 Welcome to my unboxing of the 1100 from Antec. The Advanced Gaming Authority is what they have to say about this case and I'm kind of inclined to agree with them at this point based on what I've seen about the 1100 so far. Maximum expandability that is up to 330mm long expansion cards and for whatever reason they don't mention it but they've also got 9 expansion slots which is madness. Ok maximum cooling so they're showing all the different places you can install cooling fans including 2 here, 2 here, 1 big one here, 1 here and 1 here. We've got ease of use which shows you how you can route your cables, they even show braiding the cables behind and that is because they have an inordinate amount of space behind the motherboard tray so you can actually close your panel even if you're running thick old cables like this, PSU intake and front fan filters, fan connector PCB which allows you to connect 4 3 pin fans to a single molex for improved cable management which is true, 120mm intake at the back, 120mm thermal, ok yep we've covered most of this. Oh look that, 2 more 120mms on the side. This hard drive mount I'm going to show you, this is cool, front panel USB 3 and 3 toolless 5.25 inch drive bays which I have seen in action already and they do actually work really well which is good. I'm actually usually not a huge fan of toolless unless it's like a tech station or something because I don't know, something about just putting a screw in it makes it feel more secure and safe to me but I guess it doesn't really matter so let's go ahead and extract the 1100 from its box which as always is very well packaged, Antec is pretty, has been doing this a long time so they're using a good quality closed cell phone with about 1 inch of padding on all sides which is pretty much a necessity if you want the case to make it in one piece. We've actually had sample cases arrive that were not packed with closed cell phone that looked like they had been shipped not from California but from the depths of hell to reach us so yeah this one, now that I've said all that is in immaculate condition which is good. Okay let's start at the front, so the 1100 is actually very similar to the P280 in terms of the actual chassis design but there are some key differences so we've got our 3 5 and a quarter inch bays, our front headphones, our front USB 2, our front USB 3, you can see this power and reset button placement has been reused from the P280, we've got tons of room for air intake so we've got the mesh here and then these are also completely open see how I can stick my finger through there so you're getting additional airflow through there as well as the mesh. The front pops off like this, there you go so you can see how open these are now, check that out, so it's completely unrestricted airflow and now you can mount fans here and here and check this out, bumps here, here, here and here which allows you to install these two fans with only four screws which is easier and better for gamers because in my experience gamers are nothing if not lazy, no offense to the gamers. I'm sure you won't be offended though because I think you already knew that, there we go. So let's go ahead and let's go this side first so here we find our side panel, the window nice and big, I'm just going to take these plastics off as we go, we've also got room for two rubber grommeted 120mm fans once again, you can mount them using only four screws, four of these are just blanks that will hold the fan in place, very very nice, good thinking Antec. It's those little innovations that make gamers lives slightly slightly easier that make them choose your product over someone else's. So I'm going to take that side panel off and we're going to go around to the other side panel, actually we're going to do the back panel first. So here is a 120mm cooling fan as well as the IO ports, we've also got nine expansion slots so yes up to XL ATX motherboards which is great if you want to run three way or four way SLI, ATX power supply and check this out, see these cooling vents here, that's for a good reason and I'm going to show you why because you can actually, actually you know this is probably easier to show from here, so check this out, you can install a 120mm cooling fan that blows directly at the back of the motherboard and then exhausts out there. Now why would you want to do that? Why? Well I will give you the reason, see check this out, very cool, actually give me a sec I'll go get my prop and then I'll be back. Alright here I have my prop now guys, I've got an X79 board and I'm going to show you why you might care about having cooling on the back of the board, check this out, we have PWM components on the back of this board because with all these dim slots there's so little room on these X79 boards for them to put voltage regulation modules, check this out, MSI board same thing, heatsink on the back of the board, what's going to cool that heatsink in most cases? Nothing, so having a little bit of extra cooling although I probably wouldn't use it as an intake, I would probably use it as an exhaust and just pull air from the outside here and push it out, could be useful. Okay so let's keep going on the inside of the case there, accessories wise, we've got some zip ties, some screws, tool-less drive rails which are really cool, I'm going to show you these in a minute actually, but here's something to note about them, see how they're bent? That's on purpose, so wait. We have a locking fan filter, so you pull that out, you just push it like that, now it's locked, it won't come out, and then you just push it down, that's mostly for shipping, you just want to keep it unlocked if you're actually using the case, right? So you just pull that out, clean it, slide it back in, it's more convenient than the ones that are from the back of the case, especially that long one in the 800D that is kind of a pain to get out, I know because I had to do it the other weekend. Alright, in terms of drive mounting, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 3 and a half inch drives here, and check this out, we've also got a tool-less SSD mount, this is a pressure mount, so you just slide the SSD in, I'm just going to grab an SSD, so you just slide the SSD in and it gets held there, sorry guys, here's my SSD, here's that pressure mount, so you just kind of pop it in there, so you can see there's some friction, you can put in a screw if you want right about there, and then it will be completely secure, very cool, not as cool as the 3.5 inch drive mount though, which I am going to show you at some point. Ultra big CPU cutout, and this is handy because the motherboard, CPU, socket positions keep changing, so if you have a case where they haven't built in some extra kind of fudge factor for where it could be located, then you might not end up being able to access the back of the motherboard at all, in which case you can't change the cooler. So Antec thought of that, they made the cutout as big as they possibly could, and you can see even on a new generation X79 board, we have no difficulty with that. There's that top 200 mil fan, there's that Molex 2, 4, 3 pin fan connector adapter do dad, so that is allowing us to easily manage the cables of these fans right here, and then we'll also, actually I never showed you guys this on the back, we can also adjust the LEDs for the top fan, we can turn them off or on, and then we can change fan speeds on the P280, but we can't do it on this one. Okay what else we got here, ah yes cable management, check this out guys. Look how thick that is, at the back of the motherboard tray, so you can put pretty much like, I don't know, whatever you want back there, and you can still close the side panel because this is the border, so you can put a 24 pin, they show a braided, a couple braided cables coming up to the graphics cards on the back of the box. Here are our cable management holes, so you can see these are a nice loose kind of rubber, so you can put cables through them, pull them out, and then it'll still be blocked from view. And last but not least, oh yeah, here, 8 pin hole, so you can run your 8 pin connector up there to the top of your motherboard, and then you've got also other miscellaneous stuff, so you can bring down your front panel connectors, of which there are quite a few, down this way, down to the bottom of your motherboard, and then, haha, yes, this is probably one of the coolest things that I've seen in a while as far as hard drive mounting goes, because let's face it, how interesting can hard drive mounting possibly be? So we're gonna go ahead and, how does this work, ah yes, good, put this on here, okay, so you just put that on, you put that on there, so this isn't very cool yet, right? So you put this, and you slide it into the case, and you guys are thinking, Linus, we've seen this before, and I'm thinking, yes, but not quite like this one, okay, now hard drives are worth a lot of money these days, would I do this? Whoa, right? Okay now watch this, I am gonna protect it a little bit, just in case, ah, ah, ah, that's right, once you put them on, they cannot be removed, except easily like this, I know right? So basically, what Antec has created by making this thing bent, ah, is a way to secure the hard drive in a way that is very very secure from both sides, you can see how much I'm pulling on it, look I'm actually bending the plastic, bending the plastic even more, that's the trick, so if you pull on it from the middle evenly, the hard drive cannot come out, but if you remove it specifically from one side first, then it comes off easily, so I thought that was neat, ah, so thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Antec 1100 gaming case, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.