The
LANBOY comes with a 350W Antec SmartBlue power supply. Outside of being a pretty decent power supply the Smartblue has a few blue (hence the name) LED’s inside which light up when the system is turned on. This is a nice effect and looks nice when complemented with a blue light inside the case (purchased separately). The light has the added benefit of letting you know when the system is on for those late nights when you think you’ve turned off your system and need a reminder that you didn’t quite hit the shut-down button like you thought you did (this may only be helpful to me though).
The side window is pretty well designed and does a nice job of showing off the parts of the computer. The only problem I had with the window was keeping it clean. The thing is a dust magnet so every time you open the case you have to wipe it off. Of course if you have a window you have to do a good job of routing your wires so it looks nice. It requires a little extra work to make everything look right inside but the end effect is worth it.
Getting everything inside the case is pretty easy and straightforward. The
LANBOY doesn’t have a motherboard tray, something that would have helped tremendously but the typical standoff system works pretty well. The inside is a bit intimate if you have a larger motherboard though. You also have to be careful if you have a long video card as the card may bump into the hard drives in the hard drive cage. You’ll probably want to install the motherboard first, then the drive cage and then the video card to make sure everything fits correctly. This does create some airflow concerns as some of the intake air may not move from the front of the case to the chip and video card where it’s needed. The fact that the case only has room for two 80mm fans (one intake and one outtake) doesn’t really help this problem.
The cables for the buttons, LED’s, and afore-mentioned USB ports are well labeled and easy to install. The USB cords are almost too long but given the different motherboard configurations this is to be expected and it’s not that hard to tuck them behind the drive bays.
Once you have all of your goods installed you need to put in your fans (not included), and then close the system up. This brings me to my next big gripe about the
LANBOY: the lack of thumbscrews. This is a $80-90 case so there’s no reason that a decent set of thumbscrews shouldn’t have been included with the case.
Overall this is a solid case, but there are a lot of little things that detract from the overall score. You either love or hate the name. I took a lot of crap about it but I’ve got fairly thick skin. For every positive (the carrying strap) there is a negative (the lack of thumbscrews on a case this expensive pretty heinous). Another negative is that for a case that is supposed to be taken to LAN parties and such the paint on the case scrapes easily. I only took the case to one LAN party and between that and taking it out for the Zalman review I picked up a couple of nice scratches on the case.
I would recommend this case to someone who wants something nice to look at but who isn’t going to do a lot of overclocking or stuff the computer with a lot of parts. It looks relatively nice (I received a few compliments at the first LAN party I took it to) but if you are a hardcore user then you may want to find something else.
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Antec LANBOY Companies:
Antec C+
A solid but expensive case. It lacks a few fine touches that would have made it a great case.
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