Antec Twelve Hundred Gaming Chassis

Author:	Jack Wells
Date:	2008.06.16
Topic:	Cases
Provider:	Antec
Manufacturer:	Antec

Antec Twelve Hundred Gaming Chassis

Installation

Installation of my system into the Antec Twelve Hundred was pretty straight forward. The only tool required was a screw driver, but the Twelve Hundred was not built as a tool-less case. Antec sent (with the case) a statement to me explaining that they choose a design that reduces vibration, is more sturdy, and easier to replace parts. This design was a traditional one, and utilized screws and silicone grommets to try to make the case as quiet as possible.

Basically, you will spend a little longer putting all your components inside this case on the hope that the case will last longer and be quieter. Seeing as I've had the case a week, I cannot make claims to how well this case will stand up to the test of time, other than to tell you it is sturdy and well built. I can, however, tell you it is a quiet case - it does an excellent job of dampening the noise from my components and the fans are all large and quiet.

The first thing I did in terms of assembling my Antec case was to pop out the three removable bays and strap my hard drives to them. If you look closely at the image below, you will notice the vibration dampening features. The screws required to strap your hard drives down are non-standard and much longer than traditional screws. Antec provides plenty of them and screwing them in is no more difficult than standard screws. One of the screws is placed on top of the bay to give you an idea of their size.


You can see the screws here	After installation of the hard drives

After installing the hard drives, I popped the bays back into the case, screwed them in and went to work on my optical drive. Here is what it looked like completed. Notice in the picture you can see my 3.25 inch floppy drive installed. Installing this was quite the adventure.


Top 6 bays	Bottom 6 bays

While installing my floppy drive I discovered a painful part about this case. Installing the floppy drive required more time and effort than installing all 4 of my hard drives and my optical drive. The floppy drive needs to be mounted onto a special bracket (to allow it to be installed into a 5.25 inch bay) and this in itself is difficult to get a screwdriver into the proper location. Once that is done, you have to line up the bracket with the floppy, the front panel, and the case as you screw it all in and hope you picked the right holes on the mounting bracket. You will then realize that they didn't give you a dust guarding foam part to fill the gap that the floppy doesn't fill. I think after all the trouble of getting air filters for the input fans to just leave a few square inches of space open to suck in dusty air is counterintuitive. The only way to rectify this problem is to cut the full size dust guard, which is tricky because of the nature of the material.

This is the front panel for the floppy drive, notice how the dust guard will not fit on it though, leaving a sizable gap.


Floppy drive mount versus the real one	Here is where the floppy goes

Floppy mount

Here is how the final installation of it looked, notice the lack of a dust guard. You could take the one that was in the full size and cut it to size, but the foam insert can't cost more than a couple of pennies on a high end case. That makes me believe it was just forgotten in the design process. Doesn't look too bad though, just make sure you have a black floppy and optical drive if you don't want it to look funny.

Front panel complete

Next comes the power supply, it's bottom mounted in this case and has 4 rubber grommets that it sits on. The power supply slot has a metal peice that can be taken out to allow for the installation of larger power supplies.


Power supply slot	Power supply installed

Now comes the time to pop the motherboard in. This is always a delicate part of installation. You must carefully line up the motherboard on the brass standoffs without damaging the precise soders on the bottom of the board.


Motherboard installed	Cables installed

After some wiring magic, your Antec Twelve Hundred is ready to go! Plug it in and enjoy.

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