Antec 300: Owner Opinion/Amateur Review

[TheAtomicKid]

I've installed a couple of different setups into this case now, over the last couple of months, as I fuss with my systems in an attempt to appease my sense of inner happiness.

System 1: My old socket 939 MSI Neo4 platinum setup, complete with a scythe ninja (a), and a western digital caviar 400, and a 640. Running linux, not that it really matters.

System 2: My new evga 780i setup, q6600 cpu, mini-ninja, with a pair of 74 gig Raptors.

Airflow is spectacular with the perforated front and the side vent. With both the 120 and the 140mm antec tricools set to low speed, it generated a nice intake wash throughout the entirety of the perforated front panel. I was concerned at first that it would simply draw air from near the top, closer to the fans. However, the perforations appear to generated enough resistance that it's pulling air fairly evenly over the entire front surface. The cooling is enough to keep either setup cool with minimal noise involved.

As far as layout is concerned, the bottom mounted PSU has it's usual benefits. The psu isn't seperated from the main chamber by any barrier, but it still performs nicely. Both my PC Power and Cooling Turbo Cool 510 SLI (780i setup) and my Seasonic 380 GB (MSI Nforce 4) happily fit in the space provided. There's even some bracing, so that there's room to put any bottom feeding psu's with the fan oriented downwards, allowing it to pull air from the very bottom of the case without issue. Also, because the supply is at the bottom of the case, and sitting on braces... heavy units won't be a problem. (some cases exhibit bending of the back panel due to lack of support for the power supplies.

Silencing: The case isn't naturally insulated vs sound. All that perforated metal unfortunately does pass sound fairly well. However, if you use quiet/passive components, all that airflow means that everything naturally stays nice and cool... and quiet/passive components don't need any additional silencing, usually.

Hard drives: Plenty of space behind the perforated panel to place drives directly in the air wash.. they stay nice and cool. (my two caviars are steady at 35-36c even as I write this little mini-review). The raptors when the other setup was installed were similarly well cared for. No issues concerning heat with this case at all. As for the 5+1/4"" bays up top, the bay covers are NOT perforated for those, which is good if you want to force the air to come through the front grill lower down, but not so good if you want to say, mount a smartdrive or similar setup into the wider bays. You'd need to leave the bay cover off, or any such mounting will receive minimal, if any, airflow.

Vibration: No noticeable resonance/vibration with either setup, although admittedly the pc power and cooling supply is noisy enough to mask such a problem. The seasonic based setup, which runs.. not silent, but nearly so, exhibits no vibration normally either. I did catch the front bezel/panel vibrating a bit the other night, but simply pressure near the bottom with a finger, caused it to stop and stay stopped. The feet on the case are a very soft, VERY 'grippy' black rubber of some sort. Might be silicone based. Once they contact my desk, it's a serious pain to slide it. It's easier just to pick it up and reposition the case.

For the record, my pc power and cooling setup was a fair bit quieter, compared to the chenbro case that is it's current home. Still not nearly silent in that config, though. The PSU would need to go for that to happen. the athlon + seasonic combo, however, runs nearly dead silent. From across the room, you can't really hear it at all over ambient noise. sitting next to it, it expresses itself with the idle noise from the drives (a quiet 'whir... very quiet) drive access is noted as a mild ticking that can be heard over the idle noise. video card is my modified x800-xl ati card with a zalman vf700 cooler... it's noise is well below ambient unless the card overheats.. I've never heard it spin up since returning it to active duty in this case. My 8800 gts/320 runs 5c cooler in this case, vs my chenbro, with no other changes. (using software temp monitoring... alas, I don't have linux set up to pull temps from the ati yet.. it's not spotting the sensor for some reason)

Verdict: If you've got a quiet/passifve setup, this case is VERY nice in terms of layout/airflow for keeping it nice and cool, quietly.

If you have a noisier setup and/or it runs hotter, this case will help you cool it down, let the power supply run a bit more quietly, etc. It will not muffle anything, though.

TheAtomicKid

Bonus Thought: It works wonderfully as a negative pressure setup. Converting it to positive pressure would be tough, though. All that perforated real estate would work against you. The grill at the front seems to work well at catching larger airborn materials... wiping it off every couple of days will save you time spent opening it up for a 'real' cleaning. There's space behind the front panel to put a filter in, and mountings for a couple of 120mm drives, either/or. However, it'd combine with the case front to be fairly restrictive.

[Rewdoalb]

thanks for the post...

do you have any pics that you could start a thread in the general gallery for?

also, which is positive pressure and which is negative? err, which has more intake than exhaust and vice versa.

[TheAtomicKid]

Alas, I must apologize. No pics because... well, no camera. Perhaps someday.

Negative/Positive pressure... Negative pressure means there's more air trying to exit the case due to fans, than there is actively trying to come into the case due to fans. Perhaps if you only have a psu, or a psu and a case fan.

Positive pressure is the reverse... you have more intake than exhaust... the result of which is pressure builds up in the case, and air leaks OUT, through every little nook and cranny. Floppy drive, cdrom, etc. The advantage is, if you filter the intakes, your case stays clean inside.

With a negative pressure system, air leaks IN all over the case... which is, of course, nearly impossible to filter short of isolating the entire case inside another chamber.

In theory, negative pressure supposedly cools better... up to the point where dust starts coating everything, at which point the cleanliness of the positive pressure setup, would certianly pull ahead.

Mind you if you don't filter a positive pressure system, you lose the benefits.

Most cases end up being negative pressure, btw. PSU, video card, case fans, all exhausting. It adds up, vs, usually, 1, sometimes two, intake case fans.

It's a balancing act. You don't want a LOT of positive pressure, just enough to keep the case every so slightly higher than exterior pressure. If it were a LOT higher, you'd hear air rushing out of your case continuously.

More commentary. Due to the fact that the front panel controls are all mounted at the top edge of the front bezel, you end up with about an extra inch of dead space, above the motherboard/5-1/4" drive area. This allows space for things like rotating the cpu heatink, etc, although the 140mm fan does use at least some of that space.

TAK

[TheAtomicKid]

Hokay. Fiddled around some more with the linux box.

Removed the two top fans, and replaced with... nothing.

Added two Scythe S-Flex 120x1200rpms into the front mounts, using some nice soft rubber mounts I picked up at www.sidewindercomputers.com

Soooo.... we're running positive pressure atm. In theory. It's even filtered by default, although it's not a dust/hepa grade filter. But it'll keep out hair, etc.

Observations: It definitely runs the cpu quite a bit warmer like this... and having just swapped my 8800gts/320 back into the case as well, I can observe that I've lost the cooler running ability that it was displaying earlier... it's back to normal temperatures.

It runs just warm enough that I'm still considering the overall setup without the top fans.... cpu (which is upgraded to a 4000+ as well), is running oh... 50-65c range, depending on load. The 3500+ was running perhaps a tad warmer, actually... the thermal paste was getting on towards 2 years old. I saw it peg 66c a couple of time, which is getting pretty uncomfortable with these chips (the 3500+ is supposedly a max of 65c, and the 4000+ 71c)

Overall I'm quite pleased, although I'm nervously keeping an eye on the cpu temp... I need to stress test it soon.

Annoyingly enough, when I swapped in the 4000+, I seem to have lost the ability to run my ram at it's rated speed... aka 2/2/2/5, with 1T command rate. In fact, the bios isn't showing an option to select the command rate anymore, for some reason... *scratches head*

Atomic

[Jipa]

My take on the 300, including images

Yes, it's a good case for the price. Nice layout, easy installation, sturdy frame... Haven't really tried to make it any quieter than it is out of the box and most likely wont either, it's back to P180B for me as soon as I have the time to do the change.

[tido]

Does the Antec 300 have an air filter?

[ame]

The front is filtered, but there is a side vent that is open to dust (needs to be blocked IMO).