Antec P280 Silent Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,445 words · ~12 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of the antec p280
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and you might be wondering why I had such a big smile on my face to start
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this video and the answer is quite simple because I believe the p280 is a
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true return to form for antec this is
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one of the most Innovative
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and here we go just opening up these seals this is one one of the most
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Innovative case designs that I have seen in a very long time and it is a true
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update to the original p180 we've seen
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incremental updates like the p82 and the p183 but we haven't seen anything that I
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would consider a reimagining up until now so let's go
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ahead and take this bad boy out and you
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know what I'm going to do I'm going to take the box here and I'm just going to put it here and we're going to have a
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look at some of the features before we get started so one is you can install up
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to 13-in graphics cards I'm going to get some more light for you here so you can
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actually read this quiet Computing so it uses a dual layer design with steel and
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polycarbonate side panels ease of use and we'll talk a lot about that but it
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includes grommet line Cable Management holes and tons of space for managing
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cables tooless 5 and 1/4 in Bays quiet 3
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and 1/2 in Bay and these are these are cool okay uh two front panel USB 3 ports
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an advanced cooling system including three fans and four additional fan
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mounts so yes you can have quiet and you can have cooling triple layer aluminum
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plastic and foam front bezel with double hinged door opens up to 270° finally PSU
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intake and front air filters which are very easy to take out and clean compared
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to designs that I've seen from antec and their competition in the past so let's
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go ahead and take off this foam ANC
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always packs their cases very well in closed cell foam which is much less
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susceptible to damage during Transit and much more durable much more reusable
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than other stiffer less durable kinds of
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foam go ahead and take this plastic off
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very excited to see this case because it arrived in the mail a little while ago
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and I haven't actually had a chance to check it out yet even though I've seen
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pictures and I've seen specs and I've seen where'd it go a reviewer's guide I
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haven't actually seen the case in person yet so let's get some lighting on that
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front panel while we oops sorry
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reveal the finish on there so this is
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about what I'd expect from antech in terms of the overall quality of
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materials I mean the p180 had a beautiful uh metal finished front door
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and the p280 continues in that proud tradition we've got two USB 3 ports and
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two USB 2 ports with the front panel we've got our microphone Jack as well as
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headphone jack and let's go ahead and open open this thing up so here we see
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the foam sound dampening material we also see the 3 5 and 1/4 in Bay and you
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guys are going to love this the gamers are going to love this because what kind of gamer is not lazy and doesn't like or
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and likes to work hard to take out the filters hold on okay so this is step one
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to take off the filter that was it step one take off the
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filter now you can access the uh 120 mm
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cooling fan slots that are in the front you can also see your 3 and 1/2 in Bays
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which are double purpose because you can mount 2 and 1/2 in drives in them there
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you go that's the whole thing nice honeycomb Grill design to protect it
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give it some rigidity but that is how easy it is to take out and clean your
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fan filter simply astounding in terms of
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airf flow antec has not forgotten in spite of the fact that this is a silent
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silent concept case they've not forgotten airf flow so look at these
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huge gaps between the side of the door and the closing point which are going to
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give those front fans the air flow that they need in order to not suffocate and
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actually here speaking of the door swinging open there here I want to show
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you guys the 270° hinge so you just snap that out put
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that over there a lot of people complain about front case uh doors personally I
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like them um what I really don't like to see is the power and the reset switch
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hidden behind the front door because as much as I don't need to see my uh 5 and
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a qu inch Baye I very rarely use my optical drive and I don't need to see my
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fan filter I do need to turn my case on and off so antec has repositioned the
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power and reset switches for this case to the top in a very convenient
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userfriendly location compared to what we've seen from their competition as
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well as from antec in the past we've got two 120 mm cooling fans up here which
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are spaced correctly for a dual radiator for those of you who are interested in
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running one of those very very cool good
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foresight and then take off the side panel where we see the polycarbonate
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layer as well as the metal layer on the
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side panel that gives it some stiffness it also gives us some weight this is not
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a light case so you know don't imagine you're going to be easily hauling it
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around to land parties unless you're like you know huge like me right yeah
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that's right okay so moving on uh where
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should we start on the inside you know what let's start with the fan filter since we've talked a little bit about
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that already on the outside this fan filter oh it doesn't come out it doesn't
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come out oh that because it comes locked from the factory
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see now I can easily remove it that's the filter for your power supply intake
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and then when you put it back in you don't have to lock it you can make it
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easy but if you're going to ship your case or something like that you just
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push on it and now it's locked the reason antech designed it this way is
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just because during shipping they don't want these fan filters coming out and
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getting damaged in the box so there you go personally I would always keep that
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unlock so I can easily clean it and there you go all right what else we got
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in here a little bit of accessories there's a little piece of paper here's
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some cable ties which will help you manage your cables here's some hardware
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and screws hard drive screws all that good stuff so silent concept case does
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that mean we can't put an extreme gaming machine in here I would postulate no it
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does not mean that because check this out antech has included in the p280 nine
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expansion slots so yes that means you can install crazy Enthusiast
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motherboards with up to nine expansion slots this is an XL ATX case so you can
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put pretty much anything in it because it supports long motherboards slightly
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wider than normal motherboards but not full eatx server board so stuff like the
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Rampage series from ASUS which tends to be a little bit wider that'll be no
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problem and it also supports long graphics cards up to 13 in which is
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longer than anything else on the market now we've got rubber grommets here for
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cable management and they've also sensibly positioned the rubber grommets
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a lot of the time you see one down here and then you see one up here and kind of
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one up here but obviously you can't pull out twice as many cables as you put in
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in the first place so an's giving you room to put them in here and here pull
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them out here here here here and here we've also got aha our 3 and 1/2 in or 2
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and 1/2 in drive adapter so here's the caddies there's your 2 and 1/2 in holes
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there's your 3 and 1/2 in holes with rubber silicone silicone
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mounts very solid compared to competing
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Solutions these have a lot of uh durability to them and they're not
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flimsy at all so there's six of those uh
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what else we got here oh let's go ahead and undo
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this front panel
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connectors I like that these are black for the most part wouldn't have minded
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seeing all black but I guess it's not the end of the world because you can
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hide them very easily down the rubber grommets in there so I wouldn't worry
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too much about it there's your front panel connector so that's your hard drive LED your power led oh no hard
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drive LED oh yeah there's the hard drive LED and then we've also got uh what else
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here USB 2 front audio and USB 3 with um
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uh with a header so rather than with using the cheesy you know go around the
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back and plug into the io Shield we have a nice molded plastic header piece there
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so what else do we have oh yeah tool is
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5 and a quar these are actually oh these are smart so what
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happens is when you slide in your drive it's going to push out this and then
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it's going to drive that pin right into the side of your drive no big deal and
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then you've also got two holes left over here as well as here if you want to
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secure it with screws like say for example for shipping so that's awesome
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all right what else we got 120 mm
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cooling fan is over here we've got those
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120 mm cooling fans that are in the top up here we've also got uh cooling fan
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controls over here so that's on a little PCB there going to want to power that up
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and then you can use the switches at the back of the case which I have haven't shown you yet to control the speeds of
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your fans you got your water cooling grommets these are pretty standard these
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days and oh check this out that is a huge CPU Cooler Mount or CPU Cooler
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cutout so that's going to allow you pretty much no matter where your CPU
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socket is located to easily you replace
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a back plate and uh not have to take the
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motherboard out of the case in order to do it so I'm just taking off a couple of
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thumb screws here and the camera's apparently fall following me so I'm
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going to have to turn it around and show you guys all right thumb screws
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off case opened so same thing we got the
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polycarbonate on the side panel there just going to go ahead and put that
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aside for now now check this out tons of
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cable management room look how much space there is I'm going to like jam my
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hand in there for emphasis lots of room to manage cables by the motherboard tray
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ante has also included little Clips so you can EAS manage your cables where
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exactly they're going you use zip ties you can secure the cables down nice and
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flat so that you don't interfere with trying to close a side panel it's become
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with a lot of cases they're like yes we have cable management holes but then
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when you actually go to close a side panel it's like sitting on a suitcase so
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uh very very challenging in that regard on the back here we've also got a large
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hole for putting up to two EPS 8 Pin connectors through here and then we've
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also got a hole up here so this is the one I mentioned before where you can run
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your your front panel connectors and whatnot through here without interfering
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with any of your 5 and 1/4 in Bay and without having to look at any of these
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cables in order to run them down to the bottom of your
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motherboard I think that pretty much covers it but give me a moment here
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guys so two more things guys one is the actual dimensions back here is 3 cm so
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even fat 24 pin cables will fit and the other thing is here are the controls for
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the two cool fans that are included two cool for school that is uh so you can go
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ahead and turn those to low or high in order to get either low cooling and low
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noise or high Cooling and higher noise
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so thank you for checking out my unboxing and overview and first look at
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the antech p280 don't forget to subscribe to lineus Tech tips for more
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unboxings reviews and other computer videos one feature that I actually
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missed on this case and it's been so long since I realized I missed it that
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I've actually already installed a system in it cuz I went to mount the SSD and I
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went oh yeah it's got that handy SSD Mount that's just a pressure mount so
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you go ahead and you slide your SSD in here and it's secure enough see you can
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okay here you can see I can pull in it a little bit doesn't go anywhere if I pull
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in it a lot then it comes so that is how you mount an SSD in the p280 in addition
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to being able to mount an SSD on any one of the drive sleds anytime you want so
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sorry about that and now I'm