Antec Three Hundred: The Ultimate Budget Case?

[tool_462]

Discussion thread for this review:

http://www.xcpus.com/forums/case-psu...dget-case.html

[Clue69Less]

Good work! Any chance of adding a couple of cable management photos after the fact? How is the fit and finish, like screw alignment, I/O panel alignment? Those have been problems for Antec from time to time.

[Afrodisiac]

very nice!
nice review, thoroughly written!
great work!

[anticupidon]

*applause*
good work Tool!
plain and simple ...i like this rewiew...i might learned today something...

[Afrodisiac]

oh tool himself wrote it?

oh then terrible review, not enough details, bad quality pics, bad choice of components and roughly written overall... not worthy of the grim stamp of approval

[baligavinod]

good job tool

nice case too!

[Dean]

Good job, tool.

[Farhang]

My man! Awesome work!

[flasher702]

Certainly seems like a very nice case! I dunno if $50 w/o PSU is very "budgety" though. Trying to remember how much I payed for my last antec "budget" case back in the day.

Good review, ty.

[1Tanker]

Very nice review Tool (good pics too). That looks case like a bargoooon.

I like that:

1. Thumbscrews for everywhere(hopefully other case mfgr's will adopt this)
2. 140mm blowhole w/speed controller.
3. Hinged front panel (great feature)
4. Front-panel and power/reset location

I don't like:

1. Small reset buttons.
2. I don't like that the 140mm fan grill is "raised"..it looks out of place.. and they did a similar thing with the 1200. There's enough space inside that they could have mounted it flush with the top...even if they had to lower the mobo tray/IO slots a 1/4 inch.

Like you, i appreciate the little things..that why i'm impressed with the CM690. Unlike most people, some of the niggling problems related to budget cases don't bother me... such as flimsy side-panels/build(once it's built.. who cares) and sharp edges(i take my time, and am careful... and yes i have cut myself on these before ). I ordered the Coolermaster Elite RC-330 ($40) for the machine i'm building for my daughter..looks like a cheaper version of the 690.. we'll see.

I like how the big-name case-builders/companies(CM, Antec, ASUS, Gigabyte, etc.) are building some cheap-@ss cases that are not cheaply built, yet are in the price-range of super-el cheapo cases(Ultra, Compucase,nGear, Startech, etc.) that are $hitty.

BTW....11/10... you a Spinal-Tap fan?

[Simul4ti0n]

Very nice write-up. Looks like it will be my future budget case as well. My Lian Li is still around doing me great though. One thing I see with the Antec's that I don't like is the 3.5" bays, they're all the standard direction and have to remove both sides of the case to change the config of the drives. My Lian Li has an easy slide out tray that houses 3 HDD's that I absolutely love. Makes life easy. But then again, this is a $50 case where as the LL was over $200.

[Dean]

Certainly seems like a very nice case! I dunno if $50 w/o PSU is very "budgety" though. Trying to remember how much I payed for my last antec "budget" case back in the day.

Good review, ty.

$50 w/o PSU is 100% "budget case" material, man.

-Dean

[mpilchfamily]

Looks like a nice little case. Could be a good and flexible case for modding. I like the easy access to the rear fan.

[suprnova74]

Bottom. Here we see a nice sturdy bottom and soft rubber feet. They seem to be glued on (as opposed to screws) but are attached very well and I do not foresee an issue with them coming off at any point.

The one thing I hate about glued on rubber feet is it's tendency to stick to whatever surface it's sitting on rather than the device with which it's supposed to be glued.

I have 2 coffee pots, a blender, and 2 computer cases with those glued on rubber feet that no longer have all 4 attached due to this quirk.

But for $50, maybe I'll just break out the two-part epoxy and make SURE they don't go anywhere

You mentioned that noise isn't that much of a problem with the hardware chosen. Any chance you can throw in two or three hard drives and a board with a high-speed chipset cooler (like my DFI lanparty NF4 SLI-DR Expert board with the obscenely fast rpm chipset fan). I swear i've lost a few socks into the intake when I get my feet too close to that thing...

I'd be interested to hear (or not to hear ) how the noise suppression is with multi-drives and high RPM chipset fans. Given it's $50, I can't imagine it'd be extensive, but can't hurt to find out

[DaSickNinja]

A very very nice case Tool. Great review!

[tool_462]

The one thing I hate about glued on rubber feet is it's tendency to stick to whatever surface it's sitting on rather than the device with which it's supposed to be glued.

I have 2 coffee pots, a blender, and 2 computer cases with those glued on rubber feet that no longer have all 4 attached due to this quirk.

But for $50, maybe I'll just break out the two-part epoxy and make SURE they don't go anywhere

You mentioned that noise isn't that much of a problem with the hardware chosen. Any chance you can throw in two or three hard drives and a board with a high-speed chipset cooler (like my DFI lanparty NF4 SLI-DR Expert board with the obscenely fast rpm chipset fan). I swear i've lost a few socks into the intake when I get my feet too close to that thing...

I'd be interested to hear (or not to hear ) how the noise suppression is with multi-drives and high RPM chipset fans. Given it's $50, I can't imagine it'd be extensive, but can't hurt to find out

I was actually going to address this rubber feet issue but I seemed to have forgotten to add it in the final copy. The rubber isn't sticky rubber, its more like a cloth mousepad base, grippy but when asked to, it will slide.


As an additional piece of info, the board kinda sucks for OCing (as expected) with integrated graphics enabled. Gets a bit better with a PCI video card but not a bunch.

Currently the E1200 is stable at 2.4Ghz and is running passively on an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro with the fans on "Medium" and it full loads just short of 30C. That is as read by CoreTemp.

[randomizer]

Now why didn't they make the top fan grill on the twelve hundred flush (or close enough) with the surface like that? Very nice. This reminds me, I still haven't finished my 9600GT review

[tool_462]

This reminds me, I still haven't finished my 9600GT review

Don't worry, I had the case for over 18 hours before the review was published.

[randomizer]

I've already posted half of my review though, it's just missing most of the benchies because I haven't got around to running them. So damn time consuming.

[RKH404]

whats the voltage on the e1200 to get it to 2.4ghz and how long will it last at that V? Im asking because im getting that instead of the e2200 for this secondary computer.