Antec Super LANBoy Case Review

Once again a big hello to everyone out there in Internet Land. I like everyone else in the late 90's was looking for the best bang for the buck. Usually to do this it meant some serious overclocking and lots of fan. Around '01 I started to get into the idea of having peace and quiet around the house and that meant toning down the computer. I have always had a small affinity for cases and have spent some serious time modding several. I was always trying to balance the maximum amount of cooling with the minimalist amount of noise. Finally the strangest thing has happened to cases. Manufacturers are finally taking a look at noise as well as good ole airflow. For a while there we were seeing incredible looking cases, that while aesthetically pleasing, were not very good for noise or airflow. Today we are going to take a closer look at the Antec Super LANBoy Case, which retails for $89.95.


The first thing that you will notice is that is has a huge fan in the front. The next is that it is aluminum and has the standard see-through panel on the side. Upon closer inspection you will notice that several things are missing i.e. side fans and a blow-hole. Now the last thing is that it has the traditional CD/DVD Baydoor. I have never really been a big fan of these but I was willing to keep an open mind about it.


Once you open the baydoor you notice something pretty interesting. The have a small pullout tray that can store various items. While I personally don't have anything to put there it would come in handy for twist ties when you want to take the case to go. While looking at this area in a little more detail the huge fan once again caught my eye and got me thinking. 'How the hell is something that big going to be quiet?' Once again I figured I would have to wait to pass judgement on this.


Now it is time to open this bad boy er Super Boy up and take a look inside. Before we do that I just want to do a quick point out of the carrying strap that it comes with. Haven't got a chance to use it but it does seem like it would work good. Back to the insides. I quickly noticed that unlike some other aluminum cases that edges were smoothed down in this one and should prevent those nasty cuts and scraps you get when installing a MoBo. One thing parculiar about the inside is that the HD drive bracket is mounted differently. I at first thought that the only use for this would be easy swapping out of hard drives but would airflow be affected by doing it this way. Once again only time will tell.


Looking at the next picture we see one of the two huge fans that power this bad mamma jamma. Obviously they are both clear which is definitely cool when you add cold cathode or LED lighting. If you take another look at the picture you will, in my opinion, see the future of fan mounting. The screws look plastic but aren't. They are a soft polymer that is not only easily mounted but helps greatly with vibration. The case also comes with two extra ones.


The next cool suprise I noticed was while putting the Hard Drive in. Besides the unique side mounting it has rubber grommets to help with the HD spinning not transferring vibration to the chassis. Very impressive indeed.


The case held one final surpise for me. While putting in the motherboard I noticed that there is a small plates that slides up for easier removal of PCI or AGP components. If you take out stuff from time to time like I used to, you know that this will make maintainence that much easier.

Finally it is time to put everything together and put the finishing touches on it. I decided to replace the old fan and heatsink combo with the new Cooler Master Aero 7 Lite's heatsink ($9.95 at CompUSA and a Antec Blue UV 80mm fan ($7.95 at Antec's online store). Here is what it looks like completed.


Now the big question is, 'Yes it looks cool but does it run cool?' Well the answer to that is a big 'Heck Yea!'. My old aluminum case did a pretty decent job with the mobo temp usually at around 132F and the CPU (overclocked) at 117F. The Super LANBoy with only two additions runs at nice 125.6F (Mobo) and 113.9 (CPU). The noise level has dropped about 30-50% depending on the CPU fanspeed (the Abit KV7 supports fan throttling).

So let's look at bang for the buck. The case itself runs $89.95 (not cheap but not high end), the heatsink was $9.95, and the LED fan was $7.95. So for a little over a $100 you can completely redo your rig housing. You will not only have a slick looking case but one that is pretty damn quiet as well. This DEFINTELY earns the coveted Fanboy Award.


As always thanks for getting through my mind-numbing reviews,

Tycho
2-10-2005