Antec Twelve Hundred--Build And Installation
Build, Continued
Open up the sides and you’ll find more black steel. Antec claims support for 12 drives, though in order to get that sort of capacity you’d need to remove the plastic air-tunnel channeling circulation from one front intake fan into the body of the chassis. That’s hardly a problem, though; as the case sits from the factory, you can fit six hard drives and three 5.25” optical drives.
All of the enclosure’s edges are rolled and most of the screws you’ll be dealing with (excepting those holding hard drives into their cages) are of the thumb variety, making it easy to work in and around the Twelve Hundred
Installation
Unlike the Canyon 695, which has a brushed finish that seems like it’d be easily marred and thus begs to be handled very carefully, Antec’s Twelve Hundred is a simpler solution that gets its job done inexpensively, but satisfactorily. Six of nine copper standoffs came pre-installed for a simpler motherboard installation and the PC Power and Cooling supply that wouldn’t fit in ABS’ case slid in without a problem.
Of course, the Twelve Hundred’s design isn’t faultless. Connecting the 8-pin auxiliary power connector to the Asus board required an uncomfortable stretch. Any chassis vendor forcing power supply installations at the bottom of their cases should include an extension, as Cooler Master does with its HAF.
Also, after working with the Canyon 965’s slide-in hard drive mounts and backplanes, Antec’s cage design seemed particularly clunky. Freeing a cage for installation means taking off both side panels, unfastening four thumb screws on each side, securing the drive with four Philips-head screws, and reattaching the eight thumb screws. Surely that process could have been made easier.
Because the Twelve Hundred cannot accommodate eATX motherboards, you’ll notice that it’s not as deep as the ABS or Cooler Master cases. As a result, when you drop in a long graphics card, like AMD’s Radeon HD 4870, the fit is tight, especially if you have a hard drive installed directly across from the card.
Lastly, having seen ABS and Cooler Master integrate three-pin case fans designed to plug into a motherboard and adapt them to work with a four-pin Molex connection, we would have liked to see Antec go a similar route. Instead, the Twelve Hundred’s fans are Molex-only, so a header-heavy motherboard like our Rampage II Extreme goes underutilized.
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WAOW, does britian use the Dollar now!!!!!
Come on Tom's Hardware get an f*ing grip! This has been going on too long.
although it wont be long before they are similar in worth
", I got my first peek at the ABS chassis—otherwise known as Lian Li’s PC-X2000" - The UK isn't in the USA so like the rest of the world we know the company as Lian Li.
You said yourself that it is actually a Lian li, so why call it by the retailers name anyway?
I always felt a bit proud, that one of the leading tech sites on the web was European, but since the "merger" with Best of Media this site has gone downhill at an alarming rate.
As Guardsmon says: USA = ~260 million people, Rest of the world ~6,5 billion people.
Furthermore, i visit the UK site to avoid thing like "aluminum". I always knew Americans were a bit careless, but to lose the "i" in Aluminium always ticks me off. The main reason being the fact there is no such thing like f*cking Aluminum!!
I can understand the whole metric/imperial thing. Put the one used least between brackets (i.e 25,4cm (10")) If you write an article solely intentioned for the US part of THG, use all sorts of none exiting materials and dimensions you like, but when you write for the International site: USE INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS FOR CRYIN' OUT LOUD!!!!
Get your act together again and return to being the leading international site tech you once were. Fire the American twats or get them to learn proper English and give them all al copy of both the Periodic Table and a metric - Imperial conversion book.
Lol - outrage.
I'm a latecomer, so I've always wondered why this site (although .co.uk) has $ not £.
As for conversion books, aren't there on-line programs that do that now too? There's really no excuse.