Antec Signature Series S10 Full-Tower Chassis Review

1. Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing
2. Packaging
3. Antec Signature Series S10 Full-Tower Chassis
4. Inside the Signature Series S10
5. Inside the Signature Series S10 Continued
6. Hardware & Documentation
7. Case Build & Finished Product
8. Final Thoughts

TweakTown's Rating: 98%

The Bottom Line

Antec has delivered the best chassis we have ever seen from them! It is a beast, and is sexy with all the thick brushed aluminum panels, but it is all of the features and overall design implementations that won us over. Even if you have to pay the MSRP, this S10 chassis is still worth every penny.

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

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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.

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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)

Packaging

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While we are not entirely sure this is the front of the box, we are starting with this white panel that offers simply a side view image of the S10 chassis inside of it. Not only that, but the box is also a step up, where plastic clips are removed, and the top then lifts off. This keeps you from having to overturn this heavy beast and risk any damage to it.

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The next panel is also white, but only sports the Antec name at the top in yellow text, with the Signature script in gray.

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It is highly likely that this is intended to be the front of the box. Here we find that there is a black panel this time, and without any words again to detract from it, we get to see the S10 chassis from a different angle and see that the Antec name is found at the bottom of the front bezel.

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The last of the external panels is also offered in black. There is again the yellow Antec name at the top, and we also see the Signature naming, but, this time, it is presented in a dark gray that is tough to see.

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After removing the plastic clips, sliding the box from the top of the chassis, and then lifting the goods out of the bottom of the box, this is what we found. There is thick Styrofoam on the outside that has been taped around the chassis. Inside of this, we find a cloth bag surrounding the chassis to ensure that none of the brushed metal or plastic surfaces are marred in transit. In this instance, the box may look a bit rough, but the chassis is safe and sound inside, in perfect condition to be reviewed.

Antec Signature Series S10 Full-Tower Chassis

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The bezel of the S10 is flat, yet is curved on either side as it angles back to meet the side panels. Near the bottom is the Antec name painted onto the black textured surface, and not a single break in the panel for any drive bays or intake holes.

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At the top of the chassis, in the front section where it is angled, we find the front I/O and a removable panel for short fan controllers. The front I/O panel offers a pair of USB 3.0 ports on either side a 3.5mm jack on either side for audio, with a small power button in the center of it all.

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Further back on the top of the S10, the cover levels off and has square holes over the entire surface. This allows for air to pass through from underneath the top panel.

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The left side of our chassis offers two aluminum panels, but there is an option that the larger panel offers 5mm thick glass. Both panels angle away from the gap, which is its widest point, both doors show where the hinges are, and both can be opened by lifting a tab at the top of the gap marked "door". The lower tab is marked "Vent" and pushed out the dust filter, but more on that here in a bit.

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The back of the chassis offers a bit of height at the top for water cooling options inside before you run into the rear I/O and exhaust fan locations. We then run into ten expansion slots with grommets to allow external water cooling if needed next to them. At the bottom, we see the large opening for the bottom mounted PSU, and just below that is where the filter can be removed for washing.

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Without the glass side panel option in play, this time, the right side of the chassis is a mirror image of what we saw on the left side. This time, there is still a "door" tab to make opening this pair of panels simple, but the lower tab is a blank this time because the filter only comes out the left side of the chassis.

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The bottom of the chassis is designed to be one large foot. This is entirely made of plastic, and there are smaller grids placed in the blocks that are under the weighty bits of the chassis above, but there are no signs of rubber pads in this offering. It is also highly recommended that you do not use this base to lift or carry the chassis. Since it is long with a center support system above it, you can risk damaging the foot attempting this.

Inside the Signature Series S10

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Pressing on the bottom of the "door" tab, both panels open up, and we found that the rear section is on pins so that the larger panel can be removed as well. Inside it is easy to see the three compartments of this design, and we found the wiring tied tightly to the motherboard tray, and the hardware sitting below where the PSU will go a bit later.

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In the front section, at the very top of the chassis, we find a pair of oblong holes on either side of this part of the chassis. This allows the installation of a fan controller into the top panel of the chassis, and judging by the angle; there is no way to fill this spot with an optical drive of any form.

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The main purpose of the thinner front section is to allow room for six 3.5" drives to be installed. The trays slide in vertically and are cooled by a fan at the bottom, which we will see when looking at the other side of this area.

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If you are to pull out at the top of the tab marked "vent", this full-length filter slides out the left side of the chassis to keep all of the air flowing into the main and PSU chambers dust free. This will come put completely, and can easily be run under the faucet to clean it.

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The reason there is an opening behind the front storage compartment is so that this trio of fans has an unimpeded source of cooler ambient air from the room. These fans are attached to a removable plate, and it will support a 360mm radiator here as well. The plate is also drilled to allow a pair of 140mm fans or a 280mm radiator instead.

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The pair of fans at the top of the chassis are 140mm in size. They are also mounted to a removable plate so that you do not have to need the top to be removable to access the mounting screws. Near the motherboard tray, there are long holes that allow the fan wiring to be run out of the main chamber to keep things looking as clean as possible.

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The motherboard tray offers a large CPU cooler access holt, it has six grommets to keep wiring clean, and offers twelve tie points punched into it, so wiring can be tended to behind the tray as well.

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At the bottom of the motherboard tray, there is a solid panel that goes from the front to the back to separate the main and PSU compartments. There is a large grommet in the hole here, and this allows for GPU wiring to pass through easily.

Inside the Signature Series S10 Continued

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Below the separator plate, near the front of the chassis, we find this five bay rack for 2.5" drives. You have to unclip the support bar to access these four bays, but there is no hardware needed to mount drives here, simply slide them in, and the bar holds the drives into the slots.

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At the back, again below the plate, we find room for long power supplies. The floor is ventilated to allow a fan down orientation of the unit, and we also find there are two support rails to keep the PSU level. To get the PSU into this area, you simply slide it in from either side and screw it into place through the back.

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Working our way back up, we are now looking at the rear of the chassis. The 120mm fan has its power lead already ran behind the motherboard tray, and as to the ten expansion slot covers, they are held into place with hex-head screws that are also used to secure cards into this area.

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Using the same style tab at the top allows the right side panels to open, and again the larger panel rests on pins and can be removed. The thinner section at the front allows access to wiring all of the drive bays with a pass-through below the gap on the chassis. Behind the motherboard tray, we see that it is inset, but unlike the 800D which originated the center plate design, Antec cut out a bit of it at the front to ease cable management.

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To help ease fan wiring and power management, Antec includes this ten-fan hub. This is powered via a Molex 4-pin that plugs into the bottom and delivers full power to any fan attached to this hub.

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There is a thumbscrew that needs to be removed, and in doing so, the fan mounting plate can be slid out of in front of the 2.5" drive rack. This plate will only fit a 120mm fan, but does offer a cooling option if the 2.5" drives are not SSDs.

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In the front, under the 3.5" drive rack, there is a plate that by pressing a tab, unlocks and can be lifted out of the bottom of the chassis. Here, though, Antec does include a fan to cool this area. Again, this has to be a 120mm fan attacked to the fan plate.

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The included wiring is all blacked out with rubber sleeving on the dual native USB 3.0 connections. The fan leads and the front LED and switch wiring is made of black wiring, and even the dual connection HD Audio/AC'97 lead is also done up in black. There is one drawback here, though - the leads are not very long.

Hardware & Documentation

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Inside of the box found where the PSU is to be installed, we found a cloth to clean all of the brushed aluminum to rid it of fingerprints, and inside of the bag, it is folded down to a fourth of its full size. As for the standoffs, fan screws, HDD screws, and the motherboard screws, they all come shipped together in one larger bag of hardware.

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Also inside of the box, we found Antec included six zip-ties to help manage the wiring they have not tended to with twist ties already. What we liked seeing, however, was that they also included four, ninety-degree, SATA cable, so that you can keep the wiring tight and allow the front, right, side-panel to close without issue.

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There is a manual shipped with the chassis that covers the majority of the features, the layout, and what parts you are supposed to have included, but that is about it. They do however offer a site address as to where you can find a fully detailed online manual that shows everything there is to know about this chassis.

They also include a warranty insert that not only offers a phone number to call for various regions around the world, but it also addressed what is, and what is not covered for the term of three years.

Case Build & Finished Product

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With no bays to populate and the fact that the bezel is a solid expanse of aluminum, there is no way to change the looks of it from beginning to end. We do like cases such as this, where whatever you do in your build, the chassis aesthetics are never compromised.

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Using our typical gear to proceed with the build, it does show us quite a bit about the room inside. At the front, you could easily install a thin radiator or an AIO, but push/pull fans there can only be allowed if you use a shorter video card. The same can be said for the top of the chassis as well. However, in the back of the chassis, we found plenty of room for a thick radiator as well as a push/pull fan setup. Our SSD slid right into the lower rack, and the PSU slid right in and still has plenty of room for the wiring in front of it.

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The back of the chassis offered us no issues to speak of. The dust shield snapped right into place, our video card is well supported and slid in as needed, and using four screws provided, the PSU, supported by the rails, secures tightly to the back of the chassis.

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Our wire management may not be the best, but it does show that there is plenty of room for thicker PSU leads, and the cut-out at the bottom allows all of our wiring to pass from the top to the bottom with ease. While there is not a lot of extra front I/O cabling to wire cleanly to the side, we were able to make all the connections with just a bit of slack left in the lines.

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While we would have liked to have a view of the hardware inside with the glass side panel option, we feel that the all-aluminum version offers a better, and higher-end feel when completed. We are a sucker for brushed aluminum or aluminum cases in general, and the Antec S10 chassis covers this in mass quantity, making us happy campers with the final look of this chassis.

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Once we powered the chassis, we could not hear the chassis fans from any angle, even connected to the hub, with 12V sent to them. Only at the back of the chassis could we hear anything, and that is due to the noise of the AIO we have hanging in the exhaust location there. The only thing we found that will notify you from the outside that the system is powered was the blue LED above and to the right of the power button.

Final Thoughts

Wow. There is just so much sexiness with the S10. The textured front panel with just the Antec name at the bottom, all of the curves and angled panels, and the dual panel sides made of brushed aluminum - there is nothing externally that we found fault with. Even using plastic for the top panel as well as for the single large foot at the bottom, it still matches well and looks great in our mind.

The interior is laid out very well, allows for a very clean finished build, and seems to pack surprises into every little nook and cranny. We love the panel popper tabs, the large removable dust cover in the middle, and if you have to see all of the parts you invested in, you still have the option to buy this chassis with a 5mm thick glass panel rather than the 4mm thick aluminum one we have here. This case also has to be the most water cooling friendly option that Antec has ever produced. It is easy to see why it took so long to go from the drawing board to this final product; there is just so much going on in this design to tweak and finalize to get us this excited about the S10.

If there is one thing we could pick on the S10 for, it is the factory equipped fans that come with the chassis. Using our hand as the guide with the basic feel test for air flow, we were left wanting more. While the temperatures of our components were good, it is hard to "feel" much air flow at all. The trio of 120mm fan in the front, you can barely feel any air coming from them, but there is some. The pair of fans at the top of the chassis can hardly be felt through the top of the chassis either. The rear exhaust fan offers about the same, but without a dust filter there, air is easier to feel passing through the back.

The one fan that did seem to push a lot of air is the one under the HDD stack, to cool the front compartment. However, without the AIO fans running, the most we could get the sound meter to report inside or around the chassis was 25 dB of noise, and for a lot of users, they like the chassis silent anyways. So this aspect comes down to which you prefer, a bunch of airflow, or silence of operation.

Even if this Signature Series S10 full-tower chassis was selling currently at the MSRP, we would still highly recommend you get up close and personal with this chassis for your builds. The fact that you can get this chassis currently for near a third of the $499 MSRP just makes us want to press you even harder into buying one. As we mentioned earlier, if you are ready for a high-end chassis to house your components, and have $200 (now $238 at Amazon at the time of publishing) laying around, act fast and take advantage of these crazy introductory sales going on right now. For just $200, there is not another chassis of this caliber on the market, and none offers the feature set and included goodies that this Antec S10 brings forth. The bang for the buck in a chassis like this blows the lid off the charts, and we can honestly see no reason not to get this chassis.

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)