Antec Dark Fleet DF-85 Case Review

The Top and Rear Panels

The top panel comes with two 140 mm fans, each one attached to an individual two-step speed controller that is available on the rear panel of the case. They rotate at 800 rpm (low) or 1,200 rpm (high), produce a maximum airflow of 33.6 cfm (low) or 58.9 cfm (high) and a maximum noise level of 21.8 dBA (low) or 26 dBA (high). No air filter is available on these fans, but this feature is really not necessary, since these fans work in exhaust mode (i.e., blowing hot air from inside the computer to the outside).

Figure 10: Top panel

Even though the power supply is installed on the bottom part of the case, the bottom panel has no mesh or any other special feature.

Finally we have the rear panel in Figure 11. It is painted black, giving a very professional look to the product. The Dark Fleet DF-85 comes with two 120 mm fans attached to its rear panel, which is really unique, since the vast majority of cases available on the market have only one rear fan. These two fans are attached to individual two-step speed controllers, which are located on the top part of the rear panel (see Figure 12) and rotate at 900 rpm (low) or 1,500 rpm (high), producing a maximum airflow of 30.1 cfm (low) or 51.2 cfm (high), and a maximum noise level of 16.9 dBA (low) or 27.9 dBA (high).

The DF-85 follows the standard ATX layout, with seven expansion slots. The slot covers are vented, which may improve airflow. One of the covers is silver (it should be black to match the rest of the case) and has a hole in it. This hole is for you to route the cable of the front USB 3.0 port to the rear panel of the motherboard.

Above the area where expansion cards are installed the case has a small mesh featuring two holes covered with rubber protections to be used by liquid cooling solutions with external parts.

The power supply is ins
talled on the bottom part of the case, as you can clearly see in Figure 11. One interesting thing is that this case supports power supplies from the Antec CP series. This information isn’t clear on the product page or in the product manual.

Figure 11: Rear panel

Figure 12: Controllers for the top and rear fans

Now let’s take a look inside the Antec Dark Fleet DF-85.