Antec Twelve Hundred has a big 190-mm fan on its top (Antec claims that this case uses a top 200-mm fan, but if you measure it is actually a 190-mm fan), protected by a fancy mesh, as shown on Figure 5. This and all other fans available on this case glow blue when they are turned on, but you can switch off the top fan LED’s thru a switch available on the rear panel. Unfortunately you can switch off the LED’s only from the top fan.

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Figure 5: Top panel.

On the top part of the case you can also find a panel containing two USB ports, an eSATA port and mic in and headphone jacks, plus the power and reset switches. The two USB ports have a relatively good distance between them, allowing you to install two “fat” USB devices at the same time, like USB drives. We think that this case could have a Firewire port here and two more USB ports on a high-end case wouldn’t be bad.

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Figure 6: Connectors found on the top panel.

Finally we have the rear panel on Figure 7. On this case the power supply is installed on the lower section of the case. This case has two 120-mm fans on its rear panel and you can control the speed of the top and rear fans thru a small panel available on the top section of the rear panel (see Figure 8). Three speeds are available: low (400 rpm for the top fan and 1,200 rpm for the rear fans), medium (700 rpm for the top fan and 1,600 rpm for the rear fans) and high (1,000 rpm for the top fan and 2,000 rpm for the rear fans). As mentioned, you can also turn off the LED’s from the top fan thru this panel. This case has also two holes for hoses from water cooling devices. These holes use a rubber cover, so you won’t need to break anything on your case to have them available. The side panels are attached to the case thru thumbscrews, which is great.

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Figure 7: Rear panel.

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Figure 8: Rear and top fans controller.

Let’s now see how Twelve Hundred looks like inside.