THE P280 EXTERIOR

At first glance the Performance One P280 Super Mid Tower looks a lot like the P193 just a little bit more classic (which is not a bad thing).

In the normal version neither of the two side panels has a window on it but both are quite thick to reduce noise levels.

The front fascia features a very thin gunmetal anodized aluminum plate.

The I/O is placed right above the front fascia and includes 2 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports and the usual headphones/microphone mini jacks.

Over at the lowest end of the fascia we see the Antec logo.

The door opens from right to left and unfortunately you can't switch sides like with other cases (the good thing is that the door opens a lot more than in the picture - a total of 270 degrees).

Behind the front door Antec has placed a thin layer of foam to help in keeping the noise in low levels.

Three 5.25' optical drive bays are placed behind the front door.

Beneath those you will find an access panel which doubles as an air filter.

As you can see there's room for two 120mm fans but unfortunately Antec decided not to include even one.

The power on/off and reset buttons are placed on the top of the front fascia.

There are also two 120mm TwoCool Antec exhaust fans right beneath a grill placed at the rear top of the case.

The rear of the P280 is also black as we've come to expect from most PC Cases nowadays.

A Low/High fan speed controller is placed at the top rear. From here you can adjust the speed of both the top 120mm and the rear 120mm TwoCool Antec fans.

By default the P280 comes with a preinstalled 120mm rear exhaust fan.

I was very glad to see that Antec gave a total of 9 PCI expansion slots to the P280 and two large water cooling grommets.

As usual the PSU bay is placed on the bottom.

Both side panels are kept in place with the use of rubber coated thumbscrews.

At the base of the P280 we see four round rubber feet and a removable air filter right beneath the PSU space which i was very surprised (in a positive way) to see that it gets removed from the left side (not from the rear as with most cases that have one).