Review: World Exclusive! - Antec 1200 (Twelve Hundred)

Conclusions, HEXUS Certification & Awards and HEXUS.right2reply

The Antec 1200 has been a long time coming. That could have been a problem, as it's given the competition time to produce cases to challenge it in the middle-money market of around £120. However, that sector has been surprisingly quiet.

There's no doubt that the Antec 1200 is a capable performer and one that offers a lot of potential. The supplied cooling - which can be extended further - could reasonably be described as overkill (verging on the insane?).

However, we found the case easy to live with for day-to-day tasks if the fans were all turned to their lowest settings. Things were very different with all fans set on high - the experience was painfully noisy. And, run like that, it was one of the loudest chassis we've had through the labs.

But there are a good many positives. We were impressed by the Antec 1200's potential for 9TiB of HDD storage. And, as well as nine hard disks - all actively cooled - it has three 5.25in bays spare, giving space for a pair of optical drives and a floppy disk.

Importantly, there was a good 50mm (2in) of clearance between our test 2900XT card and the nearest HDD caddy, so the Antec 1200 is well able to accommodate the latest giants of the GPU world.

Overall, the Antec 1200 is a very likeable chassis. We think it's got a great colour scheme throughout (but we do like black!) and, when it finally makes production, we'd presume it will be built to the high standards we have come to expect from Antec.

But we do have a bit of an issue with the official price of US$209, which we translate to £120. That's a little too high for our liking.

Fortunately, though, with the usual margin-trimming that e-tailers manage, we'd reckon that the Antec 1200 will be available for a little over £110 all up. And, to us, that's about right for what is a well-built and capable chassis that showed itself in our testing to be a great performer.

Yes, you guessed right. We like the Antec 1200. Indeed, enough to give it a prestigious HEXUS Extreme award.

HEXUS Where2Buy

TBA but we'll give you the low-down as soon as we know.

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External.links

Antec home page