Antec P120 Crystal Mid-Tower Chassis Review (Page 1)
Antec's P120 Crystal mid-tower computer case gets detailed as we work out if it's one to add to your consideration list.
Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing
Antec is a brand most are familiar with, as Antec had a prominent position in the early enthusiasts PC chassis market. They had such models as the Antec Nine Hundred, among others. Antec fell a bit silent along their history, almost disappearing from the limelight for several years. Antec returned a short while and struggled a bit but seemed to have found their footing in the market again. Antec's recent offerings have been more value propositions, offering unique and even extreme designs while offering good feature sets for the dollar. The Crystal series on the surface appears to be Antec's entry into the tempered glass-clad models to meet what others have out on the market.
The P120 Crystal we have today has a more mainstream feel with surround transparent glass panels on the front and main panels. The top mount PSU shroud harkens back to the early ATX days when most PC chassis had a top-mounted PSU's. The P120 Crystal appears to be targeted at mid-high mainstream with some intriguing cooling fitment along with the tempered glass affixed for styling. Not to mention, the fact that the chassis packaging is labeled "P120 Crystal - Performance Series" so, this should be interesting.
The features highlighted by Antec are as follows:
- Panoramic view with front and main panel tempered glass
- Slide latch main door release with hinged glass panel
- Top mounted PSU, opens up the bottom for liquid cooling
- 7x main expansion slots with a triple vertical option
- Aluminum VGA holder (Anti-sag bracket)
- 7x 120mm or 6x140mm cooling fan fitment
- 2x 360mm radiator mounting simultaneously
This is a reasonable feature set, although I'm not 100% sold on the top-mounted PSU for opening up the liquid cooling fitment. For the price point, I am interested to see how it stands up to the field of cases we have experience with thus far, but the top-mounted PSU gives a unique look as its far less common these days.
The chassis, of course, is called the P120 Crystal, and funny enough, the part number itself is also P120 Crystal, so hat tip to Antec for making chassis part numbers easy as can be in this scenario. The P120 Crystal measures in at 485mm tall, 476mm deep, and 234mm wide. The tall chassis should help keep the room available for bottom-mounted fans or radiators, depending upon your expansion slot usage.
Motherboard fitment is from ITX up to E-ATX. Storage fitment is up to two 3.5" drives while 2.5" can be up to four. One of the 2.5" drives can be mounted to the main 3.5" trays. PSU fitment goes up to 294mm with a stylized PSU shroud in place to help with hiding extra cable bundles. We will take a look at the PSU shroud up top when we look inside the P120 Crystal within the upcoming pages.
Cooling fitment is up to 7x 120mm fans or up to 6x 140mm fans. Radiator fitment is up to 360mm at the bottom and one vertical running parallel to the motherboard. The rear fan port can support a 120mm radiator up to 160mm total length. CPU air cooler height we have a maximum of 185mm tall, which is enough to cover any cooler I can think of at the present moment.
The P120 Crystal does not come with any fans, which probably helps with cost savings and enables enthusiasts' users to save a few bucks on chassis fans, which they may be swapping out anyways. One significant advantage of the radiator mounting locations is that it will not be hanging above the motherboard and potentially interfering with memory or motherboard cooling.
The MSRP of the P120 Crystal is $99.99, and we found it for sale at both Newegg and Amazon at this price at the time of writing. This places the P120 Crystal in a competitive place with chassis such as the H510i from NZXT, the Lancool One Digital from Lian Li and the Enthoo Pro M SE from Phanteks. These are all competent chassis, so it will be interesting to see how the P120 Crystal performs and places with such competition.
Shannon's Chassis Test System Specifications
- Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus XI Hero (Wi-Fi) Z390 (buy from Amazon)
- CPU: Intel Core i7 8700K (buy from Amazon)
- Cooler: Corsair H100i Pro RGB (buy from Amazon)
- Memory: Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB CMW32GX4M4C3000C15(buy from Amazon)
- Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming Z (buy from Amazon)
- Storage: SanDisk M.2 256GB
- Power Supply: SilverStone Strider Platinum 1000W (buy from Amazon)
- OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit (buy from Amazon)
