Techaddicts.net - Antec Nine Hundred Two Gaming Case Review

Review by: Daniel

Date: March 23, 2009

Provided by: Antec

When comparing the Nine Hundred Two against the Nine Hundred, you can see that on the front, the holes for the air grilles are bigger on the Nine Hundred Two, which can help with the air flow. Also the air filters cover the fans on the Nine Hundred Two so they are not as apparent. Their side panels are identical except that the Nine Hundred Two has an air filter in front of the fan.

For the front panel, you can see that Antec has expanded the storage area and gave the 200mm fan a more round-ish appearance. The front panel connectors and buttons have also been moved forward. I was a little disappointed that Antec has removed the fire wire port in favor of the e-SATA port. The fire wire port was useful for transferring videos from a camcorder.

Note that the Nine Hundred Two is completely painted black, while the Nine Hundred has the traditional grey color. The internal parts of the Nine Hundred are also grey. Also note the additional of the holes for water cooling, and the fan control switches.

By removing the drive sleds, via four screws on each side, per sled, you are able to install up to three hard drives in each sled (there are two). Each sled has their own 120mm LED fan and removable filter. When the computer is completely built, the only way to remove the filter is to open both side panels, unscrew the drive sleds and slide them out slightly, which can be a hassle. It could have been implemented better.

Installing the hard drives into the sleds is fairly easy. Antec has included long screws to hold the drives in place. You cannot use the standard drive screws with hard drives. The 5.25" drives install normally though.

The hard drives are installed. Note the wires coming from the sled. These wires are for powering the 120mm fan, which uses a four pin molex connector.

In this image, everything has been installed. It was tough to route the cables around the case, since the space is so tight where the drives meet the motherboard. It was a little bit better than the original Nine Hundred though. Antec should make the case slightly wider so that there is more distance between the motherboards and the internal drive bays. Other than that, the installation went smoothly.

The addition of the cable routing holes on the other side of the case help greatly in hiding cables from view and tidying the inside of the case. I was able to fit a few cables on this side, including the bulky 24-pin motherboard power connector.

The system is pretty quiet when all the fans are switched to a low speed. When all the fans are turned to a high speed, it sounds like a wind tunnel is sitting next to you and is quite loud. The air movement at high speed is phenomenal, if you can stand the noise. I ended up keeping them all at a low speed.

The Antec Nine Hundred Two offers a lot of improvements over the original Nine Hundred, most notable are the addition of the fan filters, which is great since my components were getting quite dusty in the Nine Hundred, the black colored interior, which looks great, and lastly, the addition of external fan speed controls. I also enjoyed the fact that all the fans are LED lit now, rather than just the front fans. The Ultimate Gaming case has truly evolved. The only problems I could spot was that the distance between the motherboard and drives is still too close and that the filters are somewhat hard to access for cleaning. Otherwise, this case is a must have for PC enthusiasts and gamers and wins the Editors' Choice award!