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Antec P182 Mid-Tower Case
Installation
Power Supply Installing the power supply was easy, simply removing the cage, putting the cage around my PSU and then sliding it into the space on top of the vibration reducing silicone strips. The cage holding the PSU in place screws into the PSU mount with two thumbscrews on each side. I was able to route some of my cables behind the motherboard tray using the included cable ties, but not many. That's more the fault of my PSU for having short wires though than a real issue with the case. Motherboard The motherboard standoffs are built directly onto the tray for the standard nine-screw ATX configuration. The board also has three more holes and three other standoffs for alternate configurations. The rear IO panel was also simple to install - this was a sore point on my last case because the panel's opening was just a bit too small and it would take me forever to install the IO panel. There is adequate room around the motherboard to make installation of the motherboard simple. Hard Drives Installing my three hard drives in the lower bay was fraught with problems. I screwed the hard drives into the cage with the silicone grommets between the drive and the cage, and the cage slid back into place. The difficulty came when I went to attach my power cables, and it seemed like no matter what I did I had to plug the SATA power upside down, which made pulling the cage out more difficult because I could only pull it out so far before I had to start unplugging connections. I could have mounted the drives in such a way as to eliminate this problem but because of where the screw holes were on the cage I would have lost one HD storage spot (from four down to three). Also, the 120mm fan located between the lower cage and the PSU wasn't able to turn because of the copious amount of wires located in this lower area. Antec should have included some sort of fan shroud or grill to keep wires from the PSU and the HD areas from interfering with the fan's operation. Add-in Cards Installing my video card was simple, just remove the screw and the plate and install the card. Connecting the auxiliary power was the last step. The case uses the traditional screw system and not the newer toolless system provided by some case manufacturers. Cooling Like the P180 before it, the P182 is separated into two sections: the lower HD bay and the PSU on the bottom; the motherboard, upper HD bay and optical drives on top. There is a piece of plastic that sits on the bottom of the top section that allows you to cover up (as much as possible) the holes connecting the two sections. I didn't find this very useful because I had to route my main motherboard power and aux motherboard and video card power through these holes (and not behind the motherboard tray), as well as routing the SATA cables from the motherboard down to the HD bay. As I mentioned before, the case comes with three 120mm fans, two on the top and one in the bottom middle area. There is room for two more 120mm fan installations - in front and behind the upper hard drive cage. The three standard fans all come with switches that allow you to choose low, medium and high settings that offer air flow from 39 to 79 CFM.
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Looks Page 3: A Closer Look Page 4: Installation Page 5: Quality Check Page 6: Conclusion 
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