Antec is a well respected name in the component industry at this point. They make some very nice cases, some excellent power supplies, and the myriad of fans, coolers, and other parts and upgrades. Antec’s recent release of the Overture ‘Piano Black Quiet Media Case’ caught my eye, but I wanted to see if the beauty was more than skin deep…
When looking to evaluate a high-quality, HTPC-potential horizontal/desktop case, with two full 5.25″ bays (which I’ll discuss in a Do-It-Yourself system building article), there really are slim pickings in case-land. A lot of the desktop cases are mATX sized, which rules out half the motherboards out there and in many cases most full-sized PCI or AGP boards, and even then few look like they might be suited to fitting in a home theater component system. The Antec Overture case is one of the few cheaply priced (but not ‘cheap’ in any other sense of the word!) cases out there that met my needs.
Antec recently released the ‘LifeStyle Series’ of cases, with the Overture case alongside its brother and sister the Sonata and Minuet, in a bid for the push for ‘quiet computing’ boxes. All set around the magic $100 pricepoint, they each have a particular target audience, with the Overture case looking well targeted at the home theater PC marketplace.
I’ve extracted the ‘nuts and bolts’ from the various detail pages on the Antec website:
- Specifications
- Case Dimensions: 5.25″(H) x 19″(D) x 17″(W)
- Weight: 19lbs (23 gross)
- Power Supply
- 380 Watt TruePower
- Single fan design, for quiet computing
- ATX 12V for AMD & Intel systems
- 7 Drive Bays
- 2 x 5.25″ external drive bays (in a tool-freely-removable drive cage)
- 2 x 3.5″ external drive bays
- 3 x 3.5″ internal drive bays (removable drive cage), with rubber grommets to absorb hard drive vibrations
- Motherboard Support
- 12″(W)x9.6″(L)
- Standard ATX (or proper-fitting uATX)
- 7 full-height Expansion Slots
- Special Features
- 1x92mm SmartCool Plus thermally-regulated fan, rear-mounted
- Front mounted USB & IEEE1394 (FireWire) ports
- Front Audio ports
- Cool-blue surround-lit large power button
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I highly suggest NOT getting this case. I have had nothing but problems with it since I bought it 2 weeks ago.
The internal design of the case is extremely poor to say the least. The single fan PSU is garbage and combined with the weak exhaust fan. I have an AMD 2700+ that idles a 60c with the case cover on, and 37c without.
THIS CASE HAS 0 AIRFLOW. I quite case is no use if you burn out your components.
Unless you have a slow power consuming CPU I wouldn’t get this case! Be Warned
The case does not have zero airflow. As I mentioned in the article, there are some issues with the design blowing in through the power supply. Frankly, the case is so nice that you could sell the power supply on eBay, buy an ‘normal’ exhausting PSU, and flip the rear fan.
For power users, this may not be the case for you. For HTPC builders, this is one to look at – especially when you’re using low-power and low-heat components to begin with. I’ve seen one custom-HTPC-builder basing exclusively on this case, and I’d consider doing so myself.
My HTPC uses this case with a Duron 950 and a low-speed CPU fan/sink, an ATI All-in-Wonder 8500DV, a 60GB 7200rpm HD, and sits on an nForce-based motherboard. Runs for days on end without a crash, reboot, or overheat . Only gets turned off or rebooted when I want to.
I’ve got one, had it for a few months. Have problems trying to install Gentoo Linux, my Athlon XP 1700+ gets very hot very quickly when compiling and installing Linux. I hope to get things figured out and use it as a MythTV PVR box, but for now it’s useless. Have heat alarm set at 65C now and it keeps going off. :/ Going to look into ways to improve cooling for the thing before running anything again.
Hey Bill -
I’d probably go through a few Q&As with you. Like what else do you have in the box? How many cards, positioned where? How many and what spec HD and CD drives? What heatsink/fan combo do you have on the CPU, and what is it rated for? Rounded or flat cables?
65C is outrageously hot, even for an AthXP. Especially for only a 1700+. I’d look at whether you used a high-conductivity compound on the heatsink, the efficiency of the heatsink, and the power of the heatsink/fan to draw off the heat. The overall case >should< be exhausting enough to keep the overall temperature low enough that the CPU would never get that hot if the sink/fan were doing the job. I actually burnt out a Duron by not having proper thermal-paste coverage and heatsink-contact.
Depends also on what else is generating heat, and how close to the CPU. My CPU is close to the exhaust fan, so heat is probably drawn away quickly. If your mboard has the CPU further away, if you have a high-end GPU, multiple high-heat hard-disks, that could start to build the heat up faster than it can exhaust... but I'd still start by looking at the heatsink.
Let me know how it goes!
I bought one of these cases and really regret it. If you decide you’re going to put more that a single hard drive, DVD, low-heat video card, and a medium hot processor – forget this case!!!
I put 3 drives, an nvidia 6800, dvd, and floppy in my case with a 2.53 mhz Intel processor.
Even after adding extra fans, and an expensive cpu heatsink/cooler, the case temp is 50-55C, and the CPU temp fluctuates from 50-70+
In my opinion, antec should have NEVER added the extra drive holder to this. It should have been advertised as a 4 bay case, NOT a 7 bay case
I am very disappointed in Antec regarding this.
Regards,
Mic