Antec Signature Series S10 Full-Tower Chassis Review (Page 1)

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

After three years of development, Antec has released a chassis that is bound to soon be one of your favorite designs of all time. There are a select few cases that we have seen that take this sort of honor, and right away we think of the likes of the original Antec 900, the Silverstone Temjin 11, and as of late, the Thermaltake P5 also falls into this group. In each of these instances, it is a design that is ahead of its time, the culmination of years of getting ever closer to perfection after various attempts, or just happens to be something that no other company has designed before. The chassis we are about to see from Antec, from their Signature Series of cases, ticks the right boxes. After many years of doing much of the same thing when it comes to cases, Antec is stepping up their game with a premium enclosure, and we guarantee you have never seen a chassis of this magnitude before.

Not only is this chassis made of aluminum rather than steel, there is a ton of features that are built-in to make this the perfect chassis for the beginner with deep pockets and appreciation for the finer things, but it also will hit the heart strings of many experienced users and case modders alike. In this chassis, there are three chambers for cooling, plenty of fans incorporated into the design, a bunch of water cooling options, tons of storage, and that isn't all. They were sure to make near everything easily removable or accessible, they split the side panels, all while leaving a section in the middle open to offer a centralized intake to the system.

This Signature Series S10 full-tower chassis from Antec is the best chassis we have ever seen from them, bar none. Using the finer materials offered in chassis builds, offering glass or thick brushed aluminum side panel options, room for everything under the sun, all wrapped up in a style that no one has ever done before. These are all great reasons to continue reading and see why this Antec chassis is likely to be your next choice.

Going down the checklist provided by Antec, we start with the storage potential. Here we find there is room for an astounding fourteen storage drives. With one rack of six bays for 3.5" drives, and a combination of a rack of five spots and nothing more that we found. However, it is said that there is room for eight total 2.5" drives. The front of the chassis is a solid panel with no exposed 5.25" bays, but at the top of the S10, there is a removable cover that exposes a half-depth 5.25" bay for fan controllers. It is easy as pie to fit either a Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX, XL-ATX, or even an E-ATX form factor motherboard. At the back of the chassis, we find room for Quad SLI or CrossFire with ten expansion slots there. There is a pair of maximums listed here as well. The CPU air cooler can only be 165mm of smaller, and video cards can be up to 13.5" long.

Cooling this chassis you will find a total of seven fans. There is one 120mm fan at the bottom of the case, under all of the HDD bays at the front of the chassis. Moving back a bit, just behind the gap in the chassis, Antec placed three more 120mm fans. At the top of the chassis, mounted on a removable tray, there is a pair of 140mm fans included with the case, leaving the last fan to be a 120mm fan hanging on the back panel. There is an option for an eighth fan as well, as Antec offers a slide out tray to house a 120mm intake fan to cool the lower PSU compartment and 2.5" drive rack. Helping to keep things clean with all this built-in air flow, Antec offers a slideout side filter for the trio of fans near the front. There is also a filter in the bottom of the chassis for the HDD compartment intake, as well as one for the PSU at the back of the chassis.

So what will it cost to get this forty-five-pound sexy beast to your door? The thing is, ever since we were told of this chassis coming to market, we were also informed that it was to sell at the $499 MSRP Antec set for this design. Like a lot of the other top tier offerings out there, this is well within normality for such a design and the materials used. The thing is, though, if you are quick on the trigger and have the cash to support your purchase, you can currently find the S10 chassis for significantly less. As stock has just arrived at both Newegg and Amazon, you will find that they are selling with a great introductory price of only $199.99 (at the time of publishing, the price is now $238 at Amazon), including shipping at either location. That being considered into what we have here today, it is very tough to deny there is a ton of bang for the buck in an offering such as this. And if you do like what you are about to see, we strongly suggest you move fast and take advantage of the sixty percent reduction in pricing that puts this Signature Series S10 full-tower chassis into a league of its own.

Chad's Chassis Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD4-B3
• CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair H80i GT (buy from Amazon)
• Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL6D-4GBXH
• Video Card: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 970 AMP. Extreme Edition (buy from Amazon)
• Storage: SuperSpeed 128GB SSD
• Power Supply: SilverStone SST-ST85F-G (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (buy from Amazon)