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it baffles me how i could have gone so long without ever unboxing an antec 300

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so here we are today it's not a new product by any stretch of the

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imagination but we have the antec 300 it

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is SSD hard drive compatible which it wasn't when it was first released this

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is a fairly old sku but still very popular and uh okay so they're calling

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it a versatile minitar you know like i even featured it in a uh

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in an airflow optimization guide a while back i just must have maybe i shot an

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unboxing and never actually uploaded it either way picture of the case on the

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side filtered front panel takes in air efficiently and prevents dust buildup

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that's good okay we've got our features and specs on the side here and let's

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just go ahead and start getting this open so the antec 300 if you go to any

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kind of a lan party there's a couple cases that you're to see just a ton of

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you're going to see a ton of 900s you're going to see a ton of 300s this is a

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very very common common case because it provides you

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gamer type features

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such as optimized airflow mesh fronts

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at a price point that is very very attractive

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all right so the first thing we find when we open up the box is antex characteristically

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excellent packaging here you go so you can see they're using

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a closed cell foam that is going to protect your case from any damage that

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could potentially occur in transit so you've got a good

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inch plus of foam on all sides of the chassis very very nice to see that we've

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got some documentation in here including a user's manual and yeah this should

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give you some idea how old the box design is despite its eminently portable

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frame the 300 has enough room for an NVIDIA 8800 series graphics card how

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impressive we're up to the gtx 500 series at this point so we're

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several generations away from uh

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when an NVIDIA 8800 series was uh a

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concern whether it would fit in your case or not

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uh it goes to show you that the development cycles for cases are not

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quite as fast as they are for graphics cards nor do they need to be if you have

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a well featured classic looking suitcase

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then you don't really need to redo it for quite some time

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all right here it is the 300 so you find first of

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all the mesh front you've got three five and a quarter inch bays and then you

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have dual 120 millimeter intakes in the

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front of the case so these are filtered intakes although i'm not actually sure how the

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filters come out for this particular one it does not come pre-loaded with fans

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there but at least it does give you the option of adding them so that you have

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airflow going directly over your graphics cards

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or graphics card i guess if you don't run two which most people don't

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from the front of the chassis nice thumb screws those nice wide thumb

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screws so it's easier to get a grip on them than the uh than the smaller head

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thumb screws we're gonna take the side panels off so the side panels use a

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pretty standard finish it's not quite that super matte finish but it's also

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not glossy so it's going to be fairly fingerprint resistant but not perfect

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i mean if you keep your case reasonably clean it's not really a concern on the

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side you can see we've got a punch out for a 120 millimeter fan so that's gonna

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blow directly over your graphics card so it's all about graphics card cooling the

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way i would probably set this case up for optimal cooling would be two 120

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millimeters as intakes in the front and then i would set this one right here

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up as an exhaust because most cards these days i mean it depends what you're

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using but if you have an NVIDIA reference card for example it's going to

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be drawing air in on this side and kicking it out on this side so you want

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to you want to help it rather than work against it so let's look at the inside

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of the case as you can see it's a fairly basic

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uh chassis in terms of its construction we've got one two three four five

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six five three and a half inch drive bays we have our SSD mount here at the

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bottom so you can see they've retrofitted it with that so you're just

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gonna screw these in from the bottom you can mount one SSD here and it can still

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support its full complement of three and a half inch drives even if you do that

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there are the mounts for your five and a quarter inch so there's no tool-less uh

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stuff going on in this chassis it's very basic i mean tool-less if you're only

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going to build the system once isn't that big of a deal it's only if you're

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doing frequent modding you're going to want to consider maybe getting a higher end chassis such as the 900 which uses

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thumb screws to mount the drives for example all right here we've got our

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motherboard tray which features a nice big cutout so no matter where your

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motherboard positions the CPU socket you shouldn't have any problems swapping out

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a CPU cooler even if uh

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you have a back plate on the back of it so you can just take that off and you don't have to take out the motherboard

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or anything like that here's power for our top 140 millimeter

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fan we've got all of our front leads for the front power switch front lights

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actually what do we have on the front of this case let's have a look so we have

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two front usb 2 ports we have a microphone port headphone port

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and a power switch oh okay there's a reset switch in there so it's hard to

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hit by accident that's a really uh thoughtful feature actually

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all right motherboard mount you've got room for your standard atx motherboards

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uh you're not going to get much longer you're not going to get much wider it's got your standard seven pci slots bottom

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mounted power supply this is one of the first value chassis that did offer the

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feature of the bottom mounted power supply remember ntec did pioneer that

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with the p180 at least on the mainstream i mean

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there's always a modder who's done it before someone else but

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they were the first ones who brought a mass production case to market with a

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bottom mounted power supply okay we've got a 120 millimeter fan in the back

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that comes pre-populated with a 120 millimeter fan this is one of their

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tri-cool fans so you can set it to low medium or high uh the one on top is

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actually not a tri-pool so that one runs at full

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speed regardless so the total fans that you can populate in this case are 140 up

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in the top 120 in the back and then two more 120s in the front as intakes

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all right in terms of accessories there's not a

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whole lot going on here this is our entire accessory box

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thumb screws other screws

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that's it so if you want you know fancy add-ons

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then look elsewhere i suppose

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cable management so we've got a little we've got little

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zip ties back here for managing cables on the side of the drive cage so this

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will allow you to hide your cables if you're using a non-modular power supply

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you can just bundle them all up here tie them down and that would probably be the

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best way to go about that so i think that's pretty much all i have to say

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about the 300 i don't think i ever showed a view from the back so that's

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what it looks like if you haven't seen one before don't forget to subscribe to

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