Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by NCI XCOM great technology selection and service hello everyone I'm Dimitri with hardier and axe and welcome to another case review the antic p38 II is under the spotlight receiving the full hardware conducts treatment now this one is a little bit more special because I was excited about this particular enclosure thinking this could be the return for an tech in the competitive sphere just because it looks so awesome and on paper seems to be appropriate for a 2015 release on the exterior the p38 II features beautiful aluminum top and front panels that look fantastic especially with the curved ends that would satisfy any elegant space however this is a two-piece design with I would say too large of a gap between where the aluminum meets plus I had to be really careful handling any of the edges because they were extremely sharp hopefully antic can you find them as I would actually consider them to be hazard the IO is on the left side sort of hidden between the top panel and the bottom plastic bit with audio jacks four USB ports two of which are USB 3 and power and reset buttons that are located on the front behind the aluminum on both sides which I appreciate for flexible case orientation the aluminum front facade is spaced out to allow fresh intake without restriction which is great and I love the appearance of such space but removing the entire front panel is just so inconvenient the requires removal of six screws and I wonder why as the panel sits already on pretty strong hinges the 2:140 motor fans here you see are actually were installed at the top and the p-38 e comes with no intake fans which I find really odd for the price but you could install triple 120mm fans here at the front as well now the front panel has the most ridiculous dust filter in the history of dust filters as it removes from the bottom of the case I guess there's the incentive not to keep the case on the floor or on some short pedestal as the filter is actually plenty long and requires a good enough clearance but even on the desk the case plus full system inside makes it really heavy so I need to push it all the way to the hinge for filter removal is extremely inconvenient and that clearly understands the convenience of site filter removal is that's exactly what they've done for the power supply filter but unfortunately not for the front at the back it's a standard view with nine PCI slots an exhaust mount for a 120mm fan mount only which is included and I love the totally solid top panel that lets me put some items on top without worrying about restriction on any of the airflow the panel is spaced out and ventilation is available on both sides removing the panel is pretty simple but the i/o cables are attached to it which made it more difficult to remove once the system is fully assembled and all the wires are cleaned up but here again we see triple 120 and dual 140 millimeter mounts I love the side panel in this case nice square window and good quality panels the solid one has reinforcement plate that solidifies the entire assembly and so I decided to put my entire workstation system inside the p-38 II because I absolutely love the elegant character of this case but on the inside there's really nothing special we have 8 Drive caddies that our SSD compatible and all three drive cages are removable but first you need to take out 33 screws that's 29 to many the drive cage is restrictive and there are no additional fan mounts in this face which is surprising and I'm disappointed that Antec ditched this awesome feature that actually was found on the 1100 tower back 4 years ago moving on the hard drive cage can support to 120 millimeter fans to provide additional airflow for the internals now a really neat mounting system is in place for those fans using no screws but clips that hold the fence dirty to the cage a really convenient mounting method to avoid any hassle during assembly yeah that was my voice 4 years ago anyway it looks like some things haven't changed for the worse like the rubber grommets on the side that are so far away from the ATX motherboard I would like to see better cable management accommodation for common systems and not just tailor for e-atx setups the same story below the motherboard there are no cutouts to help with simple cable management the closest cutout is just too far away to achieve a clean look coming around to the back it's good news that it's easy to secure all the cables and make sure the panel closes without any hassle but where our separate SSD brackets to show that they're listening to what we want to see from a modern case they have added the fan hub but it's nowhere the quality we should expect at this price point plus its molex powered and no pwm support and to make things worse each of the fans comes with its own built-in low or high setting but it is internal and I don't want to open my case every time I need to change the speed this approach feels outdated and no amount of aluminum will change that now sure the end result looks awesome especially with the panel on and the ambient lighting that I've added inside to highlight that hardware but you cannot judge the case by the cover and glad that I've put my full system inside just to realize that the p-38 II is not for me because of the difficult to access front filter internal modularity is poor and a molex fan hub just doesn't make any sense without proper fan speed control so it looks like the search for a new workstation case resumes this has been the antic P 380 review I'm Dimitri with heydrich NOx thank you guys so much for watching don't forget to subscribe and follow for more similar content and we'll see you in the next one you