The Ideas of the Antec P180 Applied to a Mid-Tower Case (or Two)

The Antec P180, which I first heard about and then saw reviewed and reviewed more on SPCR, has the interesting property that the interior is split into two distinct thermal zones. The motherboard is placed in the top section with core components like CPU and video card, and a 120mm fan or three. Under the top section is a thermal barrier that prevents air exchange between the two "halves", and in the bottom chamber, the hard drives and power supplies are placed with cables running up into the top section.

The intent of the separation is to remove what heat is possible from the same chamber as the CPU and graphics card, to allow the power supply to feed off ambient-temperature air instead of having its intake warmed by the other components. This allows it to run cooler (and thus quieter, if it has a variable-speed fan) and allows for more efficent air removal around the CPU itself, since the exhaust isn't impeded by flowing through the internals of a PSU.

Aside from budget considerations, there is one key factor that would prevent me from buying a P180, and that is the simple fact that it's an ATX full tower design. It wouldn't be able to replace my old mid-tower, because it wouldn't fit in the available space. Here's a picture of my current system in its home on my desk to illustrate the point:

[Showing 25mm clearance at top]

So, is there anything that can be done to create a P180-like dual thermal zone within the standard mid-tower? Certainly! In fact, the beginnings of one are already there: the rail separating the 5.25-inch bays and PSU from the rest of the case. Since the ATX specification uses the PSU to evacuate heat from the case, most are designed with excellent venting on the bottom. The PSU will need moved upwards to keep this vent free. As a convenient bonus, this should allow the top side to be in direct contact with the case, adding some additional heatsinking capacity. (If not quite direct contact, maybe some aluminum fins and an intake at the back of the case?)

Once the PSU is moved and the upper chamber isolated, a 120mm fan can be added to the middle, much like is found in the P180. For a mid-tower, this might restrict the system to shorter-depth PSUs and/or DVD/CD units, but it's not likely to matter. Modern drives like my Lite-On DVD*RW (and +RW DL) are shorter than a 2000-era CDRW.

This is roughly where things would go in the inside of my system, if I could actually do this. (The engineers of 2000 put extra serial/parallel port mountings in above/beside the I/O ports instead of an exhaust fan opening.)

[Showing the PSU move, 120mm fan, and position of the thermal boundary]

Here's how it would look in another system in a more modern case, with better perspective:

[Showing the PSU move, 120 mm fan, and position of the thermal boundary; this case also has an 80mm exhaust fan]

For those who have the slots to spare and want a true P180 style experience, the hard drives can always be taken out of the bottom chamber and mounted on a set of Nexus DiskTwins, or inside an enclosure like the SmartDrive 2002. Then they would join the optical drive(s) up in the 5.25" bays.

As interesting as it might be, I'm not planning on taking on this project myself, since I don't really want to mod my case to take an exhaust fan. Since the time of writing, Antec has introduced the P150, which seems to cover this same idea.