Antec ISK 600 Review

[section_title title=Conclusion]

Conclusion

Now I have had a chance to look at the ISK 600 for a little while now, let’s see how I thought it performed, not only in our tests but over general everyday usage. With this chassis I was particularly interested to see how it stacked up compared to the likes of the Fractal Design Node 304 and the BitFenix Prodigy. Let’s have a look at how it fared.

When I reviewed the BitFenix Phenom, many of you will remember that I spoke about innovation and how it seems harder to come by in recent years. Antec have released a swathe of cases, all with different end user needs in mind. The ISK upon first impressions seems like a unique entry onto the case market. With its small, compact design, front mounted power supply and read mounted motherboard. However, you only have to look as far as the Fractal Design Node 304 to see that there are a lot of similarities. Both have front mounted power supplies, though they are orientated differently, both have rear mounted motherboards and both that roof mounted storage caddies. The Node 304 has one up on the ISK 600 in the thermal department also; however, the margins are tiny. I believe this is largely down to the orientation of the power supply. The Node 304 orientates its power supply pretty much as you would expect a tower case to do it. This then allows two 80mm fans to be mounted above it drawing air from the front of the chassis. This is where Antec really need to improve the overall design of the ISK 600. Ok, it may not have been aimed towards the gaming market, however, there are people, and I know a couple, who are going to want to build a beefy system into this. Whilst it does get warm inside the chassis, it was never getting so high to cause any issues.

In the thermal and acoustic tests the ISK performed as expected, being a little warmer than the BitFenix Prodigy and the Lian Li PC-Q35 and performing neck and neck with the Lian Li in the acoustic tests. This was no surprise due to the single 120 mm fan in the ISK 600.

In summary, I would say that Antec have generally done a good job with this chassis. Whilst there are a few small refinements that can be made, mainly in the cooling department, the design of the chassis is excellent right down to the minor details. The storage solutions are very good and allow for a good amount of storage to be crammed into such a small chassis. The power supply mount is surprisingly well thought out, with foam dampening around the mounting area to reduce vibrations from the power supply, also, as mentioned in a previous page, the small detail of having the cut outs for the two screws nearest floor really is a tribute to the amount of attention to detail Antec have paid towards this chassis. Whilst the front of the chassis could be improved to allow a stronger airflow, the ventilation is still good and with a more powerful airflow fan exhausting, yes you would get more noise, but only a little which would be more than offset by the increased cooling. As you can fit the longest graphics cards in the market as well as approximately 5 storage drives and a slim slot Blu-ray drive into such a small chassis, and still have plenty of cable management room and good cooling, the Antec ISK 600 is fully deserving of our Design award, If the performance was ever so slightly better it would be a contender for our Editor’s Choice award as well.

I would like to thank Antec for giving us this sample and hope to see more from them in the future.

The Antec ISK 600 aswell as other products from the Antec range are available to purchase from Overclockers UK – http://www.overclockers.co.uk/search_results.php?keywords=antec&rows=0