Antec LifeStyle SOLO (0761345-18500-4) ATX Mini-Tower Case
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- Platform: PC
- Cabinet Form Factor: Mini-Tower
- Motherboard Form Factor: ATX
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Excellent computer case for the price tag
Pros
Nice style, practical, suitable for silent computing, air filters
Cons
Case fan could be better quality, cover could be even more sound damped
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
I recommend this case if you consider building a silent computer with air cooling. It may be an excellent choice for many other needs as well.
This is a good quality steel case for ATX or mATX motherboard, without a power supply. With simple proven design and support for improved acoustics, this case is great value for the money.
There are several comprehensive reviews available in internet on this case. They are easy to find using Google and they contain a lot of useful information about the specifications, features and installation details. I recommend reading at least couple of them. I won't provide here a comprehensive review, but just some supplementary comments to other reviews, mainly on my own experiences on my special needs:
http://www.hardwarelogic.com/news/63/ARTICLE/1218/1/2006-06-27.html
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=937&pageID=2393
Looks
It looks quite classy. There is no gaming style appeal except perhaps the color of the power button and HDD leds; intense blue.
Even if you have put great effort to home decoration, this case won't spoil it.
The finishing is called "piano black" but in my opinion that only defines the color; glossy black. Compared to black finishing of a good acoustic piano, the case paint is thin and slightly furrowed, revealing the nature of steel material. It still looks very good, but not as good as a real piano surface.
Silent computer?
Just as the Antec documentation states, there is no way a case alone can make the computer silent but it can support silent design in many ways.
In this case, the silence of the computer is supported mainly by the overall sturdiness and by the possibility to sound isolate HDDs from the case. There is also a layer of sound proofing material attached to inside of the case to dampen the sounds from resonating in the cover, but I decided to add a thicker and more covering layer on top of that. I don't know if adding an extra layer was really needed or sensible but I just wanted to overdo the sound proofing. The possible downside of excessive sound isolation is that it likely decreases conduction of heat throught the case cover. It may even increase the noise if the thermally controlled fans then use higher RPM.
There is no extra support for water cooling but I guess it could be installed as well. Anyway, to my understanding it only helps in transferring heat from certain hot components (CPU, GPU, chipset, memory) and is not sensible if you don't first find a way to keep the PSU dead silent and to silently get rid of heat from other electronics in the case. I have fanless PSU and GPU and a CPU which doesn't produce much heat (Athlon 64, 45W TDP). With that HW, I was able to make my computer extremely quiet without using water cooling.
The case has a pre-installed Antec Tricool fan in rear end. It was supposed to be quiet but I found it way too noisy. I replaced the case fan with more silent Noctua NF-S12-1200. The only fan in addition to that is in the CPU cooler (Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro). With both fans moving air to same direction and being thermally controlled by the MOBO, they keep the computer cool with barely audible noise. Even in totally silent (my neighbourhood is super silent) room I can't hear it more than one meter away.
Preinstalled case fan has three position speed selector but it was too noisy even with lowest RPM. There are only two wires; no RPM signal from the motor.
The HDD mount with rubber grommets, combined with a silent Samsung HDD, is superior solution for quietness but it necessitates extra care when moving the computer. If moving it outside the room, I would recommend first detaching the HDD completely.
After all the acoustic tricks above, the noisiest component is the optical drive. By default it spins excessively fast and produces irritating sound. It should slow down after a while but that depends on the driver and possibly other related software. I resolved that issue by having my Linux to issue a command to slow down the optical drive whenever it detects a DVD. The command is: hdparm -E 2 /dev/cdrom
Building
At first I removed the case fan to ease PSU and MOBO installation, which I found a very good idea. The installation was thenafter quite straighforward; PSU, MOBO, drives, CPU, memory, cards, and finally connectors, in that order. Building is covered in detail in the other reviews but I'd like to add a hint about the optical drive rails: Think carefully which screw holes to use and you only need to attach them once!
I found this case spacious and I encountered no issues building to it. One reference claims that Nvidia 8800GTX wouldn't fit to this case. I don't know more about that but just wanted to include this warning it case it is meaningful to someone.
There are several comprehensive reviews available in internet on this case. They are easy to find using Google and they contain a lot of useful information about the specifications, features and installation details. I recommend reading at least couple of them. I won't provide here a comprehensive review, but just some supplementary comments to other reviews, mainly on my own experiences on my special needs:
http://www.hardwarelogic.com/news/63/ARTICLE/1218/1/2006-06-27.html
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=937&pageID=2393
Looks
It looks quite classy. There is no gaming style appeal except perhaps the color of the power button and HDD leds; intense blue.
Even if you have put great effort to home decoration, this case won't spoil it.
The finishing is called "piano black" but in my opinion that only defines the color; glossy black. Compared to black finishing of a good acoustic piano, the case paint is thin and slightly furrowed, revealing the nature of steel material. It still looks very good, but not as good as a real piano surface.
Silent computer?
Just as the Antec documentation states, there is no way a case alone can make the computer silent but it can support silent design in many ways.
In this case, the silence of the computer is supported mainly by the overall sturdiness and by the possibility to sound isolate HDDs from the case. There is also a layer of sound proofing material attached to inside of the case to dampen the sounds from resonating in the cover, but I decided to add a thicker and more covering layer on top of that. I don't know if adding an extra layer was really needed or sensible but I just wanted to overdo the sound proofing. The possible downside of excessive sound isolation is that it likely decreases conduction of heat throught the case cover. It may even increase the noise if the thermally controlled fans then use higher RPM.
There is no extra support for water cooling but I guess it could be installed as well. Anyway, to my understanding it only helps in transferring heat from certain hot components (CPU, GPU, chipset, memory) and is not sensible if you don't first find a way to keep the PSU dead silent and to silently get rid of heat from other electronics in the case. I have fanless PSU and GPU and a CPU which doesn't produce much heat (Athlon 64, 45W TDP). With that HW, I was able to make my computer extremely quiet without using water cooling.
The case has a pre-installed Antec Tricool fan in rear end. It was supposed to be quiet but I found it way too noisy. I replaced the case fan with more silent Noctua NF-S12-1200. The only fan in addition to that is in the CPU cooler (Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro). With both fans moving air to same direction and being thermally controlled by the MOBO, they keep the computer cool with barely audible noise. Even in totally silent (my neighbourhood is super silent) room I can't hear it more than one meter away.
Preinstalled case fan has three position speed selector but it was too noisy even with lowest RPM. There are only two wires; no RPM signal from the motor.
The HDD mount with rubber grommets, combined with a silent Samsung HDD, is superior solution for quietness but it necessitates extra care when moving the computer. If moving it outside the room, I would recommend first detaching the HDD completely.
After all the acoustic tricks above, the noisiest component is the optical drive. By default it spins excessively fast and produces irritating sound. It should slow down after a while but that depends on the driver and possibly other related software. I resolved that issue by having my Linux to issue a command to slow down the optical drive whenever it detects a DVD. The command is: hdparm -E 2 /dev/cdrom
Building
At first I removed the case fan to ease PSU and MOBO installation, which I found a very good idea. The installation was thenafter quite straighforward; PSU, MOBO, drives, CPU, memory, cards, and finally connectors, in that order. Building is covered in detail in the other reviews but I'd like to add a hint about the optical drive rails: Think carefully which screw holes to use and you only need to attach them once!
I found this case spacious and I encountered no issues building to it. One reference claims that Nvidia 8800GTX wouldn't fit to this case. I don't know more about that but just wanted to include this warning it case it is meaningful to someone.
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