welcome to an unboxing that I'm actually quite excited about this is the antech
25 no no just antech they're just celebrating their quarter Century of
quality and Innovation which I think is very fair to say with a little 25 after
their logo but this is the solo 2 which
sounds like an upgraded solo but what it
actually is is the quietest case they've ever proded produced it also has a lot
of features that we have yet to see from antech um and some features that have
become ante Staples so we've got internal USB 3 headers on this guy which
is a first for antech and then we've also got some previous Innovations where
they're basically taking everything they know about silent Computing cases and
they are putting it in here so this
sticker is really in my way but let's say a few things first okay so there's a
dual layer design so it's a 1 mm Steel /
polycarbonate top and side panel design what that does is it isolates heat and
deadens noise so we saw multi-layer panels introduced on the p180 so this is
an older Innovation we also have dual hard drive mounting options so you can
either use grommets or even a suspension to M Mount your hard drives we've seen
this in the past so that is not really a new thing either here we have uh an
anodized aluminum front panel which is something that is relatively new for
antech because they don't really do the aluminum front panels but it's in my
okay based on the pictures I've seen so far we're going to get the case open in a minute looks like it's going to look
awesome we've also got a matte black interior which they've started doing on
their higher end cases finally high-end IO so two front panel usb3 ports with
internal motherboard connector for unparalleled data transmission that
might be a little bit of an overstatement unparalleled data
transmission I mean there are things that are faster than usb3 but I see
where they are coming from and it's certainly better than having those usb3
connectors that are more of a of a pass through rather than using a proper
internal header which most of the new motherboards your p67 your z68
motherboards are going to support just fine in terms of packing material we've
got about an inch of foam on all sides of the case looks good and let's pull up
the case itself now based on some of the reviews that I've seen of this guy
supposedly it is even better than the Sonata series the quietest case ever
produced by antec so that is a very serious claim and let's have a look at
how they have achieved that so first of
all they've achieved it by confusing me about which direction it opens from
there we go this baby open oo that looks
nice that is actually a very very nice front panel finish so hold on let's
start with the parts that are less interesting like the
manual and that's pretty much it okay so we have a piano black powder coat finish
on the top so you can see on the top we actually have an exhaust vent here like
we see like we saw on the original p180 no shroud on it just a regular exhaust
vent the sides are also piano black a glossy finish here we are you can see
that there the whole case is using very soft I did want that there for now I can
move closer if it helps though very very soft rubber grommet so that should
actually deaden any vibration being passed from the case to the table or the
desk that it is positioned on I'm just going to run through the specs really quick with you here guys so elegant
appearance yeah we can see that dual hard drive mounting system using tray
mount with pre-installed silicone grommets or uh suspension mounts two
external 5 and a/4 this is something I really like to see fewer 5 and a/4 in
because most people are not installing a ton of 5 and a/4 in devices something
like you know your drive and then maybe a fan controller is about all you really
need so instead they've taken more of that internal space that's available to
them and they've allocated it instead of
to stuff that people are less likely to use here is the internal design so
there's your your plastic layer as well as your metal layer that plastic layer
is going to help to deaden sound okay so instead they've alligated it to longer
video cards so you can install a huge video card in this case with no
complications and then more options for mounting your 3 and 1/2 in drives very
very good idea right there next we've got the removable power supply support
beam so we'll have a look at that that in a minute front accessible flip down
Drive cages what's a front accessible flip down Drive cage guess we'll find
out give me a second I'm going to have to figure out how to open this there we
go I figured out how to open it so there's just a few little um few little
tabs here so you just bend those back you open up the whole thing and there is
the flip down front accessible hard
drive bay now you can also see you can install a 120 mil fan here and then for
additional internal Cooling and this is really neat because this looks like a
case that doesn't have much ventilation on the surface but for additional
cooling you can throw another fan here in the front which is going to directly
blow cool air onto your graphics card and when you look at this from the side
you can see there's actually significant ventilation space Not only on the right
hand side but also on the left hand side
of the front panel so those fans are not going to be starved for air but by
blocking the entire front of the case you're going to reduce the amount of
noise that gets transmitted directly to someone sitting in front of it so let's
have a look a closer look at the front so we I don't know how to get you guys a
good angle on this but this is a really neat finish so you it's not like very
coarse brushed lines it's very very very
fine fine brushed lines on the anodized aluminum which actually has a very cool
um a very sort of matte look until you get really really close and then you can
see the brush it's kind of a neat effect we have a hard drive LED here power
reset front audio ports USB 3 and front
USB 2 there's your stamped antech logo and that pretty much does it for the
front of the qu look at that more ventilation down there so because you're
held up by these feet you're going to be able to get a little bit more fresh air
to that bottom fan which as I mentioned before there is going to be blowing
directly over your graphics card so let's have a look at the internal layout
we've got all of our included screws some zip ties some good stuff like that
for building your PC back here we've also got ah here okay so you can either
install three drives using the trays or
you can use the suspension mounting system which is included with the
accessories here to install two drives now given that most people are not at
this time installing more than a couple of drives I mean especially if you're
building a new system you can buy you know 3 tbte hard drives these days
what's the incentive to install you know eight drives in your system so so here
we go oh no there's the suspension you know what let's go ahead I'm going to reopen this from the front here and I'll
show you guys the suspension system so I
didn't screw this all the way back in fortunately so that'll save us some time
so yeah if you're not installing a ton of drives you just pull these guys
out there's The Grommet so that's the one way of mounting these are compatible
with 2 and 1/2 in drives as well you can see the spacing there for your 2 and 1/2
in ssds or even hard drives and then
here is the suspension system so you run your drives through these and what that
does is it completely isolates any vibrations from the drive away from your
case I mean don't transport your system around like that that's more for
stationary systems in your office you know don't expect to ship it across the
country using the suspension but it's there as an option in case you want it
in terms of the rest of the internal layout we've got our front panel
connectors here including an internal
USB 3 header right there so that's going to plug directly into your motherboard
instead of routing around the back to the io Shield as well as your front USB
2 your front audio and then your front panel switches for your power your reset
all of that good stuff we have an enormous cutout for
CPU uh heat sink mounting option so if you have a back plate there is no way
with this case you are going to have to remove your motherboard in order to
install a CPU Cooler with a back plate you just take off your other side panel
and you screw the back plate in from the back no worries about that okay um you
know here give me a sec I'll be back with a big video card so here's a radon
6990 for scale to show you guys how much extra space there is in this case for
ginormous video cards so no worries as
far as that's concerned as long as you've got some external exhaust going you can draw fresh air in from the front
and you are good to go we've also got an included antech tripool fan you can see
the little tricool switch is built into the back here so we've got oh no that's
a a cool cool so it's got a high and a low setting on the back of the case and
it's also got built-in silicone grommet so check this out so you're actually
mounting it using grommets and then it
also has isolators see the orange isolators here on either side to keep it
away from the case whether you have it exhausting air or whether you turn it
around and you use a water cool like the water cooler like the ANC 620 or 920 you
turn that around draw in fresh air for to cool your CPU and it's going to still
be isolated from the case all right we have a power supply
support bar here which you can remove just by taking out a couple screws if
you do not need it and that's pretty much oh this is smart I didn't even
notice what this was for so what this is for is so you can take a power supply
with a 12 mil fan and you can mount it either way and that 120 mil fan is going
to take in fresh air so this is kind of like a bottom mounted power supply but
it's in the top that's very very cool so
what it means is your power supply takes fresh air here blows it out the back and
doesn't interfere with the cooling of your system at all very neat feature
seven PCI expansion slots so that's standard and then you've got your
toolless optical drive mounting uh rails
here and I think that pretty much covers everything I wanted to say about the
solo 2 from antech don't forget to subscribe to Linus techtips more
unboxings reviews and other computer videos