The Antec Nine Hundred does not feature any removable motherboard tray but there is more than enough room for any standard sized ATX motherboard. There is another optional fan mount located in the center of the case attached to the drive bays. Antec's recommendation is to configure this fan, if you choose one, to draw air into the case. This mount can fit any 120mm fan.

Installing various bay components is a simple affair. Removing the hard drive bays will require undoing some thumbscrews.

Once the screws for the HDD cage are removed, you take the cage out by pushing it forward.

Afterwards, simply install a hard drive as you normally would and slide it back into the case.

Unlike a typical ATX case, the PSU is installed at the bottom of the Nine Hundred.

What I like about the design is that the PSU is installed with the fan facing into the case. This we prefer much more than PSUs that install at the bottom, yet point the PSU fan away from the components that actually need to be cooled. On the minus side, we found the retaining anchor to be a bit tight and it tore up the nice paint job on our Enermax PSU.

Cooling and Noise

The stock config of the Antec Nine Hundred is 3 x 120mm fans and one 200mm fan. With the optional fans, the case can fit up to 5 x 120mm fans. When you include a possible PSU fan, a fully stocked, unmodified layout can contain 7 fans. Of course, this will sound like a jet engine, especially at full speed.

Using a stock configuration, all fan speeds set to low, our Athlon 5000+ system was running at a cool 41°C after an intense 6 hour LAN session. The room itself was already quite warm, and at the high fan speed setting, we did not see much of a change, but the system temperature did go down to 39°C. Naturally, the system was quite noisy, though in a full fledged gaming environment, it was not that bad. Certainly a lot can be said for a modern system as some older systems in the room were actually noisier than the Nine Hundred.

Final Words

The Antec Nine Hundred is one of the best cases we've looked at in quite some time. The stock cooling was very good, and the case is capable of performing even better if you don't mind the added noise. The build quality was excellent for the price point, which hovers around $100 USD.

While this is still in the upper range of prices, and the Nine Hundred does not include a power supply. This of course can be good or bad depending on your budget, but personally I prefer the flexibility of choosing my own PSU. That said, one of the criticisms we have is installing the PSU did require some elbow grease as the PSU metal guide was a bit tight.

Installation and functionality wins high marks around here, and the Nine Hundred delivers on both counts. Setting up a system was a piece of cake (other than our scratched PSU), and everything from controlling the fans to having all the required inputs and outputs was simple to setup and use. Given the increasing popularity of eSATA, it would have been nice to see one of these connections instead of the FireWire which we don't feel is used very much by most mainstream users.

Aesthetics are something that will garner mixed opinions depending on what a consumer likes to see, but we find the Nine Hundred to be pleasing to look at, especially when it's all lit up to play. At the same time, there aren't any odd "extreme user" type of design choices, like big red fangs, or claws busting out from the sides. Be it a gamer or somebody that wants a very easy to work with case, the Antec Nine Hundred is highly recommended in our books.