Antec P160 Aluminum Enclosure Review

The Interior

Once you look inside the enclosure you will notice certain things that aren't exactly normal. When this case was created, it was designed for silence. Certain little additions that we'll talk about in more detail will show you just what I mean. Let's start with the hard drive trays.

You'll note that I said hard drive TRAYS above. No, that was not an exaggeration; this case uses a pullout tray for mounting the hard drives. These trays fit nice and snug and allow no movement to create any unnecessary rattling when the drive spins to speed. But that isn't all...

Within every hard drive tray (four in all), there are rubber mounting grommets. These grommets fit between the tray and the drive and are lined up with the mounting holes on the bottom of any standard hard drive. By using the special mounting screws that come with the case, you are given a secure means to mount the drive and also a means to take care of any remaining vibration that might occur when the drive spins up. Overall a very nice way to make sure you don't get any more noise than absolutely necessary when using the hardware.

Moving upwards in the drive compartments shows us a simple way to mount any floppy drives you might still use. This removable drive bay comes completely out of the unit and allows you to install up to two 3.5" drives that require access to the outside world. Even though many are getting away from floppy drives, there are still a lot of ZIP drives in use in the business world so it is good to see they are easily accommodated.

Our final stop in the drives category are the optical device bays. There is a full complement of four drive bays so this should take care of a vast majority of power users out there. Even with a CD-RW, a DVD burner, and a spare CD drive you are set to handle a great deal of media.

Being true to form with the Antec history, this case uses a rail system for mounting optical drives. While this certainly wasn't unexpected, the rail itself shows off that concept of quiet we were talking about before. Let me show you what I mean.

While rails have become commonplace in quality enclosures, these were a little different from what I am used to seeing. If you'll take a look at the rails above you will see each one has a plastic sleeve within it. After attaching the rails to your favorite drive, these plastic sleeves make contact with the metal of the drive bay. Once it is firmly seated in the bay, the plastic sleeve will keep the drive from transmitting vibration to the metal case. This is just another way to keep things nice and quiet.