Today I came home and she was already waiting for me… finally, the replacement for my shabby old standard beige case! I got this baby (Antec P182) based on a recommendation by my mate Sickboy, and I’ve got to say it’s definitely worth the rather steep price.

The P182 comes with three built-in 120mm fans, though they’re not exactly quiet ones. Fortunately, I ordered two Noctua 120mm fans along with it, so when money permits I’ll probably get the remaining stock fans replaced aswell.

One of the main things that drew me to this case is the placement of the power supply at the bottom of the case inside a special cage that decouples it, essentially eliminating any potential noise due to vibration. This comes with the added bonus of my PSU fan no longer getting blocked by the CPU fan (which used to be directly underneath it with literally no space inbetween). Now both CPU and PSU have way more air, which should drop my temps a notch or two.

The front of the case comes with some pretty cool dust filters that can be easily removed and washed. Considering how dusty my old case is, this should come in handy.

Speaking of dust, here’s my motherboard with the Zalman CNPS9700NT heatsink - which as gotten a bit clogged up over the past couple of months. I managed to get a decent amount of dust out of it but I guess it’s going to take a can of air to get it properly cleaned. Unfortunately, today being Sunday, I’ll have to leave that until next week.

All in all this baby is a pretty sweet one, though the stock fans are really starting to bug me. On low they are silent, but fail to generate any kind of significant throughput. On medium they are already pretty loud, and on high the frakkers are unbearably loud. I guess if temperatures ever rise to 50°C I’ll appreciate them. For now, I’ll just make do with medium until the rest of my Noctuas comes in to replace them.

But noisy fans aside, this case is pure sweetness.

I’ve decided to order an ATI/AMD Radeon HD4850. They’re not only dirt cheap, but also seem to be playing in the same league as the latest NVIDIA cards. Needless to say the price/performance ratio is off the charts. Can’t wait ’til this new baby gets here.