Antec P110 Luce

[testman78]

Introduction

For over 30 years Antec have been well established in the cooling, chassis and power supply market, and today we have the P110 Luce in for testing, which sits at the top of its Performance Series range. Mid-tower chassis has always been my favorite, much because you get the ability to fit everything you want while still maintaining a sleek minimalistic look. There's plenty of space for radiators, fans, HDDs and what not, but you'll still be able to avoid that "empty" feeling that many full-tower chassi builds suffer from.



Specifications.




Packaging & Contents

Antec packs the P110 Luce into a brown cardboard box with an image of the chassis on front.



The rear conveys some additional information alongside a blow-up diagram of the case.



Both side panels are covered in numerous tables of specifications to cover various languages.



The case is held in place by two fairly thick foam spacers and comes further protected by a cloth bag.



You will receive a bag of black screws, some Velcro strips, a manual, and some warranty information.




A Closer Look-Outside

Out of the box, the Antec P110 Luce offers up a simple, slightly asymmetrical design consisting of straight lines.



The Antec P110 Luce measures 230x518x489 mm (WxHxD) and weighs 11.7 kg. The housing is mainly made of steel and plastic.



On the left side, we’ve got the “it’s in the name of the product” feature, that huge side panel window, giving us a great view of the chassis interior, and something that’ll give you a great way to show off your new hardware.



With everyone utilizing glass instead of acrylic, Antec has also opted for the higher quality material for its main side panel. It is held in place by four large thumb screws. Τhe thumb screws adorn the manufacturer's logo.



The right side panel is just a solid panel cut from thick steel. The right side panel is made of steel, but for aesthetic reasons, the same mounting method was chosen as on the glass side.



The top features a large metal mesh dust filter held in place by magnetic strips.



Underneath it, you will find an elaborate setup of holes onto which two 120/140 mm fans or up to a 280 mm radiator can be fastened to the ceiling of the P110 Luce.



The front panel is nice and bold, with an almost monolithic vibe going on. Otherwise, only the manufacturer's name is placed in the upper area in the front.



The front is basically made of plastic, but on the outside a thin layer of brushed aluminum has been applied, which makes the case look more valuable.



There are edge ventilation for the front fan/radiator mounts.



You will find the basic set of I/O in front of the Antec P110 Luce. It consists of the usual pair of audio plugs, two USB 3.0 connectors, and the traditional power and reset buttons. In addition to the power button, we have a button that allows us to configure the RGB LED lighting of the chassis in 7 colors and 3 modes (fixed, breathing and cycle). As a special feature, there is also an HDMI connection outside, which should make the case interesting for the use of VR systems.



Around the back, you’ll find a 120mm fan mount with a fan pre-installed, ten ventilated expansion slot covers, as well as the PSU cut out. All pretty standard stuff, but everything you’ll need.



The 8+2 configuration means that you are able to install a GPU vertically to show it off through the glass side panel. All 10 PCI expansion slots are secured in place via regular screws.



The base has 4 plastic legs finished in foam strips and a large removable anti-dust filter that covers it, as the entire lower area is pierced.




A Closer Look-Inside

The powder black paint job of the exterior continues throughout too, giving the whole thing a uniform appearance.



The motherboard back plate features a good size CPU cooler mounting cut-out. There's also a lot of cable routing holes and cut-outs to help keep things neat and tidy.



There are quite a few cables for the front panel floating around and that is due to the chassis featuring a lot of ports.



There's no bays in the mid-section, allowing a huge amount of room for a graphics card.



Another special feature of the housing is the rail in the right area. This should hide on the one hand cables and on the other hand overlong and heavy graphics cards.



The lower part of the Antec P110 Luce is covered by a panel.



There is room for two 3.5" hard drives above this bezel.



These additional brackets can be quickly removed if necessary.



There is room under the top for two 120/140mm fans. Alternatively, a 280mm radiator can be installed.



In the back, a pre-installed 120mm Antec fan.



One 120m fan is already preinstalled behind the front of the housing.



The front of the case easily pops off by pulling from the bottom.



It reveal spots for dual 140mm or 3x120mm fans and the cover also features a removable dust filter.



The front of the case itself is compatible with water cooling systems which feature an 120/240/280/360mm radiator.



There's a huge amount of space behind the motherboard(30mm). The large opening underneath the gray cover also acts as a cable channel thanks to two plastic clips which hold the bulk of it in place.



Another 2x2.5″ drive bracket is found right behind the motherboard, giving you even more room for storage drives.



Chamber position at the back of the case with two 3.5/2.5-inch Drive Bays.



You just have to remove the brackets from the sides, mount the drive and then place them back in(Disks need screws for installation).



To the lower part we see the PSU area.The base has an perforated area,for the fan of the power supply. At the bottom, you'll find a pair of rubber pads for the PSU mount.



Taking a look from the other side we can see also the LED light hub.




Assembly & Finished Looks

The spacers are pre-installed in the Antec P110 Luce. The interior is also very tidy designed, so that the installation went easily by hand.



There’s an extremely large amount of room in this chassis for extra-long expansion cards, so no fears of any GPU not fitting here. Of course, keep in mind that thicker radiators in the front will eat into that space, so be sure to measure twice before clicking buy on all your swag custom-loop stuff.



The graphics card holder can be individually adjusted in height as well as the side and the length of the rail. The holder is made of plastic, but should be able to support longer graphics cards without problems.



One 3.5" hard drive can be placed under the bracket in front of the mainboard. An additional 3.5" or 2.5" can be installed on each of these.



Two additional 3.5 "hard drives can be installed in the brackets behind the power supply. Alternatively, SSDs can of course also be installed there.



Two more SSD seats are located behind the mainboard slide. This requires a thumb-screw to be loosened, which allows the SSDs to be easily screwed together and the entire design to be placed back in the housing.



Immediately, you can see the advantages of that PSU shroud, as it hides so many ugly aspects of a build out of the way, and that means you can just cram your cable shame in there and not worry about it.



Wide expansion cards and VR systems won’t be an issue here either, obviously, and there’s easily room for a multi-GPU configuration too.



The Antec P110 Luce has an RGB controller. The front lighting is connected there and two other connection options are already prepared in order to be able to control these, for example, with optional fans. However, only the light can be controlled there, so the controller does not replace a classic fan controller.



The lighting can be changed via the front panel by pressing the second button. It is unfortunately not switchable. The two built-in, unlit fans we have therefore operated with their own adapters directly on the power supply. Both turn quite slowly, but are also almost inaudible. The focus was therefore clearly on the volume and not on the air flow.



The inner panel has the logo of the manufacturer, which always shines white and can not be adjusted. In it, also, highlight the Antec logo with RGB LED lighting located in the upper left corner.The front logo can be adjusted. Possible are red, green, blue, purple, yellow, white, neon green and a flash mode. The three basic colors have convinced us optically the most, but this should be a matter of taste.




Test System & Methology


Processor: Intel i7 4770K @ 4.2GHz (1.1v)
CPU Cooling: Thermaltake NiC C4
Motherboard: Asus Z87I-Deluxe
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 Series 16GB 2400MHz
Video Card: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 770 Reference Model
PSU: Thermaltake Smart 750W
Hard Drive: OCZ Vector 120GB SSD
Optical Drive: DVD-ROM
OS: Windows 7 Pro 64-bit SP2



Software:

CPUID HW Monitor 1.23
CPUID CPU-Z 1.65
Prime95 v27.1
Furmark 1.11.0

I am testing the Antec Cube Razer Edition performance as follows:

Room temperature is kept at 22C throughout my tests.
The CPU Fan is set to 100% to eliminate inconsistencies as a result of PWM control.
Idle temperatures are obtained after booting the PC and idling on the desktop for 30 minutes.
CPU load temperatures are obtained after running Prime95′s Small FTTs test for 15 minutes.
GPU load temperatures are obtained after running Furmark's Burn-In Test for 15 minutes.


Temperature

You can keep the PC inside your Antec P110 Luce case cool. The stock fans do a fine job in conjunction with your chosen CPU cooler. Air flow is good and the dust filtering guarantees your hardware will remain clean and cool over time. If you wish to switch from air cooling to liquid cooling you will have to make a bit of an effort but as things stand the P110 Luce is delivered ready for action.




Noise Level

The Antec P110 Luce is a very quiet chassis registering below 40dBA in our acoustic testing. There is only one intake preinstalled fan at the front which helps lower noise emissions, but the Antec Panels really do seem to work.




Final thoughts

The Antec P110 Luce scores with a simple design and good processing quality. The smooth panels, the lack of much going on outside of some shiny plastic stripes, allows the case to go almost anywhere and blend into the background. The real glass side part and the aluminum front also make it look very high quality. The interior can be built very cleanly through the two existing covers and is also versatile and flexible in the area of hard disk or SSD installation options. Plenty of cable management space and zip tie mounts. There is a bracket for overlong and heavy graphics cards, a pre-installed RGB control and a HDMI port in the top, making the device also interesting for VR systems. Antec P110 Luce is a case where you build with ease. It was a genuine pleasure to work with the case and 0 issues were found. Dual chamber design helps a little bit with the temperatures. There is plenty of opportunities in P110 Luce to water cool your hardware and water cool them good. Somewhat strange we found that although a RGB lighting is available, which can also be easily extended, but no illuminated fans are installed. A fan control is also completely missing. The installed fans are almost inaudible. Packing the with two preinstalled fans means they are able to run low and slow while delivering plenty of cooling. The result is a really quiet case with excellent air flow.



The Antec P110 Luce is one of the best midi cases I’ve worked with. Antec’s P110 Luce was designed to have a minimalistic appearance and allow some customization inside. The case has a very good & solid construction due to the materials used: metal and brushed aluminum for the most part of it. The P110 Luce offers quite a few different features for beginners and enthusiasts alike. You have the stunning glass side panel, the case fans that actually don’t suck, and plenty of room for all your cooling needs. The P110 Luce is available now from most major retailers for around €90. It’s obviously not a budget Mid-chassis at this price, but given the range of features and build quality on offer, it’s very competitively priced.