what's up everyone jay2 sense here we're going to take a look at ank's new flagship PC uh they reached out to me and asked if I'd be interested in taking a look at one and doing a video for them so I thought absolutely because I am a huge antech fan from the past one of my favorite builds that I ever did was back in my antech p82 where I customized the top to put a radiator on it and made some custom air flow uh through the case and really got comfortable with my Dremel um and then I also my antech 900 case which was one of the most awesome airflow cases at the time and then ante kind of went quiet for a while and then just recently we started kind of really taking a look at what they've got again and I'm really really excited to show you guys the the new flux Pro it kind of feels like they've taken everything from the past that I loved about their original full tower cases and really just modernized it for today's hardcore like hardware and stuff so huge thanks to antech for sponsoring today's video for me to do a build in this case and show you guys what it is they're bringing to really sort of make a name for themselves again in the industry today's video is brought to you by the new really super cool Jus sense melty connector shirt you know paying tribute to one of the best designs that's clearly ever existed and if you don't like the paper wave colors we've got our OG gray and red colors available now so get yours by following the link in the description below nice ow I have a thigh cramp so one of the best ways to obviously really get to know a case is to do a build in it and initially I was just going to kind of do a case overview and talk about the features and stuff some of the there's obviously some design cues with the flux Pro that really seem to carry over from designs they had 20 years ago um but really give it a more modern kind of a flare but then I just the more I looked at it I really decided like it's important to do a build in this because of the fact that there's very there's many things I'm like oh but if you do this and you can't do that and it's like oh wait they thought of that and there's a lot of modularity and adjustability built into this case so that it doesn't have to be like a monster tower on your desk but it kind of feels like one when it comes to the amount of flexibility that that's in there um I've also got this lazy Su so I can turn it but it's not like the feet are kind of dragging a little bit so I'm going to go ahead and just like space this out a little bit here it's going to be think a little easier to get it to turn if I can just sort of get a little bit of extra height perfect okay so anyway the flux Pro what does flux stand for it stands for their flow luxury and their whole concept with this particular case is to get as much airflow to the graphics card as possible but how long it takes to design a case I guarantee antech was already in the middle of Designing this case when the 40 series gpus launched and then we realized oh my God they're hot as balls so they went you know what let's just sort of take our design cues and our and our whole design flow no fun no pun intended but let's make it really derivative towards cooling the GPU as much as possible now let's talk about what you get with the case uh before you building it because obviously when it's built everything's already in there so all the fans that you see minus what's on my aiio up top come included with the case so you have three of their 140 tranquil uh fans in the front you get a 140 tranquil fan in the back and then you get two of their 120 reverse flow fans in the mid plate so these are reverse flow which means the blade pitch is actually backwards from the way it normally is that way you don't see the back of the Hub and such as it's pulling air into that particular compartment a little bit of a gripe already right there and because I have a gripe I guess I'll take that one away um I don't like that the fans don't match so I'm going to start off with that the Tranquil fans are black and they're a standard flow the mid plate fans are gray and reverse blade so I think it would have been great if we had matching reverse blade fans in the front since you've got this beautiful mesh panel that's got this kind of a geometric design but then you also get real wood trim around here you don't really see the fans to the front or the detail of them so having some sort of a reverse flow fan would have made the angle that you're looking at them which is kind of right there how your camera is sort of oriented it would have been nice to see them match that way so I just wanted to sort of get that gripe out of the way I couldn't help but keep thinking that as I was building in it especially as I'm looking at these the entire time every panel on this case is mesh the bottom the side the back on the side right here as you can see the mesh flows all the way through we've got our mesh panel in the front we've got our mesh panel on the top and the mesh me measures 1.5 mm in uh opening so if you're wondering how big the holes are they are 1.5 mm thick so well not thick but open if you will and then obviously on the front we can pull this guy off and this exposes our mesh front panel with our wood frame the the case comes in two colors white and black and I think that both look equally good with the wood frame I've personally never been into the wood aesthetic on cases I know this has kind of become a trend with a lot of case manufacturers I personally never really cared for the wood but this one I think is minimalistic enough to where it's not like in your face with all these wood slats everywhere but kind of elegant enough to have this sort of a walnut colored wood around the black or the white which both equally look good and we'll put pictures of the white up here to where this feels like something you could have in an office or in a living room or a bedroom where it feels more like a piece of furniture than it does a computer case and that's what I think is really nice about this as we're building in it um let's start with the front because not only is oh my PC fell off the money there we go so not only and it's fake money guys come on it's Hollywood money it even says if you're wondering it even says right on it for motion picture purposes prop of movie use only or prop for do how many people actually think this is real whatever okay moving forward um not only is it about cooling the GPU but it's also extremely water cooling friendly when I talked about my old P antech p82 back this is like early early 2000s and we're talking like 2003 I think at this time is when I had the p82 it had some like cage drives right here that had a little ring on there you could pull the drives out and such it was not very water cooling friendly so I had to take a Dremel and modify the crap out of the case to be able to put fans and radiators where I wanted namely on the exterior on the top of the case however every single panel in here has a radiator support along with it so for instance on the front right here you can see we have three 140 mm fans pre-installed if you look at my top right here I do have an Arctic 420 on the top this is the freezer 3 you can see I can fit a 420 on the top but you can see that over here in this corner they sort of overlap so I would not have been able to put a 420 in the front and a 420 on the top however the front fan has five or the bracket I should say has five adjustability points right now it's from second from the top we have three more Mount locations down that we could push this down to allow us realistically the best chance possible of being able to mount a 420 on the top and a 420 on the front now keep in mind this Radiator on the top is thicker than normal it is a 38 mm thick radiator with 25 mm I think there's a 25mm fans it might be 27 mm fans actually on the top so this is a thicker situation than we would normally have I think the only thing that can improve on this is if these were some sort of captive toolless screws cuz so far everything everything else in the case has been pretty much toolless when working with it especially the the out exterior panels so now I can take this out and I can scoot it all the way down to the bottom right there this whole bracket comes out so if you want to saw the fans and the radiator and everything on this outside of the case just to make it simpler you can do that and then just install it once you uh have everything mounted up now for the super astute in the audience you know who you are raise your hand if you're a student no not you the guy behind you yeah sorry I wasn't talking to you so the power supply you might notice is turned sideways this is what they call their eye shift and you can see it right here the idea here is the fact that you can even put a 240 mm Radiator in the bottom on the bottom of the fan there or the bottom of the case there is a rail system to be able to install 120 mm fans and 140 mm fans however they only support 240 mm Radiator on the bottom mostly because of the width of the radiator and the length of the the 280 would be so the 240 is what they recommend on the bottom but if your power Supply was mounted in a traditional position with the cables going out that way then the cables would interfere with the radiator so what they give you pre-installed is this bracket right here which again captive thumb screw which just has as you can see a lead cable which plugs into the power supply and you can see it plugged into the power supply right now and what I love is the fact that they give you options to have this come out either side so we got these notches built into the brackets right here so the cable can pass through these little notches and plug right in so the only downside for this is if you need to switch off your power supply or whatever cuz let's say you're working on something or unplugging cables and and whatnot then you have to take off the tempered glass you have to lift up the side um cover right here for the lower compartment and then flip the switch so there's a trade-off you know things that are really positive like this sometimes come with a drawback and that's what it is on this one here glass has to come off the side cover right here which is tool list by the way it just has these little notches and it's it's got these little tabs on the bottom that just rest into place so as soon as you take the glass off this can pop up but for like many people tempered glass can be scary so the more you handle it the more scary it can be just I guess this is only really if you're running a lower radiator in the front otherwise if you turn it the other way what's down there already pre-installed is this hard drive cage which I took out just to show you guys that again it is a tooless system here it's got a captive thumb screw it's got a rail system on the bottom and just mounts in that bottom compartment so you can mount a 3 and 1/2 in drive here but it also comes and this is kind of Genius a lot of Brands don't do this it also comes with a 2 1/2 in Drive sled that mounts to the top of the 3 and 1/2 in Drive sled so not only have to make you know in other situations or other cases you have to make a choice if you're going to mount a 2 and 1/2 in drive or a 3 and 1/2 in drive in the actual removable sled or tray and it is as you can see tool this by the way to slide that out it was smart for them to just utilize extra space to put a 2 and2 in drive right on top of the drive cage but I took it out because this would have to come out if you're going to be installing a 240 mm lower radiator but it comes out without tools which is pretty awesome now if you weren't going to be doing a lower radiator right here I would highly recommend putting the power supply in the traditional Direction and then they do obviously give you a bracket for that and so it just replaces that bracket that has the lead cable on there for your power supply with the standard one so you can just put a normal power supply to it so the back panel comes off tooless like this you can see the mesh on the bottom so that bottom compartment and those middle fans that are blowing air directly at the GPU are getting fed a massive volume of air right underneath those blades uh and it basically pulls it in from the bottom of the case as well as these vents on the side on the bottom chamber so although you can mount fans on the bottom you could remove the bracket so this is the pre-installed bracket right here that the hard drive cage mounts on so it basically just slides right on in there I missed but basically it slides right on in there and I can't see it's dark this is why I don't like black cases I can't see there we go so it's slides right on in there like that and you can see you still have plenty of room for your power supply cables without hitting the bracket now you can slide this bracket left and right if you want because what's unique about this hard drive bracket is it is screwed down from underneath though it just mounts to anywhere there's a 120 mm fan Mount so you could Mount this hard drive bracket if you needed the hard drives and you wanted to run a lower radiator there you could mount it in this lot or this lot not this one here though I don't know not entirely sure why but on the review review guide there's just a big X saying don't put it here but you can put it here or here but that's if you have to have the 3 and 1/2 in drive now you can fit four 3 and 1/2 in drives if you need to cuz you have one Mount here one Mount here you've got the the sleds which I just showed you that came out one there and my captive screw just came out cuz I screwed it too far if you take off the add 2 and 1/2 in Drive sled you have these holes on the top of the cage which you can mount your hard drive to and then on the bottom side you can see you got these big old cutouts right here so you can actually pass your screwdriver down in there to be able to mount them down so the fourth 3 and 1 12 in drive would just be mounted to the top of this cage and it would be down there in the bottom or in the mid plate or something like that and you can fit two 2 and 1/2 in ssds natively without utilizing any of these other parts right here these both just captive or thumb screw come off and mount to the back or any of these Drive cages I showed you as you can see the holes can also hold 2 and 1/2 in ssds so any combination of that is the drives that you can install antech let me just say a big note of appreciation that your factory is not installing captive thumb screws with the strength of the Hulk because the point of thumb screws is you use your thumbs to take them off not a bulldozzer or you know the torque of like a freaking Hellcat okay not thank you just want to point that out all right so let's talk about a couple other things here um the top also has a removable bracket so if you're installing your radiator on the top or your AIO or whatever you can do it entirely outside of the chassis if you want gives you a lot of room to work around with plugging in your EPS cables or any top fan cables or anything like that because as you can see if you have an AO hanging down like I do and then you forget to plug that stuff in it can become a little bit of a pain in the butt fortunately the case is so large and volume there's still plenty of room to sort of reach up under there and still reach the cables fun fact I installed the EPS cables my fan cables and my RGB cable after the 420 a was installed and my big old fingers were able to fit in there without any sort of problem speaking of removable brackets the same thing goes for the middle right here so these two fans can come off and mount on the bottom if you want if this look bothers you you can also take this middle bracket out there's two screws right here so you can see the entire bracket will just lift out and if you want direct air flow to the GPU and it's wired in so I can't really take it out entirely you can take this out entirely put these fans on the bottom and then have it just blow a big volume of air on the top but now you'll lose this compartmentalized sort of separation between the lower chamber and the upper chamber which I think people have kind of become accustomed to but you can also install a radiator right here you can install a radiator uh with fans either well not really on the bottom cuz it would inter interfere with the power supply but you could you could do three fans and Radiator on top and have that air blowing right to the GPU if it's a water cooled GPU it won't matter if the air is blowing right at it cuz that heat is being taken away through the uh the radiators so you can fit a 360 in the top a 360 in the front a 360 in the mid and a 120 in the back if you want to stick with 120 mil fans or a 420 top a 360 in the front 360 mid and a 140 rear or 420 top a 360 in the front 240 bottom 360 mid 140 rear if you just really wanted to go Overkill and then try and figure out where the heck you're going to put all that tubing it can support it uh let's see also too if you want to take these fans out entirely and you're just like I don't want to run those fans it does come with two extra plates that go in the middle so you can see how this right here just has this little plate that's mounted down with the mesh it comes with two more of those so that you could just Mount those there where those fans are and then it won't be in the way won't look weird with that opening there so those would just be meshed off right there let's see other stuff that it comes with right here um these are just the io Shields I took out for the or the io covers for the GPU it does come with a little snap kit right here that has extra screws motherboard standoffs the motherboard nut to tighten down the standoffs if you need so spare parts that are commonly lost and if you want to know more about the wood that was used they give you a sample and a little Indo info card about the wood I guessed that it was Walnut I didn't actually pay attention to the kind of wood and it was so apparently Jay knows would all right so what else to talk about here oh the grommets the grommets on this thing are massive they're also very floppy I'm a little concerned about how thin they are about whether or not if they get caught on something if they'll tear off I've had that happen before on cases in the past um but because there a large opening like this you can fit many cables through there without too much of an issue this can also fit an eatx motherboard without any problem this is a standard motherboard right here uh it's an am5 board and then if it's a standard ATX that's fine if it's an eatx with 90° uh plugs like we have here with the 24 pin you're good if it's an eatx motherboard with 180° uh plugs which means they Point straight out you're going to have a pretty tight Bend to get into The Grommet right here but it is doable it would actually be recommended in my opinion to get a 90° 24 pin adapter so it just pushes the cable right through here cuz it lines up perfectly then you won't have as much of an issue but because the ground do pretty much run the entire length of the motherboard minus this little separation right there Then any of those 90° or 180° headers and such for fans and RGB and USB 3 and all that stuff should line up with these grommets right here but as you can see it is an extremely clean build that you can easily fit a lot of stuff in the one thing I didn't talk about right here is it actually does have a CPU temperature and a GPU temperature readout that exists right here on the side panel so that side panel does have a little lens cover right here that's uh it's just on the mesh so when that's installed it just lines up right over the display this uses their uh I Unity software which has to be downloaded and installed for it to work so if you turn on the system without that software running or it's in BIOS you just get two white lines and then it kind of turns off um unfortunately I didn't do a OS installation on this system cuz I didn't need to I just wanted to be able to build in it and see what any of the nuances were like um it does have a USB header that plugs into the motherboard and that USB header also controls this Hub which is pre-installed right here and all the fans are pre-wired to it I love when case manufacturers do that a lot of case manufacturers will have a hub but then the fan wires are just left dangling but everything for the front panels and the USB and all that was already pre-installed and ran down here to where it needs to go and then you just plug it in so this does also sync with your motherboard if you don't want to use for RGB purposes anyway the uh Unity software from antec then you can just use whatever your Control software is for your motherboard and then anything plugged into this will give you uh that RS RGB control for your motherboard and you do get 1 2 3 4 five headers for RGB as well as five headers for fans five of the fans are pre- plugged in the rear fan was just dangling because there's six pre-installed fans and there's only room for five on the header so I just plugged the rear fan into one of the chassis headers on the motherboard and everything was good to go very very easy to install in this would be an extremely userfriendly case okay now let's talk about price because when you get this kind of design look tooling something like this is not cheap I mean all these little things that are that are adjustable these little even these stupid little pegs that are on the front to be able to mount the the brackets and stuff to every little thing like that costs additional to Tool you would think that that stuff would really start to add up and make this a very expensive chassis I'm very pleased to be able to say that the black is $179 the there there are cases that I first reviewed when I started this channel 12 years ago that were more expensive than that and didn't have half the design that this case does and the white is $184 so they have to make up for some of the low margins you get on white for every white case that sells most brands will sell like 10 black cases so there's it's low volume which means it costs more to produce because you're not ordering as many as a quantity orq right or minimum order quantities or qualities anyway um the price I think is very very very competitive I can think of cases that are more expensive that are not this Pleasant to build in I mean usually any of the cases that involve wood immediately become more expensive because they have to make sure that the wood meets the aesthetic they're looking for and I don't just mean like what kind of wood I mean to Source wood and get it without knots and blemishes and cracks and defects in there and then to go through the process of sealing it cuz my biggest concern with cases with with wood is if you live in a very humid environment is it going to start to warp or curl up on you but the wood has been uh moisture treated and is sealed so you're not going to get that so it even has a nice kind of a lacquer finish on there which is nice and smooth it gives it sort of a a satin finish but also has a little bit of wood shine to it so when you the light hits it you see all the grain it just pops out and has depth and I can see why people are really falling in love with wood um design cues on cases now because it just it it doesn't feel adolescent it doesn't feel juvenile it feels like a a piece of furniture in your room it doesn't stand out with blinking RGB lights everywhere and say hey look at me cuz you might have noticed this entire case lacks any sort of RGB it has the controller it gives you options to plug stuff into it to make your life easier if you want to use RGB but nothing on this case illuminates at all with the exception of the display panel down here for your GPU and CPU temperatures the only RGB that lights at all in this case is the RGB fans that are on the Arctic uh cover right here for the AIO and the fans that are installed on the Arctic cooler already because that's what I put in there otherwise this is like the perfect case for the person that's like look my balls dropped 30 years ago I don't care about RGB I care about just being clean and not in your face or just screaming for attention and that's exactly what this gives you I feel like this is the kind of case that if I had it sitting on my desk at work I would start to have wood tones and stuff to sort of match this in fact these are like the exact same color and tone as my edifiers that are on my desk over there right now I wonder if maybe a case changes in my future anyway guys thanks for watching today's video and of course a huge thanks to antech antech is an OG they've been around for decades and they were really non-existent there for quite a while in the sense that they weren't really pushing their name like they could have and I think a lot of other brands got real comfortable with kind of sliding into the space and showing some design and an's bringing it back old school but with modern flare it's the antech I remember being excited about when I had my p82 or even my antech 900 with having the 200 mm fans all over it I'm really happy to see antech really really making a name for themselves here the C8 was super popular and then now the flux Pro I think is and the whole flux lineup of cases I think are going to be extremely popular given their price to Performance ratios however you guys are the consumers and it's your money that talks not mine not my video it's your money so sound off in the comments below how you feel about the price point at $1 179 for black and do you think that the feature set for that price is a good value for fun fact I know I can't demonstrate airf flow for you guys and I don't have a chamber that can do that I do have the smoke test but I'm going to tell you right now when it's running there's so much air flow the grommets start flapping it's insane how much air flow there is to this case and that's because of the 1.5 mm paracity in the well 1.5 mm holes in the in the a fine mesh that is doing a good job at blocking dust but not blocking air flow all right guys sound off down below and as always we'll see you in the next one