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In English
SuomeksiInstallation continued
Here one can see the place for an optional fan (three of the four screw holes are visible). The fan has to suck air through two very narrow gaps between the hard disks, which most likely will cause even more unwanted noise. Antec should really rethink the HDD-cooling before the next model.
The distance between the card slots and the HDD-cage is 27 cm, which isn't quite enough for the newest and longer graphic cards out there. When the optional fan is mounted the space gets even shorter.
Had there not been wrong screws the installation would have been very straight forward. I still don't like the support bar under the PSU as it makes installing the motherboard and managing the cables harder, but other than that there are no things in the design I'd change. All in all the internal layout is very good.
When routing the cables in Sonata 3 it's worth remembering the PSU sucks air from the front and not from underneath. So it's a good idea to bundle the excess cables somewhere else but right in front of the PSU. Like into an empty 5,25" bay.
Noise
As mentioned earlier, the only fan in the case is a 120 mm Antec Tri-cool. Even Sonatas try to be quiet cases, it's hard to tell it, because no dampening materials are used like in the P-series. The only real effort to make the case more quiet is the usage of silicon-pads on the HDD-sledges. That's a good start, but I'd like to see a bit more before calling a case exceptionally quiet.
The 80 mm fan in the PSU is far from inaudible. It's not noisy, but I've heard many PSUs that are quieter than the EA-500. At the lowest setting the case fan is, again while being easily hearable, pretty quiet. At the medium speed the fan starts to get noisy and hides the noise created by the rest of the fans both sidepanel open and close. At full speed the airflow the fan creates is pretty immense, but so is the noise. I really don't understand who could listen to the fan at max-setting in normal use. With headphones on at LAN-party it might not disturb, but other than that it's just too much. Closing the side panel makes the situation even worse as the case seems to amplify the noise and make the sound even more annoying.
Conclusion
Even though the third coming of Sonata doesn't provide any significant new features, it's still a decent case. The outlooks have become even more stylish than before and everything has a quality touch to it. The only problems with the installation of the case were the wrong screws and the support bar. The S-ATA connectors can also be problematic, but they can still be used, so it's not too significant problem. The power supply does its job, but by no means stands out. It's a basic 500 watt unit with no fancy outlooks or other features. The fan could be quieter, but other than that the PSU did well. The case fan didn't do as well, for users looking for silence the low-setting was noise-wise the only real option. |
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