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The Antec Dark Fleet DF 85 is one of the most striking looking cases on the market right now. At night, when this aggressively designed chassis is lit up with the rows of red LED fans, it takes on a sinister, almost evil appearance. This is the kind of case we can imagine Darth Vader building his gaming system around.
Technically there is very litle to fault, after reviewing several budget cases lately we expected to find something inside which felt flimsy or substandard, but this chassis is targeting a higher market and it shows – the attention to detail throughout is absolutely top drawer. Not only are all the fans controllable, but they have easy to access removeable, washable dust filters. On the outside we have a bay for a 2.5 inch hard drive, which makes copying, or security based backups a viable option. My colleague said he would use this top mounted external drive bay for an SSD operating system install, and when he left, he could remove it, meaning no one else could access the machine, or his files.
Internally it is a masterclass on how to design a case, installing a system is a pleasure thanks to the spacious room around the motherboard area, and the biggest graphics card fit without a problem. The hard drive system is one of the best ive seen as you can add and remove drives without disconnecting any cables, thanks to the Antec ‘Fleet Swap drive' system. There are also no problems installing the largest CPU coolers on the market, such as the Noctua NH D14 ‘Austrian Sandwich'.
The cooling performance is right up there with the Silverstone Raven 02 which has been my favourite case for the last 2 years and I think Antec have just topped it. The cooling is just as good, but the overall design is more effective and its better built too.
Anything negative? The only fault I could find is that there is no external eSATA port and although I miss it, I doubt many people will.
The UK price right now for the Dark Fleet DF 85 is around £140–150 inc vat. I think this is great value for money, especially for a high end gaming system when ultimate cooling and a high quality, eye catching finish are top of the list.
KitGuru says: The Silverstone Raven 02 has finally been replaced in our labs with the Antec Dark Fleet DF 85 Chassis … we can give it no higher praise.
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