Antec P70 Performance Series Mid-Tower Chassis Review

Introduction, Specifications and Pricing

Glancing back to the Antec literature for a bit of inspiration to start this review with, we realized that is has been ten years now that the Performance series of cases have been with us. The whole idea behind this series is to offer customers with a silent chassis, but at the same time making no compromises, as well as offering a design that will allow you to grow into it as your needs progress and list of components grows larger as time goes on. With what we have seen in the past with the Antec Performance series, this series offers very wallet friendly pricing as well.

The main idea that Antec had with this chassis was to offer users a chassis that is silent, above all other design aspects. Things like redirecting sound to the sides of the front bezel, offering solid doors, and even an additional insert for the top of the chassis so that you can close that off if desired is all built right in. Along with that, they also gave the bays a refresh of sorts, and rather than a huge wall of bays like we have seen in a lot of Antec cases, this time things are more up to date with what is offered and how it is arranged. As far as the "no compromises" or the "room to grow" aspects, one they have hit on the head, and the other is something they seemed to have forgotten about completely.

Today, we will be looking at the P70 from the Antec Performance series of cases; a chassis that comes from the heritage of the P280 and P380, which are very refined stylish cases. The thing is with this P70, while offering a bit of what we know from the Performance series, it also pulls some of its design from the 900 of yesteryear. We are not against the styling at all, and even with its wallet friendly pricing going for it, we have found many issues with our chassis. While usually we do not come out with this so early in a review, and even the pricing will not save this design. If you want to find out why, continue ready as to why the Antec P70 should not be your next choice in cases.

As we follow the chart provided for us by Antec, we can skip past the P70 naming and UPC code right into the dimensions. There we are told this chassis is 18" deep, it is 8.1" wide, and it stands 18.7" in height. We then are shown that this chassis supports 380mm video cards, and offers water cooling grommets. Next, we see that there is a single USB 2.0 port and a single USB 3.0 port, along with the HD Audio jacks, long before they tell us that this is a mid-tower chassis.

We then see that the chassis includes a pair of 120mm fans, it includes a single 120mm fan in the back, and that it has room for a pair of 120mm fans in the front, but those locations are currently empty. We then are shown that there are two 5.25" bays, both with removable covers in the bezel, and the third bay down is made for 3.5" external device usage. There is room for four 3.5" drives, and what they call a dedicated 2.5" drive mount is actually two holes in the HDD rack to hang one side of the drive off of. Concluding the list of specifications, we then see there is a washable dust filter in the front with no mention of the one under the chassis. We also see the motherboard compatibility, that it offers an access hole in the motherboard tray, that it comes in black, and lastly that there are seven expansion slots.

As we look around to try to obtain this chassis, we are finding it near everywhere we look, which is a good thing. What we are seeing along with the availability is that this chassis started with an MSRP of $69.99, and from what we have seen that is a bit overpriced. If you tend to shop at Newegg, you can shave $10 off that pricing, but you will have to pay $4 of it for shipping. If you want the best deal we could find, we suggest you use Amazon, as there we found the P70 listed at $54 and no additional cost to ship it. However, in the grand scheme of things, we feel that even at a around $54 to your door, there are better options out there.