today we're going to be having a look at a product from antec now the sonata line
has been around since pretty much the dawn of time as far as i can tell but it
has received some significant updates
since the original antec sonata this is the sonata four
is it is it is like its predecessors a quiet mid tower case elegantly silent
they've added SSD hard drive compatibility this is a quiet computing
product from antec which is in line with the original concept for the sonata and
is in my opinion what makes the sonata line
so successful over the long period of
time that it has existed so we're going to start opening up the box but we're
also going to have a look at what antec has to say for themselves in terms of
spec so it can it has a quiet 620 watt
continuous power psu so that is higher than any previous sonata line
although the sonata other than the sonata elite or sonata proto rather the
sonata line all comes with a power supply but 620 watts is very generous
considering that it is so because the sorry about the battery there guys so
because the sonata's always been kind of a value bang for the buck line of
products that's very generous it has 80 plus certification now in terms of drive
bays we've got seven drive bays three five and a quarter inch and four three
and a half inch seven expansion slots which is atx standard one rear 120
millimeter tri-cool three-speed fan and we have front mounted usb 3.0 which is
pretty cool to see on a very mainstream case like the
sonata series so let's uh we got some foam here so you can see and text using
a very robust closed cell phone you don't want your sonata4 to be damaged at
any point shipping okay well that was very very close
because i probably should have dumped it out with the foam rather than without it
there's what's left in the box in case you guys are wondering
now let's see what the sonata 4 looks like in person i
did not have a chance to visit antec at the ces 2011 show so i
actually have not seen this case in person yet and it's upside down so that
is something i'm going to have to remedy okay so here we are with the traditional
oh did i catch you there okay here we are with the traditional piano black
finish now the last time i used a sonata
was actually a sonata ii so i'm going to
be telling you guys what improvements i see based on that ancient case so we've got
thumb screws on both sides which means that unlike the older older sonata we
can actually remove both side panels
there we are so that allows for better cable management as well as better
accessibility to things like hard drives or
whatever basically cable management more than anything else let's see how
fingerprint resistant this finish is so unlike older sonata style cases you can
see the fingerprints do leave a mark but it's not quite as ugly as some of the
previous ones this is actually quite fingerprint resistant considering
everything and let's see how easily they wipe off once you've got something
smeared on there oh that's nice actually that's really nice okay
so here we've got some ventilation on the side for your drives
and then uh cameraman wants to see the inside so that's how it's mounted just
using little plastic clips
so side panels off so we're looking at the back side you can see there's not
much room for cable management behind the motherboard tray although because
there's no window you don't have to worry too too much about the overall
appearance of the cables just make sure that you're optimizing them for good
airflow so let's have a look at the front of the case
and here you can see in traditional sonata style oh okay oh yeah there we go
it's not locked but it does lock which as as per the old sonata cases as well
you can lock the front here and so that's what gives you access to the
power switch as well as the reset switch i remember the old sonatas the door only
used to open about this much and people would frequently break them off by
accident in fact i broke one off myself at one point so now antec has
implemented this 270 degree door opening
hinge so that you're a lot less likely to accidentally push it too far and
break it off so there you go here's our three five and a quarter inch base and
here is all of our front port access so we've got two usb 2.0 usb 3.0 power hard
drive led microphone as well as headphones
all right moving around to the other side
and there is the inside of the sonata4
so it has a fairly standard layout although there are going to be some
tweaks oh this is interesting so
the box oh okay the box actually has to be
removed via a screw
so i don't have a screwdriver on me at
just this moment so we're gonna have to make do here but the first thing i see
when i get inside the case is the front usb 3.0 so the front usb 3.0 actually
runs via a wire comes out the back of the case and uses a usb port to plug
into the back of the i o shield now i suspect at some point andtech will
update this product to use an internal header now that that spec has finally
been finalized but right now this is unfortunately the most elegant way to do
front usb 3.0 now here's all of our front panel ports including our front
usb 2.0 our power switch reset switch
power led hard drive led as well as high
definition audio and ac 97 audio the
included power supply has a wide variety of connectors this is a neo eco 620 watt
so it's 80 plus you can actually see the full specs there but it is a single 12
volt rail power supply which means that no matter what kind of components you're
using as long as it has enough power to
supply to those components you will not accidentally you know trip any over
current protection or anything like that so we've got 124 pin power connector
we've got one four plus four pin power connector as well as uh no yeah that's
four plus four pin power connector we've got dual pci express connectors and you
can see these cables are fairly short but since they are designed to work
inside the sonata four which is a fairly small chassis that's not a problem at
all so we have two PCIe one is a six plus two and one is a six pin so you can
support any of the highest end graphics cards within this case although be
careful with ventilation you're probably going to want to add another fan let's
say for example on the hard drive cage or position something on
let me see if i can see if they actually have any additional fan mounts it looks
like this fan can be mounted on here
but i don't see where any extra ventilation is going to oh that's right the extra ventilation is going to come
from the back in the hard drive cage as on the on the back side panel okay so
we've got six SATA connectors and then we also have
one two three molex six molex connectors so that's our power
supply connectors here is our tri-cool fan so we've got our switch is actually
integrated into the back of the case and it's powered by a molex connector so
i'll go ahead and show you guys that switch and while we're back here i'll show you the entire back panel so it
comes with a dummy io shield there's your seven expansion slots here's a
little bit of extra ventilation room and other than that there's not really much
of note on the back of the case now hard
drive mounting has been altered a fair bit on the sonata 4 so you can see these
hard drive cages can actually fit drives on silicone grommets
here we're going to remove the whole assembly here
to show you guys how this works so you can actually mount the drives on
silicone grommets and you can do up to four drives sideways so that that is a
fairly unique way of mounting the drives this is all with thumb screws so you
don't actually have to use a screwdriver to mount your hard drive which is kind
of neat as well and let me see what we've got in terms
of accessories in our accessory box here
okay so we have a power cord which stands to reason as this case does have
an included power supply we have some zip ties as well as all of the necessary
screws we're going to need we have a key for the front case
and an antec case badge and last but not least oh we've actually
got a drive bay adapter so this is a five and a quarter inch to three and a
half inch external drive bay adapter just in case you have a media card
reader or you know heaven forbid i suppose a
floppy drive or anything else that you might need to plug into a three and a
half inch external drive so that's pretty much all i have to say at this
time about the sonata4 thank you for checking out my unboxing and don't
forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips for more reviews unboxings and other
computer videos
i found the SSD mount or rather cameraman found it it's right here so
this is not for a fan this is for mounting a two and a half inch SSD drive
so you would put it right on there so there actually isn't any additional uh
forced air intake so you're going to be relying on your 120 millimeter exhaust
for all of your well exhaust so i wouldn't really recommend a super high
powered GPU like a gtx 580 but anything
like a gtx 560 or below should be just
fine in a case like this which is designed more for a mainstream gamer or
a mainstream consumer