. I wanted this to be over. So I moved on. I did however wire the power switch of the Neo HE 550 in just in case via a left over wiring adapter provided by one of my older Coolermaster Stacker STC-T01 cases to do the job. This also gave me an extension that makes reaching the motherboard power connector a little easier.

Next I simply swapped my lower drive cage with all my drives in it from my P182. This worked out well since this part was identical. This also worked great because there is a new hole just above that chamber that makes running cable a snap. I hid the excess cable from my drives in the floppy bay. Looks pretty good too.

I moved on to the rest of the build. Installing my motherboard, routing cables, installing cards and my optical drives. Finally I installed all my water cooling hoses and blocks, memory modules and so fourth. Everything worked pretty well and was generally easy to do. The problem I did run into was the water cooling hoses. They would interfere with movement of the 200mm side fan. I'll work on re-doing all my hoses and getting this resolved as it's my fault for a generally poor water cooling hose layout. I'm kind of new at water cooling and therefore my water cooling setup isn't as pretty as I'd hoped for. So that aspect of the build is a work in progress.

Another change unique to my build is that I decided to mount the lower chamber fan differently. Fortunately Antec included the normal screw holes so that you do not have to use their fan bracket if you don't want to. I installed fan grills on both sides of the fans. It's hard to keep the wiring in the lower chamber neat because of the amount of wiring I have to have and because of the nature of some of that wiring. My SAS card cabling has power connectors attached to it and the plugs are long. Therefore they were kind of getting cought up in the fan, hence the need to place fan grills on both sides of the fan. Small problem, easy fix and it looks pretty good.

One final build observation: For the love of god, all case manufacturers need to either include both types of power LED wires or they need to split them apart. Period, pulling the leads out and redoing the plug end gets old after awhile.

Overall I am pleased with the case. The included power supplies will find uses elsewhere so I don't feel like I wasted a bunch of money on the P190. I got it from Atacom.com for around $400 instead of Antec's MSRP of $500. Since the PSUs would have cost around $100 each or so I did ok. I think the case is worth $200.

Suggestions for improvements for any Antec people who might read this:

#1 First off, this is a high end case, people want to be able to use high end power supplies and don't want to use Antec power supplies necessarily. Antec is about the only manufacturer that still sells cases and power supplies together. This is fine but we want options. I had alot of trouble installing my Thermaltake ToughPower 1200 which has superior specifications and components to the Neo-Link setup. So please, start selling these without included PSUs. That would drop the price considerably. Few people will spend $400-$500 on a steel case and dropping the Neo-Link setup would probably sell more of them.

#2 To make PSUs of extreme size fit better, you can do things one of two ways. Drop dual PSU support (most people don't like it and don't use it anyway) and make the PSU mounting area more like that of the P182. If not, the hole in the top of the PSU chamber that you slide PSUs into needs to be an inch longer. It should also be just a hair wider. It's hard to slide PSUs in there without scratching them.

#3 Offer the black interior of the P182SE on more cases, it would be especially cool to have on an all black Antec P190.

#4 Some of the edges in the PSU area are very sharp. I cut the piss out of myself working in that area. Some great care has been made to file down many of these edges, but compared to older cases like the KS-188, SX1040 and others this thing is a bit hazardous to work with. Those older cases I mentioned are safe nearly everywhere.

#5 Drop the proprietary Neo-Link feature. It's cool and all of that but a solution more like the CM Stacker STC-T01's works much better as it will work with ANY power supply pair out there.

#6 Include a Y-Power cable like the Dell servers use. This would be much nicer for plugging in two PSUs.

#7 An additional change needs to be made in the top 3.5" drive cage. I think that the cage needs to be a about an 8th of an inch shorter so that fans of fan grills can install fan grills on this fan. Granted this is super minor, but I like fan grills on all my fans. I like the look and it gives the interior an overall higher quality feel to it in my opinion. Plus the drive cage length being slightly longer than that of the P182's makes clearing the fan bracket a bit tough, but there is just enough room to do it.

#8 Include fan grills for all the fans. I'd like to see more case manufacturers do this. It's something that I think every manufacturer should do. If someone has sloppy wiring it keeps wires from getting into the fan blades. Specifically for water cooling users or just people with sloppy wiring jobs, the lack of a fan grill on the 200mm side fan makes things really difficult to close up due to the fact that you have to worry so much about getting stuff caught in it. You might also want to think of a different method of powering the 200mm side fan. It's a bitch to have to connect and disconnect a 4 pin molex connector like that. Not to mention you have to keep access to at least one four pin molex connected to your PSU in order to power the fan. It's not an ideal solution for wire management.

#9 There is a stamped fan grill on the back of the case. I don't like these things and I never have. This should be removed and replaced with a mesh like the Coolermaster Stacker series cases have. That and I could use a fan grill on the back of it instead. It would also make attaching water cooling radiators to that back fan easier.

#10 Include a damn cover plate for the PSU area. As I've stated most people that would buy this case don't want the dual Antec PSUs. Frankly their quality isn't what it used to be and secondly, some of us already have badass PSUs we want to use. If you didn't include the PSUs or even if you do, include a cover plate so that we can cover up the PSU bay we don't use. Lian-Li makes one for thier dual PSU bays as does Coolermaster that allows you to mount two 80mm fans in this area instead which would be a welcome feature on this case.

This may sound like alot of complaining, but really most of these things are just me nitpicking. The most annoying thing, and frankly the biggest problem is the PSU area. Head my advice for changing that, and start selling them without the dual PSU setup and you'll sell a ton of these things. Even at $200 or $250 I think they'd sell really well.

Cliff notes and summary

Sell the case without the power supplies.

Change the PSU area either by enlarging the hole that PSUs are dropped into the chamber from or make that section like the one found in the P182 for single PSUs.

I am pleased with the case for the most part as I've already stated. This is truely an enthusiasts case. It's rugged, sturdy and not bad to look at. It's a good case, but there are some changes Antec will need to make before it becomes a great case. For people who don't need extra PSUs this case is probably a waste of money the way they are sold today. For individuals who would use the Neo-Link setup the case is a pretty good deal if you think it through. Those using the Neo-Link setup obviously won't have the issues building with it that I had so that's something for all potential buyers to think about.

I'll post pics of the setup sometime tonight hopefully. Make fun of my water cooling setup and I'll find your house and take a dump on the hood of your car. :D
 
Looks like [H] wouldn't have too look for for a Case reviewer. All we need is pics and a link on the front page.

As far as I'm concerned the major headaches I run into when setting up a system in a case is mobo mounting (cheers to Antec on this front apparently) and installation of large power supplies (jeer's to Antec). Along with Dan's suggestion of better psu options, I would just make a small addition as throwing in a single psu adapter bracket also.

But one of the things that really bother me about the case is the fact that the side panel with the Big Boy 200 is not flat. The way Lian-Li has the side panel fan on my V1100 is such an easier way to mount it and better looking (imo).
 
What do you mean it's not flat? On the outside it's pretty flat. If you are talking about the inside, well I am not sure that can be avoided. As far as motherboard installation goes, it's really easy to install them in this case and everything lined up perfectly. The CM Stacker STC-T01 was really good in this regard but the CM Stacker 830's have issues when it comes to installing peripheral cards. With the exception of the PSU area the P190 is almost flawless in design and even execution. Really my 10 improvement suggestions are me just being the nit-picky jackass I have always been. What really kills me though is that designers miss these things and that the marketting people apparently don't see a need for a PSU-less version of this case. HUGE mistake as far as I am concerned. If this thing were $150-$200 and was sold with no PSUs, watch out they'd sell like hotcakes to guys just like me.

Yeah, if they did the PSU area in a more modular fashion that allowed PSUs to be installed from the back like the CM Stackers, that would have been sufficient. That and a cover plate for the extra bay or some kind of single PSU adapter kit would work as well. I'm not even saying that the case needs to come with that necessarily, but it needs to be readily available. I really think that selling this case as a dual PSU only case is a mistake. There needs to be an option for no PSUs and a provision for installing single PSUs in this case. With a few minor changes this thing would be awesome.
 
What do you mean it's not flat? On the outside it's pretty flat. If you are talking about the inside, well I am not sure that can be avoided. As far as motherboard installation goes, it's really easy to install them in this case and everything lined up perfectly. The CM Stacker STC-T01 was really good in this regard but the CM Stacker 830's have issues when it comes to installing peripheral cards. With the exception of the PSU area the P190 is almost flawless in design and even execution. Really my 10 improvement suggestions are me just being the nit-picky jackass I have always been. What really kills me though is that designers miss these things and that the marketting people apparently don't see a need for a PSU-less version of this case. HUGE mistake as far as I am concerned. If this thing were $150-$200 and was sold with no PSUs, watch out they'd sell like hotcakes to guys just like me.

Yeah, if they did the PSU area in a more modular fashion that allowed PSUs to be installed from the back like the CM Stackers, that would have been sufficient. That and a cover plate for the extra bay or some kind of single PSU adapter kit would work as well. I'm not even saying that the case needs to come with that necessarily, but it needs to be readily available. I really think that selling this case as a dual PSU only case is a mistake. There needs to be an option for no PSUs and a provision for installing single PSUs in this case. With a few minor changes this thing would be awesome.

Quiet frankly when it comes to product reviews, I want the reviewer to be as big of an ass as possible. Seriously who wants to hear all the good reviews about a product, we want to know what are the issues with the product, because it can be a problem for us. So in short, I fully support you being an ass when it comes to product reviews. :D

Yes, looks like its a 182+, with a much bigger case and accomadation for 2 PSU? Anything else I'm missing?
 
Quiet frankly when it comes to product reviews, I want the reviewer to be as big of an ass as possible. Seriously who wants to hear all the good reviews about a product, we want to know what are the issues with the product, because it can be a problem for us. So in short, I fully support you being an ass when it comes to product reviews. :D

Yes, looks like its a 182+, with a much bigger case and accomadation for 2 PSU? Anything else I'm missing?

No not really. It looks just like the P182 in the front except that it's actually black like the P180B. The inside is almost the same except for the case is about four inches longer or so to accomodate E-ATX motherboards. The PSU area is completely different and that's where most of the problems were with my installation. The fan spoiler is gone so the top of the case is flat. There are more fans in the P190 and they are much larger fans in some cases. Otherwise all the improvements of the P182 are present. The holes for water cooling, the space behind the motherboard tray and the holes in the tray for wire management are all present. I had heard comments about the P190 being wider than the P182 and I don't think it is. The front bezel is exactly the same.
 
What do you mean it's not flat?

This bordered indent on the panel:

p190_side_panel_fan_indent1.jpg


My Lian-Li V1100 has a side fan and its attached via a bracket that screws to the back of the case on the inside.

lian-li_side_fan_bracket2.jpg

lian-li_side_fan_bracket.jpg
 
I see what you are saying. I don't mind the looks of the P190's side panel, but I agree that is all entirely subjective. Some people won't mind and others will. One nice improvement I didn't mention concerns the P190's side panels. They don't have the stupid plastic clips that the P180 and P182/SE have. The side panels have a solid metal ridge on the top and bottom of the panel that helps hold it in place and both panels secure from the back. Unlike the P180/B and P182/SE both side panels have thumbscrews now and are much easier to remove and replace.

EDIT: Added my comments above to the original post/mini-review.
 
Very informative review :)

I gotta agree on the power LED wires. I dont think Ive ever had a case and mobo match up so that I was able to use them :/
 
if they offer one without the pesky PSUs, i would buy one in a heart beat

Well if they do start offering them without PSU's then I'll start recommending them. At the price they are going for I simply can't recommend this case. Aside from that, the 200mm fan is so thick you can't hardly use it without crap getting caught in it. The 200mm fan really needs a grill.
 
Well I pulled the secondary power supply and moved the primary over. To fill the hole I took an old Enermax PSU, took it apart, removed the fans, and the guts, then cut the backplate off. Then I took some of the extra sheet metal from the cover and made a cover plate for the power recepticles hole, and I attached an 80mm fan, kept the fan speed controller, and mounted it in the case. It looks pretty good.

Later on in the week, I'll be installing my Swiftech Apex Ultra H20-220 in my case as well as my Danger Den NV-88GTX waterblocks on my 8800GTX's. Finally, I'll top it off with some custom BIOS' for the 8800GTX cards and I might increase the size of my RAID array while I am at it. I'll get some pictures up in the Case modding section when ever I get it all done.
 
progress?

Haven't taken any pics, I'm trying to wrap up a review. I'm fairly happy with the wiring job, and my cover for the extra PSU bay just got finished last night. (Dremel FTW!) I think it turned out quite well and when I get some time I'll do all the photos. My tubes for the water cooling aren't the prettiest thing. I basically set those up in my CM Stacker 830 and moved the setup over to the P190 where it turned out to be less than ideal. I will however be fixing that when the new Swiftech Apex Ultra goes in. Right now I've also got one 8800GTX pulled out as it was getting a bit too hot in the case. I have the Danger Den NV-88GTX waterblock installed on that card right now, and since I don't need both my GTX's to finish my review, I'm in no hurry to get the second card back in.

I've got alot of work ahead of me, but it should be fun and by next Sunday it should be all complete.
 
Bumping this thread from a couple weeks ago, wondering if you ever took pics with your setup in it.
 
Bumping this thread from a couple weeks ago, wondering if you ever took pics with your setup in it.

I haven't. My installation went horribly wrong and I got coolant all over my motherboard. Right now I've got the air going and I'm re-testing and re-doing all my water cooling installation.

Right now I've got the air coolers on the GTX's and the Nautilus with Apogee GT on my processor. (Air cooling just sucks too bad on the Core 2 Quad Q6600s.)

I hope to get everything finished this weekend, but there are no guarantees. I've made some changes to my cooling loop, (added drain/fill port) and I am also waiting on more hose clamps. I'm also still out on which res I want to use or even if I want to use one at all. But bleeding the system through a T-Line sucks ass.
 
can you go into more detail on why you were so determined to swap the PSUs?
 
can you go into more detail on why you were so determined to swap the PSUs?

Because I had already purchased the Thermaltake ToughPower 1200 and frankly, it's a better PSU than anything Antec currently sells. It also worked out better as it left alot of room for my water pump, and even left a place to keep the water pump out of site.
 
As good as theP190's performance was, I'm also for a little bit of bling. Is there any way to get a P190 with a window?
 
As good as theP190's performance was, I'm also for a little bit of bling. Is there any way to get a P190 with a window?

Nope. They come only one way, with dual PSUs and no window.
 
The P190 seems to be easier to mod, however, that large fan would have to be killed for a window.. defeating the purpose of the new model.


This is a very nice case, I saw one at frys on Sunday and I was really pleased. I just wish it had PSU options.
 
The P190 seems to be easier to mod, however, that large fan would have to be killed for a window.. defeating the purpose of the new model.


This is a very nice case, I saw one at frys on Sunday and I was really pleased. I just wish it had PSU options.

Well that large fan is a pain in the ass. It's the reason why larger air coolers can't be used. It also can't be installed when my Danger Den NV88-GTX waterblocks are installed as the fittings get in the way. Even the 8800GTX power cables kind of get in the way at times. If you aren't careful they get caught in the 200mm fan. That thing needs a fan grill on it in the worst way.
 
So a P182 is more refined overall?

No, not really. The P190 has a few improvements, and a few drawbacks. As to which is better it really depends on the application. The P182 can't do many of the things that the P190 can such as handle E-ATX boards. I don't think either is perfect, but with some minor changes they each could be.
 
i like this case, just don't like the fact that it comes with PSUs. like Dan said, if they had a version without the PSUs, i'd buy one.

here's hoping Antec releases it.
 
As I've stated before, the PSU bay needs to be modified pretty extensively as is. Yes, a version without PSU's would be really nice.
 
It makes no sense to me at all that this case was ever bundled with /any/ PSUs. Look at their older server cases. Look at their older full towers. I don't think they've ever done this before on the high end.

Antec, in my mind, has gone down hill. I've owned many of their products -- I still do own many of their products. Everything but the cases have been massive disappointments in one way or another.

The only reason my Truepower 2.0 PSU I had with my Athlon 64 system was not the worst purchase decision I've ever made is their willingness to keep sending me new ones when they died (multiple times) despite low loads and pretty much ideal operating conditions. A 550 watt PSU running an A64 3500+, 2 HHDs, 2 DVDRWs, and a Radeon X800XT dies twice, in a case with 3 120mm fans in a room with the airconditioning on high year round...? Yeah, real high quality product.

My Antec laptop cooler (the huge thing that sits under the machine, not the newer one that acts like a prop in the back) was fine for 2 weeks, until the USB cable it came with self-destructed when I pulled it out (straight, not sheering it or anything like that) because the glue used in putting it together at the factory had completely given up the ghost /already/. I cut the cable off a broken USB gamepad, opened up the cooling pad, soldered the new cable on rather than using the stupid plug-in system it came with, and set it up so the cable can coil inside the storage compartment they had for the original cable...and unlike it, can't get lost. It's been working fine since, leading me to wonder why the design and engineering team didn't, you know, sell it that way...

Antec TriCool fans don't push much air, even on high, and get very loud. $4 Yate Loons are better all around, and there's just something wrong with that. I'm glad I didn't buy the things separately and they only came in my case, but honestly, if you think they're worth $12-15 a piece I'd much rather get the case $36-45 cheaper, rather than be force-fed things I now know I'd immediately replace, just like the PSUs in the P190 were I (or most other enthusiasts, I'd wager) to get one. Of course, I know the price wouldn't drop that much, because I know they don't cost you near that much to make.


End result?


These guys can't make anything but cases. They never could. They make solid, reasonably priced cases with forgivable flaws (stupid plastic doors for the most part) and fair airflow. I'm not willing to throw down $200+ on a case, so I'll never be one of the Lian Li guys -- it's a box, it has holes in it, maybe some baffles and ducting, but I could care less if it's Japanese, US, Korean, steel, aluminum, etc. Does it work and fit everything I want it to inside? Fine.

Antec: either hire out to better companies or drop your other lines. Go back to making cases and only cases -- it's what you did best from the start, and all the crap you're currently shoveling out on to the market with your name emblazoned on it is only lowering people's opinions of the company. At one point I would have bought something and felt it was 'safe' because it was make by you, and now, I feel as if I need to be on my guard, even if it's a small thing. What happened here?
 
Well on the subject of the Antec P190, I am nearly done with my installation of the water cooling equipment. I've been leak testing it for a day or so, and now all I am doing is the final top off and bleeding out the air bubbles. Otherwise, I am nearly finsihed.

I accidentally broke one of the 140mm tri-cool fans and while unfortunate, it isn't a big deal. I used this as an excuse to replace all the fans with Yate Loons fans. Though I lose the speed controller on the back, it's a fair trade in my mind for quieter and generally superior fans. In any case the removal of the second PSU allowed me the opportunity to use that space for something more useful than Antec's shitty PSU system. I placed my water pump there. Even my elecrical wiring in the lower chamber didn't come out all that bad. One downside is though that I finally had to mount my res on the side of the drive cage. The drilling and bolts required to do this made it so that I would have to lose the functionality of this cage as a drive cage and instead use it for a duct, and reservior mounting point.

But the installation turned out great, and everything worked out fine. The 200mm fan had to go as the waterblocks interfere with the side panel being installed with that fan in place. (Not that I need it since I am watercooling.)

One huge drawback to this case compared to the P182 is that if you are running an SLI configuration, the secondary video card will likely run too hot. It's borderline with the 200mm fan installed, but if I wasn't running the fans at 100% speed all the time (thank you Rivatuner) then I would get thermal throttling on the second GPU. The P182 doesn't have this problem if you leave the wire managment slider thingy open. Then air is drawn in from the bottom PSU chamber and therefore it stays cool enough.
 
Someone w/ this case should post some pictures of it. Would be great to see, love the case, it's nice and big!!!!
 
there is a whole thread on it that was started yesterday... i ahve one too, if you are interested make sure you get the revision one with cable management else its a bitch to make it look good
 
Someone w/ this case should post some pictures of it. Would be great to see, love the case, it's nice and big!!!!

Well the case has some definite issues. Mine has had to be modified slightly to accomodate my water cooling. As stated above the PSU's have been changed to a single unit, and I had to make a custom back plate for the second PSU bay. Then I had to cut the edges of the left side case panel. Due to the way Antec positions their rear 120mm fans on many of their cases, the case cover actually closes over half of the two screws that hold the fan in. For stock operations this is fine, but in my case my radiator is externally mounted and therefore it was no bueno. So I had to do some work on the back of the side panel to make it fit. (Still in the process of working on that.) Finally I had to gut the middle drive cage and drill some holes in it to mount my reservior. So now that cage is just an air duct. Finally my 200mm fan had to be removed for clearance issues. This is nearly necessary on any 8800GTX SLI system as the PCIe 6 pin power connectors can sometimes hit the 200mm fan. In my system my water blocks create the clearance issue as they protrude past the normal card width.

I just got it finished up (aside from the side panel) yesterday and I spent the night playing Lost Planet (as well as conducting temp tests)

Unfortunately while my GPU temperatures are AWESOME, (Never crawling past 65c under load and idling at 55c) my north bridge and CPU temps aren't very good. I need to look into this some today. I've tried a number of solutions on this north bridge and this board just seems to run a bit hotter than my other EVGA 680i SLI boards do. My processor however ran a little cooler on the Nautilus, but admittedly the Nautilus was just running the Q6600 and nothing else.
 
Reseating and re-applying the thermal paste did the trick. My temps are under control now. My CPU is around 37c idle and up to 55c under load. The north bridge temp only dropped 10c but I haven't had any stability issues. I've also got my CPU running 12 hours stable under Orthos at 3.21GHz. I'm going to try testing at 3.4GHz tonight.
 
there is a whole thread on it that was started yesterday... i ahve one too, if you are interested make sure you get the revision one with cable management else its a bitch to make it look good

I didn't realize there were multiple revisions of the P190, or are you referring to the P180, since that's what you list in your sig?
 
I didn't realize there were multiple revisions of the P190, or are you referring to the P180, since that's what you list in your sig?

The P190 is brand new and has no revisions. The P180 is the one has a few variants. There is a P180, P180B, P182 and P182SE. Some of the P180B's you buy now are actually P182's with P180 colored panels. (Either silver or black.)
 
The P190 is brand new and has no revisions. The P180 is the one has a few variants. There is a P180, P180B, P182 and P182SE. Some of the P180B's you buy now are actually P182's with P180 colored panels. (Either silver or black.)

Yup, that's what I was thinking he was referring to, but I know with my Antec Titan, they did a silent revision change to remove one of the soldiered in standoffs to allow for more motherboard sizes. I was thinking maybe he was referring to the P190 having one of these too, to correct an uncommon issue.
 
Hmm that looks factory to me. I wonder if this is a modded case or if it is going to ship like this?

I get the feeling that they are modding those and Antec isn't going to be shipping them like that. Then again who knows? Antec may decide to start doing that.
 
So Dan, If you didn't have to bother with water cooling, would you say the P190 has been the most enjoyable case you've used?
 
Wow, that 190 see-through is baaaaaaaaaaaad!! Wow, I want one, wish it didn't cost so much w/ Dual PSU's, do they sell one w/o PSU's???
 
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