Skeleton Open Air Case from Antec

Author: Toni 'HaoKi' Siik Published: 30.10.2008 Manufacturer: Antec Product Group: Computer Case In English Suomeksi

The Design continued

Here we can see the lower compartment a little bit better. When looking at the chassis from the front, the optical drive bays are on the left side and the harddisk bays on the right. Antec has chosen to equip the bays with a quick release feature. The harddisks and optical drives can be installed by just screwing in one screw that will lock the drive onto its rails. If the user thinks that this way of mounting drives is not secure enough, there are additional holes so that the drives can be attached with the ordinary mounting holes to the chassis.

Here we get a closer look at the front of the case. The front has all the necessary buttons and ports that we have gotten used to seeing in cases. It has both the power button and the reset button, two USB, one Firewire, one eSATA ports. In addition they have included two audio-jacks to the front, one for the headphones and another for the microphone. Nothing that far out of the ordinary with the ports and switches here.

Here we get to see why the Skeleton chassis is targeted towards the enthusiast crowd. The whole tray slides out with all of the components. You will have to remove the card-support bracket from the frame to do this though. Anyways the fact that the tray moves this far outside, we can change components on the motherboard with relative ease. The tray is locked in its place with two large thumbscrews that will keep it nice and secure.

Its too bad that we have to slide the tray out of the frame. This way the user has to move the chassis first forward so that the tray will be able to move out of the the frame. I think that it would've been a better approach if the tray would stay in its place and the frame moved forward off the tray. This way the user wouldn't have to move or remove any wires from the motherboard and power supply to "open" the chassis.

Here we can see the controls for the fan that is located on top. One switch is used to change the speed of the fan, a total of three settings are available as with most Antec fans. The other button is used to change the color setting of the fan. There are enough settings to please everyone, including turning the LEDs completely off. It is however annoying that the fan doesn't remember what setting was used last time the computer was wrong, so you have to set it back to your favourite theme everytime the power is turned off.

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