Antec Dark Fleet DF-85 Case Review

Conclusions

The Antec Dark Fleet DF-85 is a nice full-tower case for the user that is looking for a case that supports lots of hard disk drives and comes with lots of fans with speed control. The construction quality is top-notch, but we didn’t like the tabs covering the 5.25” bays. Users looking for other specific features – eight expansion slots, for instance – will have to pick a different product, though. In the same price range, we have Cooler Master HAF X, which may be a better choice, depending on what you are looking for in terms of features.

Strong Points

• Impressive number of fans: seven.
• Speed control for all fans.
• Vented slot covers
• Air filters on the front fans
• Four 3.5” and one 2.5” hot-swap bays
• Support for up to two 2.5” hard drives or SSDs
• Support for up to 11 hard drives is more than enough for even the most hardcore user
• Hole for accessing the backplate fo
  r the CPU cooler on the motherboard tray
• Holes for routing cables on the motherboard tray
• Clips for fastening zip-lock ties
• One USB 3.0 port
• Anti-vibration mechanism on the internal 2.5” bay
• No sharp edges where you could cut yourself while building your PC
• Support for power supplies from the Antec CP series

Weak Points

• The tabs in front of the 5.25” bays make inserting media in the optical drives a really annoying process
• No screwless mechanism for the drive bays
• No anti-vibration mechanism for hard disk drives
• No eSATA port
• No FireWire port
• Slot cover for the USB 3.0 cable isn’t painted black
• Uses regular silver screws for installing expansion cards instead of black thumbscrews
• Bay covers aren’t meshed
• It would be nice if it came with eight expansion slots
• It should have a separated hole for routing the cable from the front USB 3.0 port instead of using one expansion slot for this