Antec Sonata Issues HELP!!

[Mattyboy90]

Hopefully someone here will know what is going on with my new Sonata case. I am new to the fourms here. Anyway, here goes. I just put together a system yesterday using this sonata case. I have the following installed:

Asus P4P800-Deluxe Mobo
Intel P4 3.0CGHz CPU
1 GB TWINX-LL Corsair P3200 Memory
2 SATA WD 120GB HD
1 ATA Maxtor 30GB HD
ATI Radeon 9600 AIW PRO
Plextor 8X DVD+/- Burner

At first I was able to turn it on fine and all the fans were spinning properly. Power supply speed was around 1400RPM, and CPU fan around 4000RPM. It was not reporting a speed for the case fan (said N/A) in the BIOS. Don't know why I am getting in the low 50C range for CPU temp either. The large 120MM case fan on the back seemed to be spinning very slow (can hardly feel any air when you put your hand near it). I left the computer on overnight because I was using partition magic to format the hard drives and when I got up the case fan had completely stopped. I opened the case up and it was pretty hot inside. The HD were hot to the touch. I also tried running with the case off before I went to sleep and it was still hot. I know it is pretty cramped in there with all the wires coming from the power supply and don't know if the case is overloaded with the 3 HD's but I disconnected, but the fan should not stop completely. I also tried both the fan only and the regular connectors and both did the same thing. The fan will not come on at all now when I boot up the computer. I am also now getting a long series of beeps when I boot up and it will not boot into windows at all. I might have did something wrong during the partitioning of the HD. Does anyone know how to install XP using a SATA RAID 0 setup? XP would not detect the SATA HD's unless they were set in a NON-RAID configuration. This is my first time using SATA in RAID so any installation help will be much appreciated.

 

[Mattyboy90]

I think I found out the XP issue. Usually this happens after you think so hard on what you did wrong and then read the back of your manual again. I forgot to load the RAID drivers when loading XP (hitting F6) during setup. I think that will solve the XP issue, but the case issue remains. Any feedback on that would be great!!

 

[lazybum131]

Don't worry about fan speed reading for the case fan, it doesn't have an rpm sensor wire to plug into the motherboard since it uses the 4-pin molex.
However, the case fan not spinning at all is an issue for sure! Using the regular connectors, it shouldn't have any problems spinning, in fact you should easily be able to tell it's running since it would be pretty loud at 12volts. I think you may have a defective fan. Contact Antec support to see about replacing the fan.

I don't have much experience with P4's, but if you're using the stock heatsink, I don't think 50C is a bad temp for a 3.0C processor.

 

[cubanx]

Do not use the "Fan Only" connectors if you need case Air flow. These connectors drop the voltage down to 6 or 7 volts to keep the noise down but slow the fan. I just spent today re-building my set-up in this case. Are you using two 120mm fans or just the one that came with it?

My CPU temp is 41C Idle with my Barton 2500+ overclocked to 3200+.

What's in my Sonata:
AMD Barton 2500+ O/C'ed to 3200+ / Artic Silver 5 with AX-7 Heatsink
1GB PC3500 CAS 2 Dual Channel
Abit NF7-S with Stock Northbridge fan replaced with a Zalman ZM-NB47J Fanless Heatsink
ATI 9800 Pro with Stock fan replaced with a Zalman ZM80C-HP Heatpipe VGA Cooler
80GB Seagate 7200 EIDE
Toshiba DVD-Rom
2 Papst 120mm Case fans (Removed the Stock Antec)
All Floppy and IDE cables are Round Type

I had bought a 80mm to 120mm Fan adapter to put a Papst 120mm fan on the CPU to keep noise down but the Sonata case is too small and the Power Supply gets in the way so I have to look for a low noise 80mm CPU fan alternate but other then that no other problems with the case..

 

[Mattyboy90]

Thanks for the help. I plugged in another fan and it worked fine. Looks like I had a bad case fan. Faxed Antec for replacement. Also CPU temp stabilized at around 35-40C so everything is A Ok. Thanks again.

 

[DancingBear]

Round Cables!

That is the best piece of advice that I could give any potential Sonata owner. The case has horrible airflow normally, so once you add IDE cables and quieter, slower fans, temps just shoot up. Once I switched to round cables I lost more than 10c of case temp.

 

[Sid59]

the round cables aren't that much of a factor in the sonata. 2 round cables took a crap on me and had to use regular flat cables. there hasn't been an increase in temps at all in my sonata.

 

[seepy83]

i think if you can keep your flat IDE cables out of the way, you wont have any problems. if you've got any hard drive using IDE, that cable goes right underneath the hard drive bay, so it's completely out of the way of air flow. and you should be able to move your other ide cable that goes up to any cd drives so it's not in the way either. i've actually found that this is a pretty good case for cable management...

 

[DancingBear]

Originally posted by: Sid59
the round cables aren't that much of a factor in the sonata. 2 round cables took a crap on me and had to use regular flat cables. there hasn't been an increase in temps at all in my sonata.

I agree that it wouldn't make a big difference if you are running fans at full speed with one HDD. If you are trying to silence the box and use undervolted slow running fans, then the airflow is not good to start with. Mattyboy90 has 3 HDD and a 9600 Pro AIW. Those 3 HDD block the air intake by themselves let alone all the ribbon cables associated with 4 IDE devices. Round cables should defibitely help his airflow.

 

[WobbleWobble]

Originally posted by: seepy83
i think if you can keep your flat IDE cables out of the way, you wont have any problems. if you've got any hard drive using IDE, that cable goes right underneath the hard drive bay, so it's completely out of the way of air flow. and you should be able to move your other ide cable that goes up to any cd drives so it's not in the way either. i've actually found that this is a pretty good case for cable management...

Agreed. I use flat cables on the Sonata and don't think it impedes airflow at all.

 

[Sid59]

Originally posted by: DancingBear

Originally posted by: Sid59
the round cables aren't that much of a factor in the sonata. 2 round cables took a crap on me and had to use regular flat cables. there hasn't been an increase in temps at all in my sonata.

I agree that it wouldn't make a big difference if you are running fans at full speed with one HDD. If you are trying to silence the box and use undervolted slow running fans, then the airflow is not good to start with. Mattyboy90 has 3 HDD and a 9600 Pro AIW. Those 3 HDD block the air intake by themselves let alone all the ribbon cables associated with 4 IDE devices. Round cables should defibitely help his airflow.

i have 4 hdds in my computer and the 9700 pro. which is quite warm in there. the hdd cage of the sonata is rotated 90 degrees, using round or flat cable will make little difference because of the orientation of the hdd cage.

 

[DancingBear]

Originally posted by: Sid59

Originally posted by: DancingBear

Originally posted by: Sid59 the round cables aren't that much of a factor in the sonata. 2 round cables took a crap on me and had to use regular flat cables. there hasn't been an increase in temps at all in my sonata.

I agree that it wouldn't make a big difference if you are running fans at full speed with one HDD. If you are trying to silence the box and use undervolted slow running fans, then the airflow is not good to start with. Mattyboy90 has 3 HDD and a 9600 Pro AIW. Those 3 HDD block the air intake by themselves let alone all the ribbon cables associated with 4 IDE devices. Round cables should defibitely help his airflow.

i have 4 hdds in my computer and the 9700 pro. which is quite warm in there. the hdd cage of the sonata is rotated 90 degrees, using round or flat cable will make little difference because of the orientation of the hdd cage.

How do you run your cables? The way I had mine jammed up the space between the harddrives.

 

[Sid59]

Originally posted by: DancingBear

Originally posted by: Sid59

Originally posted by: DancingBear

Originally posted by: Sid59 the round cables aren't that much of a factor in the sonata. 2 round cables took a crap on me and had to use regular flat cables. there hasn't been an increase in temps at all in my sonata.

I agree that it wouldn't make a big difference if you are running fans at full speed with one HDD. If you are trying to silence the box and use undervolted slow running fans, then the airflow is not good to start with. Mattyboy90 has 3 HDD and a 9600 Pro AIW. Those 3 HDD block the air intake by themselves let alone all the ribbon cables associated with 4 IDE devices. Round cables should defibitely help his airflow.

i have 4 hdds in my computer and the 9700 pro. which is quite warm in there. the hdd cage of the sonata is rotated 90 degrees, using round or flat cable will make little difference because of the orientation of the hdd cage.

How do you run your cables? The way I had mine jammed up the space between the harddrives.

on the side door side. i had them going through the back of the case but i was having problems with the mobo finding drives and was getting tired of putlling the drives and fixing them.

maybe tomorrow or after finals, ill post some pictures of what my case looks like on the inside.

 

[Sid59]

bump for pictures of my case

 

[DancingBear]

Originally posted by: Sid59
bump for pictures of my case

Thanks for the pics.

I now understand. Your case looks like mine before a changed cables. The diference is that you have the front fan installed to pull air in. Without it, I think that your results would have been similar to mine.