Review: Antec P150 - Quiet PC - Chassis - HEXUS.net

Kitted up for testing

We fitted the following hardware to the P150, to test the thermal performance. We found it to be fairly easy to work with, considering the lack of removable motherboard, but, at the same time, there were a few issues to deal with.

Hardware

DFI Lanparty 925TX Socket 775 Motherboard
Intel® 3.4 Ghz Extreme Edition Socket 775 CPU
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 Cooler
2 x Crucial 1GB PC4200 DDRII DIMMs
BFG 256MiB 7800GTX PCI-e
2 x 160GByte Seagate 7200 SATA Barracuda HDD

Everything was fitted into the system, with the HDDs mounted in the bungee mounts. This is where the tight space really did become apparent, with the moderately large 7800GTX card causing routing issues for the 6-pin power cable. A couple of extra inches would have helped matters. They usually do.

To evaluate the thermal performance of the P150 we ran a loop of Futuremark’s 3D Mark 2005 for 20 minutes before taking temperature readings at various locations. The ambient temperatures on the day was a balmy 29.5 degrees (hey, it’s warm for the U.K., alright?)

We also ran the same tests, on the same day, against Antec's own P180 and a larger Akasa Eclipse 62. On to the numbers, folks.