Internal appearance – drive management
On the front of the Antec 1200 is a series of small knobs seemingly mounted to the first, fourth and seventh bays. The location of these gives a clue to what's going on within. There, you'll find three supplied drive caddies, each able to hold three 3.5in hard drives (yes, nine in all!) leaving three bays spare. The knobs on the front are fan-speed controllers - one for the 120mm blue-LED fan that's inside each of the drive caddies. It's a simple but effective way of avoiding the more usual unsightly switches. Each caddy has a fan frame cage mounted to the front. The fans are blue-LED TriCool models with three speed settings. And each cage has a fan filter in the front - sitting between the fan and the mesh front of the module. If you were to opt for 1TiB drives, the Antec 1200 could store up to 9TiB without breaking into a sweat - thanks to the trio of 120mm fans.
But we aren't necessarily fans (groan!) of this type of drive housing. As we mentioned in our recent Cooler Master COSMOS S review – we have a real issue with the need to take three drives offline when only one might need attention. Even so, the Antec 1200's mounting method is much simpler that others we have recently seen using long screws into recessed mounts on the side.