Black Beauty
Written: Nov 07 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great looking, very quiet, nice features.
Cons: No motherboard tray, "Antec" drilled on sides.
The Bottom Line: Way cool, way quiet case!
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| Bradman's Full Review: Antec LifeStyle Sonata ATX Mid-Tower Case |
I was getting tired of my home built gaming rig sounding like a small jet coming in for a landing. I tried a few things that quieted it down a bit but when I need to get a new case anyway I thought I would let the experts do their work.
My gaming case is a huge Antec SX830 model that has an Enermax power supply. I loved working in this case it has more room than my first apartment. There are snap in mounts on the intake and exhaust for additional fans (I mounted 2 PC Power & Cooling silencer fans on the exhaust), and the drive rails store in the “floor” when they aren’t used. Maybe I should write a review on that older case . .
Anyway, I dug around on the web and this case kept coming up as a very good and quiet case. The local computer store (Micro Center) had this case for $120 with a $20 rebate. Heck, the TruePower power supply alone runs around $60 so I went ahead and got it.
The finish on this case is a pretty good gloss black. I don’t think this will give the high dollar custom modders anything to worry about, but it sure looks better than the boring beige that all my other cases had. There is a door (which can be removed) to cover the external bays, and a small front panel with USB, IEEE1394, and audio connectors.
There is an Antec TruePower 380Watt power supply with only one temperature controlled fan (to keep the noise down). This special power supply also has a case fan power connector which controls up to two case fans automatically. As the power supply detects the internal air temperature increasing the case fans are sped up. The case comes with a large 120mm exhaust fan that is pretty quiet (larger fans can move the same volume of air more quietly than smaller fans) which is mounted to the frame with spongy isolation connectors.
The hard drives sit in a special bracket that uses rubber isolation mounts to try to quiet down the shrill whine from the high rpm drive spindle motors. The drives also mount 90 degrees compared to normal, so when you open the side panel you are looking at the rear of the drives. This is a great idea and I don’t know why more cases don’t do this.
The only things I don’t like about this case is that there is no removable motherboard tray but my other Antec doesn’t do that either. Maybe that is an Antec “thing”. It isn’t the end of the world but it does make the initial installation more difficult. They also drilled the word “Antec” with small holes on both sides of the case. I think this lets out more noise than necessary but I think the cooling would suffer if it wasn’t there.
Overall this case is the quietest one I have heard. Could things be quieter? Yes. But at least now it just sounds like a small fan at the corner of my desk and not a helicopter. I may try out the Zalman CPU cooler to try and quiet down the stock CPU heatsink that I am running, but I will see if I get used to this noise level (or should I say quiet level). For the money I think this is a great deal – quiet, looks great, neat features.
Here is a link to the Antec website:
http://www.antec-inc.com/pro_details_enclosure.php?ProdID=15138#
And some other reviews:
http://www.pcabusers.com/reviews/antec/sonata/p1.html
http://www.intelforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=375
http://www.procooling.com/reviews/html/antec_sonata_case_review.php
Bradman
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Bradman
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Brad W
Location: OH
Reviews written: 125
Trusted by: 7 members
About Me:
Cars, computers, digital photography and video.
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