Antec Sonata - Help with 5.25 devices?

[gramboh]

Hi there, I'm setting up my new machine using an Antec Sonata. Mainboard is already in and I am now trying to get my CDRW drive in. It appears you have to put 5.25 devices in from "inside the case" and slide them forward in the drive bay. Unfortunetly this is nearly impossible because of the stupid steel bar they have welded from the back of the case to the front. I tried to pop the front panel off to see if I could back the drive in but I can only seem to find the clips to remove the front case panel on the side of the case with the removable panel, are there 3 more clips hidden behind the mainboard tray that you have to get at to remove the other panel? Is there an easier way to install these devices besides doing it before the mainboard is in? This is a huge pain.

Thanks for any help..

 

[gramboh]

Nevermind, I'm an idiot and had the rails on the wrong set of screw holes on the CDRW. oops

 

Dont feel bad, I made the same mistake.

 

[gramboh]

The worst part was I tugged out all the power cables/mainbaord power harness that were tucked away neatly thinking it would create enough room to put the drive in through the PC. Oh well, it's up and running now, love the Sonata, except now I can hear how awful the old broken 40mm rattling fan on my Geforce2 GTS is!

 

[JZilla]

Haha, I also had trouble finding the right holes on the cdrw. My main trouble now is my heatsink fan, which is a 60mm.

 

[paperfist]

Lol you don't want to know how long it took me to figure out how to mount the harddrives in that case

 

[PLaYaHaTeD]

Im planning on getting the antec sonata. How do you guys feel about the case? I was going to get a lian li aluminum, but it seems you get more for your money with the Sonata. If you could do it again would you get all aluminum or stick with "piano black"

 

[gramboh]

So far I'm loving it, first "good" case I've had (rest have been cheap generic ones). The Piano black is a nice clean looking finish, no cash windows or anything, just a clean look which is what I want. There are two blue LEDs, one on each side of the front bezel, I think they look nice since they are not too overstated. I think there is adaquate room inside the PC, they have areas for you to tuck away power/HDD/FDD cables so it's fairly easy to have a clean interior. I haven't mounted my other 120mm fan yet so that may cramp things up a bit. Once you figure it out (a bit weird that the manual doesn't include any diagrams) how to mount hard drives and 5.25 devices, it is extremely easy, but figuring it out is a bit confusing (for some of us anyway heh). It is much more quiet than my last case, but not silent, this may be because I have the 92mm Panaflo L1A fan on my heatsink running at full speed. The powersupply does a nice job of controlling the power supply and case fan according to temperature, usually they are around 1300rpm so far. As I said, the loudest thing I notice now is the stupid rattling 40mm fan on my 2+ year old Geforce 2 GTS. The LianLi will have more room and somewhat more features, as well as being very light (although I've heard aluminum cases are louder). Personally, the Sonata was way cheaper and came with a good powersupply, and I like the look more (cleaner).

 

[JZilla]

I like mine very much and like gramboh this is almost my first quality case. It's not silent, but very quiet. I had trouble with the optical drive (not much trouble though). But the biggest problem was those nasty little pins, that connect the mobo with the front usb/sound. They where very hard to plug in. But all in all, I'm very satisfied.

 

Adding a 120mm intake fan had no effect on the temps with two systems I own built in Sonata cases. I would not bother adding a intake fan unless you need a fan to blow on your video card. You will also want to keep a lint free coth handy. These Sonatas are dust magnets.

 

[PLaYaHaTeD]

But as far as comparing the Sonata to an aluminum solution from Lian Li, what are the advantages and disadvantages? And does anyone have a personal preference?

 

[dartworth]

if you guys can...post some pics of your set up with that case. inside and out.



thanks

 

[JZilla]

Ars thread with pics.

You can also go to the Antec site, choose the Sonata, then under reviews there are links to reviews with pics.

 

[gramboh]

Hmm, the main reason I wanted to add the 120mm was because I have a WD Raptor which seems to get pretty hot to the touch, wanted to ensure it doesn't die quickly. Mounting a 120mm intake fan in this case seems nearly impossible though (with stuff already in the case). Getting at the 2 fan screw mounts that are close to the motherboard is so hard, I couldn't get my 120mm L1A in

 

[PLaYaHaTeD]

Originally posted by: gramboh
Hmm, the main reason I wanted to add the 120mm was because I have a WD Raptor

Oh you have the raptor? How do you like it? Can you see a noticeable speed increase? I might go with a larger SATA drive if the 10000 rpm and 5.2 seek time arent that noticeable....

 

[TXMatt]

Congrats on the Sonata gramboh. In my experience adding intake fans has done more to lower case temp than CPU temp. Since the intake fan on the Sonata blows over the Hard Drives it can help to cool them as well.

In reguards to your noisy 40mm fan; I removed the 40mm fans on both my video card and north bridge. I use a Zalman FB-123 bracket (around $4 by itself, but you can usually only find it with a 92mm fan for $9) to blow air on my video card and North bridge. I put a 12cm fan on there, and it pushes air over the video card, north bridge, and system ram. No more 40mm noise!

Matt

 

[manly]

I'm still assembling my new Sonata-based rig, so I'll have to reserve final judgment. So far so good, but the piano black finish tracks dust way too easily. Not to mention it'll be a major challenge to not scratch it up. I was a bit surprised it doesn't have the trademark Antec swing-out feet, just rubber pads.

I do have a question: how do you guys organize the mess of cables inside? Any general pointers, guides, or a pic of the "right way"? It's nice they included a big cable tie, but it's still pretty hairy inside and I've yet to install all my components.

 

[gramboh]

The Raptor is great, after defragging after install it runs very quickly. I don't have anything to benchmark it with except the old free HDTach from 1999 which gives 78meg read max, 18meg read min, 45meg read average and 8.3ms (according to the article on storagereview.com this is normal, you subtract 3ms for some reason I don't understand). Huge performance increase over my 40gig Maxtor 7200rpm ATA133 Diamondmax -- games load very quickly, OS boots super fast etc, no more "hard drive grinding".

The Sonata has a little slot thing behind the 3 1/2 inch external drive bay cage where I tucked the motherboard power connecter wire into (the connection on the mainboard happens to be right beside it, good design). I tucked all unused molex power cables up behind the 5 1/4 inch drive cage and the currently unused fan only connecter (still having an impossible time getting an L1A in the front mount) above the power supply. I have an IDE cable running in through the drive cage for the time being since threading it properly behind the cage is going to require a bit of work.

Any tips on how to mount the 120mm in the front? It seems to be impossible to get at the fan mounts that are near the motherboard, there is no room to move your hand around in there. BTW I am trying to put in 2 x 120mm Panaflos which don't fit with the factory fan isolaters so I will be using screws until I order some larger isolators, or hopefully find something that works at a hardware store.

 

I used foam ear protectors to mount the 120 L1a panflos since the Sonata rubber fan isolators dont acomodate fans 38mm in width. Just roll them with your fingers to compress them, mount fan and let them expand. The fan is just as secure as using the Sonata isolators.