Antec Sonata - Anyone?

[Coherence]

Thoughts on this compact and "silent" case?

 

[Syborg1211]

The case is pretty nice. I like the rubber grommets on the hard drive trays, and I like the way they have most of it set up. But the airflow of the case is somewhat sacrificed to be quiet so you cannot really overclock much unless you add another 120mm fan which is not recommended by Antec. And adding the 120mm fan doesnt help too much since it does not mount in the very front of the case by on the inside of the hard drive bays.

 

[whovous]

I think the only reason to buy this case is if you are looking for a quieter machine. Looks are good but not great, as is the internal layout. I was not sure just what I wanted when I started to shop for a new case, but I knew the old one was too noisy.

Once I got the Sonata, I was able to figure out what the other noise sources were, and to quiet them down as well. A passive Zalman 17 on the GeForce3 Ti200 in place of a whiny little fan, and a big honking Zalman CNPS-7000-CU running at its slowest and nearly silent speed in place of the P4's stock HSF. CPU temps are very slightly lower at a pretty much inaudible noise level.

So, I am happy with my Sonata, but if you have concerns other than making the damn thing shut up, you may want to look further. As others have said elsewhere, this is not an overclockers case, at least not for serious overclockers.

 

[Zap]

I think the Sonata is a good start for a retail quiet system (meaning it's quiet without you having to mod it). I actually think the airflow should be pretty decent with the 120MM exhaust fan included. There's a lot of interest in this case over at forums.silentpcreview.com. Just FYI, those guys do like the Sonata and the Antec TruePower power supplies, but merely consider them adequately quiet - meaning they're quieter than pretty much all other reasonably priced easy to find retail offerings, but not quiet enough for those quiet computing maniacs over there.

 

[styrafoam]

I have mine set up with 2 WD hard drives and a ZM-HP80a on my GF4, and a low noise coolermaster on my CPU. It is dead silent when it is first booted but after running for a little while it ramps up the RPM on the ps fan. Nothing bad mind you, much more quiet than my last case. I am satisfied with it.

 

[Jombo]

i just put together the sonata box a few weeks ago and had it running for about a day or two before the cpu decided to take a poop, so i'm sitting on it for next week or two before the newegg rma comes back.

but while the box was running it was great, craziest thing was having the hd be the loudest thing in my box.

i like the case a lot, and it does come w/ a modded truepower 380, so it worked for me.