Antec P183 Case Review

The Disk Drive Bays

This case has five external 5.25” bays, one external 3.5” bay and six internal 3.5” bays for hard disk drives, in two cages.

The external bays use an excellent mechanism to hold drives, even though it is not screwless. You need to add one ruler to each side of the drive you want to install using normal screws and then slide the drive in the bay.

Figure 18: Rulers and optical drive with rulers installed.

Figure 19: Optical drive installed (side view).

Figure 20: Optical drive installed (front view).

Officially you cannot use the external 3.5” bay to install a hard disk drive, because will have a hole on the front panel, as the bay cover can’t be reinstalled while a drive is installed inside a bay. If this aesthetic problem doesn’t bother you, then you can have a seventh drive installed there.