Antec SONATA IV Black Computer Case

Comment:
Very quiet, I like Antec. Price is a little bit too much, so I price matched it. Got 40$ off, very good deal!

Comment:
This case is great for those who need a quiet PC. It's not aluminum (thus no vibrations). Lots of grommets in the case and drive areas to reduce noise. Designed with practicality in mind. 2.5" SSD Drive mount completely useless. use 3.5" Adapter instead. Arrangements of HDDs and framework needs longer power cables. Make sure you have either extenders or an intuitive way of organizing it.This case supports only 1 fan. Do NOT purchase if you are planning to overclock or use hot parts.

Comment:
inexpensive and elegant. easy to assemble

Comment:
This is a good Tower if you don't mind a couple of changes that needs to be done. For the 5.25Drive Bay's to align a CDrom for example you need to drill wholes in the plastic slot that the CDRom's face and the tower are aligned. Else your CDrom will be out about a quarter inch.Also the mounting spot for a 2.5" SSD is simply wrong it simply doesn't mount well at all. I used a regular 3.5HDD drive bay to mount mine.But everything else is great.

Comment:
This case would be perfect if not for the power cables for the drives. This case has room for 4 hard drives, mounted sideways, but the Power Supply has two set of cables, each for 3 drives. Since you need to power the DVD drives (I have 2, it would work for 3), this leaves 3 connectors for the HDD. Since I have 3 HDDs, I thought it would work.BUT: due to the arrangement of the drives, and the cable lengths, you can only power 2 drives, not 3.So you need molex-to-sata adaptors for the remaining drives.Overall, I still prefer my Sonata III in which reside my second computer, since the horizontal placement of the drives, would make the connectors work. This review was modfied by poster @ 07-03-11 07:04 AM

Comment:
This case has a really sleek look. The front is glossy black and has a front cover and lock which you don't see in many other cases. Although it is supposed to be a quiet case, I could hear a slight buzzing noise but that could be just my stock CPU cooler. If you are a gamer or overclocker, I wouldn't recommend getting this case since it will most likely burn your parts due to lack of fans (airflow). There's just this 120mm (I think) fan at the back pulling all the air from the case. More fan slots would be nice as it's literally a brazen bull for your OC'ed parts. This would make a pretty neat HTPC case though.

Comment:
At first glance, this would seem to be a great case. Unlike the previous versions of the Sonata, the door can swing past 180 degrees to avoid bumping and breaking it off, and both side panels are able to be opened (albeit with thumbscrews instead of a latch). It is sleek, the hard drives finally mount from the side instead of the back, and there is a side vent for air intake.However, that's just appearances... and aesthetics are where this case's good points end.Although the hard drives mount from the side, this comes as a great sacrifice to ventillation. A metallic wall literally separates the hard drive bays from the rest of the case, and there is only 1.5" of space between this wall and the side panel, resulting in the hard drives cooking in their own heat. What little air that does slip out and 'flow' into the rest of the case is hot... if you are using multiple drives in each row.The stock case fan is quiet... only when set to the L setting, which ended up driving my system to average out at 68 degrees celsius at idle. When set to H, the fan sounds like a jet engine and only manages to bring the temperature by a mean of 10 degrees. (I am using an Intel Core i7 940, with an ASUS Sabertooth x58 motherboard... this case pretty much kills my hopes for overclocking even a little).I've worked with many mid-tower cases, but because of the aforementioned wall, this one has even less room to place components in. It was nearly impossible to fit an XFX Radeon HD5830 into the case, made worse by the fact that the PCI-E power cables needed to be plugged into the back of the graphics card, not the side.You can also say goodbye to the notion of cable management if you intend to use the stock power supply unit. There is hardly any space at the back of the case, and even when I hid/slipped as many cables as I could behind the motherboard prior to mounting it, there is still a huge mess of cables which restricts airflow and jacks up the overall temperature within the case.If only they made the interior walls a mesh or something, this case would have been better. At the moment though, it's a tomb, and I would not build anything in such a case ever again, despite its exterior aesthetics.