Hardware Antec LanBoy Air Review

Thats too bad, I didnt think the thermal performance would be so terrible.

I think what Antec needs to do, and they could make quite some money off this one, is update the Performance One line.

This is what I would like to see in the P184:

-Make it a little bit wider, so cable management behind the back panel becomes easier.
-Make a large CPU cut-out on the back of the motherboard tray, for fitting coolers.
-Give it USB3 support.
-Make it a little bit taller, and add an additional 120mm fan mount or two so that you could place a dual or triple rad in the top WITH fans, all on the interior. With the case being made wider, these could even be 140mm mounts, though then the case would probably also need made longer.
-Because PSU's are now more efficient than ever, and PSU heat affecting the rest of the hardware in the case is now negligible, remove the wall that separates the 'upper' and 'lower' chambers. I know this removes a key characteristic of the series, but it would allow for the case to have 8 expansion slots instead of 7, and separate chambers are now no longer much necessary.

 

Well performance is disappointing.

I was wondering though, if you didn't have any drives in there, could you fit 2 3xfan radiators in the front there?

 

Presumably their target with this mesh look was to make the best thermal performer possible.

What they've actually done is make one of the ugliest cases known to man, which is horrendous at cooling.

What the heck is going on at Antec? I personally think they're all high.

 

Very dissapointing thermal performance, but to be expected with such airflow short circuit.

 

you can imagine a 'JCB' sticker on it imo

 

I think it's a great looking case, so maybe I'm weird but I really like the colour scheme and the different segments are pretty cool. As for cooling the case is designed so all the fans INTAKE, and this creates positive air pressure that forces air out through the various meshes, along with the dust too. If I had the cash - I'd definitely consider this case, my score: 7/10

 

More or less. Positive pressure can only help so much. You'll still get dust being blown into the case then falling to the bottom and collecting in nooks and crannies where there isn't enough pressure to blow it out.

You'll also still get coatings of dust on fan blades, as well as a good deal of dust in heatsinks. Blows the dust in, gets it sucked up into your GPU heatsink, gets stuck there. Case pressure doesn't really matter once its in a heatsink's fins.

 

Surely, as the rear fan is an intake, you should have mounted your cooler the other way round to avoid the fans counteracting each other.

 

That's a variation in the testing equipement other than the case. It adds variables such as the cooler's effectiveness in other directions, and any changes in the heat of the air being drawn into the cooler due to passing by the power hardware rather than the RAM.

To maintain the scientific rigidity of their tests they have to leave it that way.

 

Hey thanks bit-tech for the review. I saw Antec's video about this case. It looked cool from the outset but just from a glance there are serious issues. Noise, There is nothing between you and the fans. Dust. And the cooling scheme seems like a load of bs. Positive pressure sounds cool but tests show otherwise. What I did like about the case was the handles and it might be lighter for a full tower because of the mesh.

 

When I first saw the ads in the mags for this thing a month or so ago I thought , what an ugly P.O.S. But I did think the cooling would be much better. I thought anything with more holes than a tea bag will let the hot air escape no probs... I was wrong.

One thing is for sure, anything that can be stripped down to bare bones as easy as this can is going to be modded to death, It does have some potential in that department at least.

 

Personally, I would prefer it if Antec or whomever sells these cases give a recommendation on fan position, because they have obviously designed this case with a particular direction in mind. As long as Bit-Tech followed the companies' recommendations then there shouldn't be an issue with changing that direction. Bit-Tech has always been a little on the rigid side when it comes to case reviews, it took a long while to move from purely passively cooled components on the motherboard to an enthusiast setup.

And there is something to be said about using the exact same components in every test. If you have to change direction of the heatsink, that involves reapplying all the thermal paste. It's not trivial. But it would be nice if there were two generic setups all the same components except for the direction, switched out based on what is recommended from the manufacturer

Still, the GPU temps are sad. A case this expensive needs to provide more fans, one over the GPU needs to be included.

 

It already exists. Just buy a load of mechano and build a case. Simple.

 

This reminds me of Napalm, one of the robots from Robot Wars back in the day. Yeah i'm a nerd, wanna fight about it?

 

This looks awfully familiar. Wasn't it released some time ago?

 

While it is important to keep the tests scientific, its common sense that the cooler should be facing the other way (or just flip the cooler fan over), its not like using a different cooler. If everyone tests cases with a rigid layout like this, new innovation in case layout will be reduced.

 

meeee thinks there supposed to all be inlet fans which makes all the mesh the outlet thats the original idea

 

I had an Air. You need to use a screwdriver to open the side panels, and you also need the screwdriver to replace the front ODD drives. Its very pointless.