I am by no means a professional PC builder but I have built and maintained all of my own PC’s for the past few decades. I’ve built in cases of all sizes from Cooler Master MasterBox NR200 to my old case, which was a BeQuiet Dark Base, and that case was an absolute monster.
But, the time came for a change and that came when I watched a video review of the Antec C8 Wood case. Dual chamber cases tend to be expensive with Corsairs 6500D airflow coming in at around £170 right up to NZXT’s H9 Elite costing around the £230 mark. The Antec C8 costs roughly £100 and what you get is a strong PC case that has been built with precision.
This is my first attempt at writing a case review and the reason for it was the considerable lack of product imagery on retail websites. So hopefully the images you find here will help show all aspects of the case. If you don’t want to read the below no worries, just scroll down to the photographs.
THE MAIN CHAMBER
The main chamber itself is nice and spacious with plenty of options for fan/radiator configurations. I am not a custom loop builder so I cannot comment on the suitability of this case for that purpose, but there is space for a reservoir at the front of the case. There is also decent clearance at the top and the bottom for substantial radiator/fan combos, something I didn’t have in the BeQuiet case despite its size. Its also worth noting that the side fan section is recessed, which allows the fans to seat nicely in line with the motherboard. Visually this keeps everything tidy.
POWER SUPPLY PLACEMENT
The PSU placement in this case is midway up, so as most PSU’s have cable lengths for either top or bottom placement you will find that you have an excess that will need to be managed, which the second chamber has plenty of room for. There is also a shelf for the PSU to sit on, which is reassuring as I have used cases in the past where the PSU is free floating which makes for some interesting installation and maintenance situations. The shelf itself is padded as well so your PSU will never be grinding against the metal shelf which reduces superficial damage to both parts during installation.
HARD DRIVE STORAGE
There are three options for additional drive storage with one HDD chassis that can hold three drives, and two SSD chassis which are positioned top and bottom of the case, and these can hold two drives each. I do not keep HDDs in PC cases because of temperature fluctuations causing longevity issues, so that chassis came straight out but I did use one of SSD chassis for my two work drives. Most current motherboards have several m.2 slots these days so there is a reduced need for separate SATA connected drives in cases, but the option of storage in the case is nice. The only critique here is that the position of thumb screw for the SSD chassis is facing into the case which makes wire routing difficult for the bottom drive. It would have been better if that screw was facing the rear of the case.
CABLE MANAGEMENT AND GROMMETS
This is my first ever dual chamber case (and my first case review) and building in it was much easier than a conventional shroud style case. Cable routing, whilst still important for a clean build, is not as much of a concern. I’ve found with non-dual chambers the vast majority of your build time is working out how to channel cables cleanly so you can get the rear panel back on to the PC and so you can maintain the PC. The larger chamber of the the Antec C8 gives you plenty of room to be less precise and I ended up using fewer cable ties than a standard build.
The experiences I have had with grommets to date have been poor. They are usually flimsy and pull away from their assigned slot with ease. Not the case here. The grommets in the C8 are reassuringly strong and at no point did I feel they were going to pop out. There are 6 grommets in total for access to the second chamber and all of these have decent clearance from the motherboard, are of a good size and are positioned nicely.
CRITICISMS & ISSUES
So far I have had two issues with this case.
The first is the location of the power button relative to the first USB slot. If you are not careful you will find that you can place a finger on the button as you pull a cable out causing the PC to shut down. This has happened several times now as my PC is situated under my desk. If this was on a desk I don’t foresee this being an issue.
The other issue I had was with the angle of the wall that separates the fans from the second chamber. As the chamber became full of cables I found it hard at times to get my fingers to certain wires. The angle is there to assist with air flow but to be honest l I don’t think is necessary as I can’t see a scenario where air is moving past that wall so fast it creates an issue.
CONSTRUCTION AND BUILD QUALITY
Construction wise the case is solid. A concern I had was that the front of the case where the glass panels meet would be weak, but this area is strong and it can have some force applied to it before you see a flex in the metal. I genuinely could not find any issue with build quality. The tolerances are on point across the case with everything fitting with ease.
The sides are all push fit, which is a pleasant change, and there are nicely sized indents on the rear of the case which allows you to easily pop the panels off with your fingers. There are also guides on the bottom of panels that help to guide them into the right spot whilst fitting. Compared to sliding sides which I had become used to, this was an extremely nice feature.
The glass panels are split unlike other cases that use a singular piece of glass. The joining edge is a 45 degree bevel and it is extremely precise in its engineering. I much prefer this as you can pull off either of the glass panels should you need to access the case instead of having to remove a large a singular piece of glass.
Access slots for the GPU are all screw fits which for the longer term makes the rear of the case neat should you want to add/remove PCIe accessories.
The rear and top side mesh panels allow plenty of ventilation for both fans and the PSU. The underside of the case has a removable mesh filter that makes cleaning much easier. And there is more than enough room between the top panel and the motherboard for fairly chunky fan/radiator placements.
From my limited experience with cases, building in the Antec C8 was good fun and for the money you pay it’s a superbly built case that will fulfill the vast majority of needs the average PC user will require.Â
If you are looking at a dual chamber case for your next build or upgrade, then the Antec C8 should be at the top of your wish list.
If you have any specific question about the case pop them in the comment section at the bottom of the post and I will try my best to answer them.
2 Comments
I just bought this c8 wood, airflow at chamber hdd is very-very bad. my seagate constellation 3TB easily rised to 50C (non AC room). terrible.
The normal running temps for HDD’s is between 30C and 50C, so 50C isn’t horrific. The issue I see will be in summer time if your room heats up. You will see hotter disk temps in that type of scenario if you don’t put a small fan in that area which is easy to do. But, closed off HDD storage isn’t something I considered with this review as I don’t keep HDD’s in the case due to far too much temperature variance. I use an external hot swap for my HDD and I only run m.2’s and solid state drives inside the case. Never had any issues with temps for those.
Paul
TKYM