Antec Performance One P280 Midtower Case Review

Installing parts into the Antec P280

Antec provides a bag of hardware, a sheet to point out parts, and a couple of wire ties.

In the hardware bag is an assortment of items needed to mount the motherboard, hard drives, and fans.

The hard drive tray has both 2.5 and 3.5 mounting points. The 2.5″ mounts are solid to the cage. The 3.5″ have silicon vibration isolators.

Since I’m using an SSD, I chose to use the dedicated 2.5″ cage. The drive does stick out a little, but no further than the drive trays. There is a positive stop to keep the drive from going too far in. There are pressure fingers in the slot that hold the drive nicely, but you can also secure the drive in place with a screw.

The overall install was quick and I only found one issue and a small annoyance.

Both are in regards to the front panel wires. The power, reset, LED activity lights could stand to be a couple inches longer. No matter how I routed the wires I could not get the HDD activity LED wire to the connections on the board. Not so much an issue for me, as I don’t hook it up, but others do. So, if your motherboard front panel connections are low and to the rear like mine are on the Intel DX58SO motherboard you may have some issues. As you can see in the image I used one of the holes created for the wire tie tab to run the switch wires through, and I ran the front USB cable wires between the board and the tray. Another wire routing hole in place of that one wire tie tab would be very nice.

There was a TON of room to run wire behind the tray. I had no issues back here with anything.

If using the dedicated 2.5″ bays I would suggest hooking them up first before putting any dives in the trays. To get my hand in far enough to hook up the cables I had to take the top tray out.

The wire routing holes at the top of the tray made it easy to get a cable up to the power distribution block for the fans.