CES 2009 - Cases, Coolers, and Power Supplies

There was a difference at this year's CES: fewer companies with coolers, chassis, and power supplies were actually on the show floor and more in suites around the Strip. This is why we have toured hotel suites for the first couple of days and didn't even come close to the actual show floor until Saturday. Some companies had many new products to show or at least initial samples. Some others came with products that already launched and didn't show anything new. Antec is one of the companies with a whole new lineup of products, the P1000 chassis perhaps being the most interesting.

Antec's New P1000 Gamer Chassis

Antec is showing off their new P1000 at this year's CES. It's a new gamer chassis that Antec put a lot of work into creating. Even though this chassis is still in development it could be out very soon. Antec showed it at the show to get feedback from editors and customers and it seems that feedback was very positive so far. Please give us your thoughts about in the comment section, and you can be sure Antec will see them.

The chassis has a metal structure covered with plastic sheets to improve the appearance. The surface is rough instead of smooth, which we found appealing. There are handlebars on all four corners to aid in moving the case around, with the chassis standing on the two on the bottom.

The venting concept seems to be very cool and we are looking forward to testing it. The front is totally closed and the air comes in through the large openings on the sides. Antec wants to keep larger openings facing away from the user to keep noise down. The side panel has another large fan installed with the opening angled towards the back - again to keep noise from projecting at the user. The top has a 200mm fan that exhausts most of the air from the chassis. The back sports another 120mm fan at the height of the CPU to help exhaust air.

Antec installed three hard drive cages, each supporting three vertically mounted hard drives. The bays are easily removable to the front. (Please note that the fan on the one picture of the drive bay is installed facing the wrong direction). The inside of the chassis is all black. You will be able to install a normal ATX size power supply or Antec's own standard like the CP-850. We do hope this case is available soon, with a price of around $200 to $250.

Power Supplies: CP-850, a New Earthwatts, and a New TruePower

Antec is one of the first retail brands to say good-bye to the normal ATX standard - at least on one of their products. The CP-850 uses Antec's own standard that is basically just a taller casing for the power supply. With this design Antec is able to stick a large 120mm fan at the front of the PSU to push air through the power supply. There are two main PCBs inside as we have seen in the Signature series. The taller construction also enables Antec to choose larger components that are obviously cheaper than special smaller ones that fit in normal sized power supplies. That means the CP-850 should be cheaper than other power supplies with the same specs, with the big disadvantage that it won't fit in any cases other than some of Antec's latest offerings.

The Earthwatts and TruePower series both extend to 750W with the EA-750 and TP-750 Blue, and the TruePower Quattro comes now with up 1200W. We have seen this model before and we hope it's finally ready to ship to the retail market. In general, we see more high-wattage power supplies these days from Antec; we hope the company doesn't forget the smaller wattage offerings that many have come to appreciate.