MaximumPC 2008 09

Y

ou will not fi nd a more powerful air-
cooled case on the market than Antec’s
Twelve Hundred—not unless you strap a
box fan to the side of your chassis. That’s what
it would take to challenge the cooling prowess
of this full-tower enclosure, which features
one 20cm fan on top and fi ve 12cm fans
placed throughout the interior. These six blue
LED fans are attached to individual switches
that allow you to tweak the strength (and
sound) of each fan to suit your needs.
While the case’s cooling is top-notch,
not all of the Twelve Hundred’s features are
so thoughtfully designed. The fans’ cables
could stand to be longer to better utilize the
case’s numerous holes and attachments for
cable management. And while the Twelve
Hundred comes with an additional switch to
turn the 20cm fan’s light on and off, it would
be nice if we could control all the lights at
once. And the installation procedure for
hard drives is overly complicated. You have
to remove a grand total of 16 screws to

insert a single drive—what ever happened

to no-fuss rails?

The case has plenty of room on the inside—

vertically. Larger graphics cards, such as Nvidia’s

8800 GTX, fi t inside the chassis but leave little

room for stringing cables along the card’s side.

We would have preferred a wider case to the

unusable space above the motherboard. The

chassis supports three 5.25-inch devices and

nine 3.5-inch drives, but we’d gladly trade two

drive bays for more usable space.

We liked the Antec Nine Hundred, but we

expected the Twelve Hundred to improve on

its predecessor’s shortcomings—such as the

narrow body and overly complex drive instal-

lation. Antec has done nothing to fi x these

issues. We could excuse these things in the

Nine Hundred because its exceptional cooling-

based design impressed us greatly. We’re now

at the design’s second iteration, and the Twelve

Hundred off ers little above and beyond what

we’ve already seen. This isn’t an improvement;

it’s a resize. – D A V I D M U R P H Y

Antec Twelve Hundred

More fans, more fuss, and more frustration

than your average case

VERDICT

$210, http://www.antec.com

7

More cooling than a

wind tunnel, elegant

design, USB and eSATA

front-panel connectors.

A tight horizontal fit,

drive installations

take forever, no

screwless mounting.

300

ANTEC TWELVE HUNDRED

4400

The Twelve Hundred’s many fans are fairly quiet

on their lowest settings. On their highest, you

might want to tape your windows.