| Article Index |
|---|
| Antec Sonata Plus 550 Case Review |
| Page 2 - Design and Features |
| Page 3 - More Features |
| Page 4 - The Power Supply |
| Page 5 - Conclusion |
| All Pages |
Design and Features:
The Antec Sonata Plus 550 is only a Mid-Tower case but it still packs a lot of features inside. The motherboard area will take any standard size ATX or MicroATX board (up to 12” x 9.6”) without a worry. Any expansion cards are held in place by standard screws rather the clip arrangements found on many other cases, so it’s by no means a tool-free design when it comes to swapping bits and pieces, but I prefer my expansion cards held down my screws rather than plastic clips anyway, far more secure. All of the drives, both 5.25” and 3.5” are also held in with screws – well kind of, more on that later.
A maximum of 8 drives can be installed in the Sonata Plus, 4 x 3.5” drives internally, 3 x 5.25” drives, and one more space which is a 5.25” drive slot, that comes standard with a 5.25” to 3.5” convertor bracket for installing a floppy drive. If you don’t need a floppy drive (few do) this space can be used for a fourth 5.25” drive (or even another hard drive).
All the 5.25” drives are installed on drive slides which screw into the side of the drives, there are 3 sets of drives slides provided and attached to the base of the case, with the 4th set already installed on the 5.25” to 3.5” convertor bracket.
For the hard drives there are two methods of installation available. The first is by screwing them into removable drive trays, which contain anti-noise grommets for the screws to go through, this method will allow you to install 4 x 3.5” hard drives into the Sonata.
The second method is rather unusual, the drives are installed by squeezing them through elastic fabric straps and having the drives suspended in mid-air. With this method the drives are not touching the case at all and as such there is no way for them to transfer or cause any vibration noise through to the rest of the case. This is quite an innovative idea but the drives are barely held in there and if you were to transport the case you could guarantee they’d come loose and bounce around inside, Antec even warn you not to transport the case with drives installed in this manner.
To get access to the drive bays you need to unclip and swing open the front panel (which can then be easily popped off its hinges and removed completely) then remove two thumbscrews and open another metal door to gain access. Doing it this way and having the drives come out the front of the case is a great idea, because often when you try to remove hard drives from inside a fully assembled case, there are all sorts of cables and expansion cards in your path, this way you can easily pull the drives out the front with nothing getting in your way.
Also on this second metal door, there are two mounting holes for some 9cm fans if you require extra cooling, which include removable and washable dust filters to keep everything nice and clean inside. As standard there are no fans installed in these mounting holes, most likely to keep noise to a minimum.
The standard cooling system of the Sonata Plus 550 consists of a single 12cm fan at the rear of the case. This is a standard Antec Tri-Cool case fan and as such has a 3-way speed switch for low-medium-high fan speeds, on low and medium it pretty much can’t be heard at all. Other cooling fans can be added into the 9cm mounting holes down in front of the hard drive bay, but as mentioned before there’s none included there as standard to help keep the noise down.
Still not recomended for transport tho, but quite secure afterwards.