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welcome to an unboxing that I'm actually quite excited about this is the antech

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25 no no just antech they're just celebrating their quarter Century of

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quality and Innovation which I think is very fair to say with a little 25 after

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their logo but this is the solo 2 which

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sounds like an upgraded solo but what it

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actually is is the quietest case they've ever proded produced it also has a lot

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of features that we have yet to see from antech um and some features that have

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become ante Staples so we've got internal USB 3 headers on this guy which

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is a first for antech and then we've also got some previous Innovations where

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they're basically taking everything they know about silent Computing cases and

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they are putting it in here so this

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sticker is really in my way but let's say a few things first okay so there's a

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dual layer design so it's a 1 mm Steel /

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polycarbonate top and side panel design what that does is it isolates heat and

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deadens noise so we saw multi-layer panels introduced on the p180 so this is

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an older Innovation we also have dual hard drive mounting options so you can

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either use grommets or even a suspension to M Mount your hard drives we've seen

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this in the past so that is not really a new thing either here we have uh an

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anodized aluminum front panel which is something that is relatively new for

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antech because they don't really do the aluminum front panels but it's in my

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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

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awesome we've also got a matte black interior which they've started doing on

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their higher end cases finally high-end IO so two front panel usb3 ports with

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internal motherboard connector for unparalleled data transmission that

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might be a little bit of an overstatement unparalleled data

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transmission I mean there are things that are faster than usb3 but I see

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where they are coming from and it's certainly better than having those usb3

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connectors that are more of a of a pass through rather than using a proper

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internal header which most of the new motherboards your p67 your z68

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motherboards are going to support just fine in terms of packing material we've

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got about an inch of foam on all sides of the case looks good and let's pull up

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the case itself now based on some of the reviews that I've seen of this guy

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supposedly it is even better than the Sonata series the quietest case ever

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produced by antec so that is a very serious claim and let's have a look at

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how they have achieved that so first of

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all they've achieved it by confusing me about which direction it opens from

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there we go this baby open oo that looks

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nice that is actually a very very nice front panel finish so hold on let's

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start with the parts that are less interesting like the

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manual and that's pretty much it okay so we have a piano black powder coat finish

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on the top so you can see on the top we actually have an exhaust vent here like

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we see like we saw on the original p180 no shroud on it just a regular exhaust

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vent the sides are also piano black a glossy finish here we are you can see

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that there the whole case is using very soft I did want that there for now I can

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move closer if it helps though very very soft rubber grommet so that should

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actually deaden any vibration being passed from the case to the table or the

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desk that it is positioned on I'm just going to run through the specs really quick with you here guys so elegant

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appearance yeah we can see that dual hard drive mounting system using tray

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mount with pre-installed silicone grommets or uh suspension mounts two

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external 5 and a/4 this is something I really like to see fewer 5 and a/4 in

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because most people are not installing a ton of 5 and a/4 in devices something

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like you know your drive and then maybe a fan controller is about all you really

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need so instead they've taken more of that internal space that's available to

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them and they've allocated it instead of

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to stuff that people are less likely to use here is the internal design so

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there's your your plastic layer as well as your metal layer that plastic layer

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is going to help to deaden sound okay so instead they've alligated it to longer

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video cards so you can install a huge video card in this case with no

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complications and then more options for mounting your 3 and 1/2 in drives very

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very good idea right there next we've got the removable power supply support

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beam so we'll have a look at that that in a minute front accessible flip down

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Drive cages what's a front accessible flip down Drive cage guess we'll find

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out give me a second I'm going to have to figure out how to open this there we

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go I figured out how to open it so there's just a few little um few little

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tabs here so you just bend those back you open up the whole thing and there is

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the flip down front accessible hard

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drive bay now you can also see you can install a 120 mil fan here and then for

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additional internal Cooling and this is really neat because this looks like a

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case that doesn't have much ventilation on the surface but for additional

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cooling you can throw another fan here in the front which is going to directly

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blow cool air onto your graphics card and when you look at this from the side

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you can see there's actually significant ventilation space Not only on the right

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hand side but also on the left hand side

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of the front panel so those fans are not going to be starved for air but by

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blocking the entire front of the case you're going to reduce the amount of

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noise that gets transmitted directly to someone sitting in front of it so let's

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have a look a closer look at the front so we I don't know how to get you guys a

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good angle on this but this is a really neat finish so you it's not like very

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coarse brushed lines it's very very very

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fine fine brushed lines on the anodized aluminum which actually has a very cool

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um a very sort of matte look until you get really really close and then you can

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see the brush it's kind of a neat effect we have a hard drive LED here power

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reset front audio ports USB 3 and front

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USB 2 there's your stamped antech logo and that pretty much does it for the

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front of the qu look at that more ventilation down there so because you're

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held up by these feet you're going to be able to get a little bit more fresh air

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to that bottom fan which as I mentioned before there is going to be blowing

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directly over your graphics card so let's have a look at the internal layout

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we've got all of our included screws some zip ties some good stuff like that

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for building your PC back here we've also got ah here okay so you can either

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install three drives using the trays or

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you can use the suspension mounting system which is included with the

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accessories here to install two drives now given that most people are not at

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this time installing more than a couple of drives I mean especially if you're

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building a new system you can buy you know 3 tbte hard drives these days

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what's the incentive to install you know eight drives in your system so so here

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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

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show you guys the suspension system so I

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didn't screw this all the way back in fortunately so that'll save us some time

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so yeah if you're not installing a ton of drives you just pull these guys

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out there's The Grommet so that's the one way of mounting these are compatible

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with 2 and 1/2 in drives as well you can see the spacing there for your 2 and 1/2

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in ssds or even hard drives and then

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here is the suspension system so you run your drives through these and what that

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does is it completely isolates any vibrations from the drive away from your

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case I mean don't transport your system around like that that's more for

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stationary systems in your office you know don't expect to ship it across the

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country using the suspension but it's there as an option in case you want it

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in terms of the rest of the internal layout we've got our front panel

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connectors here including an internal

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USB 3 header right there so that's going to plug directly into your motherboard

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instead of routing around the back to the io Shield as well as your front USB

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2 your front audio and then your front panel switches for your power your reset

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all of that good stuff we have an enormous cutout for

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CPU uh heat sink mounting option so if you have a back plate there is no way

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with this case you are going to have to remove your motherboard in order to

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install a CPU Cooler with a back plate you just take off your other side panel

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and you screw the back plate in from the back no worries about that okay um you

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know here give me a sec I'll be back with a big video card so here's a radon

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6990 for scale to show you guys how much extra space there is in this case for

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ginormous video cards so no worries as

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far as that's concerned as long as you've got some external exhaust going you can draw fresh air in from the front

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and you are good to go we've also got an included antech tripool fan you can see

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the little tricool switch is built into the back here so we've got oh no that's

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a a cool cool so it's got a high and a low setting on the back of the case and

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it's also got built-in silicone grommet so check this out so you're actually

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mounting it using grommets and then it

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also has isolators see the orange isolators here on either side to keep it

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away from the case whether you have it exhausting air or whether you turn it

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around and you use a water cool like the water cooler like the ANC 620 or 920 you

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turn that around draw in fresh air for to cool your CPU and it's going to still

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be isolated from the case all right we have a power supply

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support bar here which you can remove just by taking out a couple screws if

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you do not need it and that's pretty much oh this is smart I didn't even

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notice what this was for so what this is for is so you can take a power supply

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with a 12 mil fan and you can mount it either way and that 120 mil fan is going

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to take in fresh air so this is kind of like a bottom mounted power supply but

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it's in the top that's very very cool so

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what it means is your power supply takes fresh air here blows it out the back and

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doesn't interfere with the cooling of your system at all very neat feature

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seven PCI expansion slots so that's standard and then you've got your

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toolless optical drive mounting uh rails

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here and I think that pretty much covers everything I wanted to say about the

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solo 2 from antech don't forget to subscribe to Linus techtips more

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