I hope everyone took at a look at our Day 1 Blizzcon 2011 photos yesterday (and liked our Facebook page for it!), and if you did you already got a sneak peek at the new Antec cases that I am going to feature here today.  Antec has a pretty big presence at Blizzcon including a booth with a lot of ongoing competitions and prizes as well as providing ALL of the cases for the World of Warcraft, StarCraft II and Diablo III free play areas.

Both the new Eleven Hundred (or 1100 I guess) and the P280 are based on the same basic chassis design but with some interesting differences to point out.  Let’s start with the Eleven Hundred:

Antec’s upcoming Eleven Hundred chassis

This case is going to attempt to bring the Antec design back into the world of high performance users and gamers and starts with a full-size ATX that includes plenty of airflow.  You can see that the front of the case includes a pair of fans while the side window does the same. 

Below the window is a removable fan intake filter for the bottom mounted power supply.  This was actually one of my many requests to case builders – don’t make me move my case out of its area to clean the filters!

Taking off the side panel you can see the removable drive bays and plenty of room for longer graphics cards.

Continue reading our preview of the upcoming Antec Eleven Hundred and P280 cases!!

The Eleven Hundred has enough room for the popular self contained water coolers and includes a large top fan.

Antec has also adopted the internal cable management features we prefer on cases like those from Corsair and even has rubber grommets on them to protect the wires from wear.

Behind the motherboard Antec has included a lot of space for cable routing and airflow.

In fact, Antec has even included a fan that blows air directly onto the back of the motherboard and processor area to help push hot air out of the back of the chassis.

Now, as for the P280, being based on the same basic internal design, there are only a few key differences.

Antec’s upcoming P280 chassis

Much like the previous Performance series cases it has a swinging door on the front.

Though hard to see with this lighting, there is sound dampening foam on the front door and internally on the side panels as well.  Unlike the Eleven Hundred, the front fan filter is removable for easy cleaning.

Here you can see the internals of the case without all of the components installed to get a better idea of the features both designs offer.  One note, Antec informed us that the rear side panel fan won’t actually be included on the P280.

Finally, rather than the single large fan the P280 will include dual 120mm fans and of course offer support for larger radiators for water cooling.

Antec tells us these cases should be on the market pretty soon and you can expect a full review of both of them on PC Perspective coming up!!