Legit Case Reviews
Antec Dark Fleet DF-85 Full Tower PC Case Review
| Manufacturer: | Antec Inc. |
| Product: | DF-85 |
| Date: | Mon, Jul 26, 2010 - 12:00 AM |
| Written By: | Shane Higgins - |
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Moving inside the DF-85
Pulling the side panel off we can get an good overall look of the space in the DF-85. Its overall space and arrangement is similar to that of the Twelve Hundred, but there are differences.
The biggest change is the hard drive cage arrangement. Gone are the secondary cages that hold the hard drives, and the overall drive cage is narrowed from the full 5.25” bay width to 3.5” width. Some water cooling guys may not like this as the old 5.25 width was enough space to put a radiator, not now. For the users that are big on storage space there is room for nine 3.5” hard drives in the main drive cage. About the middle of the case we can see the lever that locks and unlocks the front bay doors.
New with the Dark Fleet line is the Fleet Swap. The hot swap back planes are different then those I have seen in case before. Each of the back planes has two PCB’s mounted to a bracket that can be moved anywhere up and down the 3.5” drive cage area. In the bottom of the case is a sport for mounting a single internal 2.5” drive.
Moving around to the rear we can see the expansion slot covers. The covers are not tool less, Antec did this on purpose as they feel that tool less systems are noisy because they can rattle making noise. This and most end users don’t replace parts as often as extreme end of the scale.
All of the internal fans have 4 pin molex connectors.
The top exhaust fan is also a departure from the previous Antec cases. This time around the Antec has chosen to use twin 140mm fan over the single 200mm fan. I would have like to have seen a little space between the rear and top fans to allow for radiators to be mounted internally.
All the case wiring for the front I/O ports seems to be more then long enough.
Moving around to the right we can see the back of the motherboard tray. There are several tie points, a massive CPU cut out, and a couple of wire routing pass through holes. There is a very large hole around the PSU area, two to the side and top of the motherboard area. There is one place that I would have like to have seen a hole.
I would have liked a hole in this area. If you look close you can see the front panel wires. It would have made a nice clean transition through this area.
Instead you have to drop at an angle to the pass though. Not the cleanest look, but I have seen worse in other cases.
Next Page - Installing parts into the DF-85
| Review Index |
|
Page 1 - Antec Dark Fleet DF-85 Full Tower
Page 2 - Antec DF-85 Retail Packaging Page 3 - DF-85 External Impressions Page 4 - External Impressions Contiuned Page 5 - Moving inside the DF-85 Page 6 - Installing parts into the DF-85 Page 7 - Antec DF-85 Final Thoughts |
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