Legit Reviews

Legit Reviews had a chance to sit down with Antec during CES and get a peak at some of their upcoming offerings. One intriguing item was their new LanBoy Air chassis that's comprised mostly of mesh panels for optimum air flow. To assist Antec has told us it will come with five 120mm fans but is expandable to twelve 120mm fans in total. The drive bays have mounts that are suspended flexible cords to kill vibrations on even the fastest drives and help protect platter drives from damage if the case is moved while powered on. This is a nice feature since it does come with a carrying strap complete with a solid base and wheels. It carries the usual complement of USB 2.0, audio and e-SATA ports and supports ATX, Micro-ATX, or Mini-ITX mainboards. The actual frame, shown in blue, will come in a variety of colors to choose from and although no price was given, you can likely expect it to be somewhere north of the $250 mark and available sometime mid 2010.

WOW! It looks like Antec out did them self with this one. Looks sweet.

Its slogan should be 'Your dust will love it!'

im sure(or would hope at least) that every fan in the thing would have an air filter

skier wrote:im sure(or would hope at least) that every fan in the thing would have an air filter

Nope, no filters. However, it doesn't really make sense to put filters on the fans when the whole case is mesh...the dust will still get in.

FZ1 wrote:Nope, no filters. However, it doesn't really make sense to put filters on the fans when the whole case is mesh...the dust will still get in.

so keep the can of compressed air handy

very unique looking case tho(in a good way)

It looks like it will have great airflow...but is it sturdy? A small amount of metal used as the...rectangular frame. It's won't be as heavy duty as the Antec 1200 or 900; I guess you'll have to sacrifice something to gain something else.

It's gonna get dusty no matter what, even if you have a case that's not all mesh. A bunch of 120mm+ fans brings in a load of dust anyways.

Just because you have mesh everywhere doesn't mean you'll have good/correct airflow. Since it's all mesh you have no way of controlling where your air goes. All your front case fans could push the air straight out the side panels. If the hot air from your graphics card is ousted out the back of the case, then it's very easy for it to move back towards the rear side panel where it could be sucked in again by the graphics card fan.

gwolfman wrote:Just because you have mesh everywhere doesn't mean you'll have good/correct airflow. Since it's all mesh you have no way of controlling where your air goes. All your front case fans could push the air straight out the side panels. If the hot air from your graphics card is ousted out the back of the case, then it's very easy for it to move back towards the rear side panel where it could be sucked in again by the graphics card fan.

The designers of the case would not have do it if they new it wouldn't work, and the designers bin doing it for years.

For almost a year now I've been living with a HAF 932. I almost immediately removed the large side panel fan and replaced it with 4 fairly high flow fans. I also suspended another 120mm fan in the 5.25" drive bays below my ROM drives. And this combination moves allot of air, without making allot of noise. Combine this with the fact that I live in an extremely dusty environment. And you will understand why I clean out my computer at least once a month. Plus every other month I disconnect my fans and wipe down their blades.

Now I understand many of you would not want a setup like mine. Its just too much maintenance, and you might not have things like an Air Compressor to help you clean out your computer. But it does allow me to run an Overclocked CPU and Video cards without instability. And because pressure doesn't build up inside a case like this 120mm fans, and larger, really don't make allot of noise (still it's not "silent" but you have to keep your expectations realistic).

So overall this new case by Antec is interesting. To achieve the kind of Airflow you want, you just have to put fans in the right places. And I would suggest you really do not need all 12 fans slots filled for this case to work quite well. Still, in the instance of my gaming rig, I'm mid-way through setting up water cooling for the CPU and chipset. So I'll probably just install the casters and stick with my larger case.... Either way just needs some work to deal with the dust.