Antec 300 Three Hundred Computer Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,458 words · ~7 min read
0:07
it baffles me how i could have gone so long without ever unboxing an antec 300
0:13
so here we are today it's not a new product by any stretch of the
0:16
imagination but we have the antec 300 it
0:20
is SSD hard drive compatible which it wasn't when it was first released this
0:23
is a fairly old sku but still very popular and uh okay so they're calling
0:28
it a versatile minitar you know like i even featured it in a uh
0:32
in an airflow optimization guide a while back i just must have maybe i shot an
0:37
unboxing and never actually uploaded it either way picture of the case on the
0:41
side filtered front panel takes in air efficiently and prevents dust buildup
0:45
that's good okay we've got our features and specs on the side here and let's
0:49
just go ahead and start getting this open so the antec 300 if you go to any
0:54
kind of a lan party there's a couple cases that you're to see just a ton of
0:58
you're going to see a ton of 900s you're going to see a ton of 300s this is a
1:03
very very common common case because it provides you
1:09
gamer type features
1:13
such as optimized airflow mesh fronts
1:16
at a price point that is very very attractive
1:20
all right so the first thing we find when we open up the box is antex characteristically
1:26
excellent packaging here you go so you can see they're using
1:30
a closed cell foam that is going to protect your case from any damage that
1:35
could potentially occur in transit so you've got a good
1:39
inch plus of foam on all sides of the chassis very very nice to see that we've
1:44
got some documentation in here including a user's manual and yeah this should
1:48
give you some idea how old the box design is despite its eminently portable
1:53
frame the 300 has enough room for an NVIDIA 8800 series graphics card how
1:58
impressive we're up to the gtx 500 series at this point so we're
2:03
several generations away from uh
2:07
when an NVIDIA 8800 series was uh a
2:10
concern whether it would fit in your case or not
2:13
uh it goes to show you that the development cycles for cases are not
2:17
quite as fast as they are for graphics cards nor do they need to be if you have
2:23
a well featured classic looking suitcase
2:27
then you don't really need to redo it for quite some time
2:33
all right here it is the 300 so you find first of
2:37
all the mesh front you've got three five and a quarter inch bays and then you
2:41
have dual 120 millimeter intakes in the
2:45
front of the case so these are filtered intakes although i'm not actually sure how the
2:49
filters come out for this particular one it does not come pre-loaded with fans
2:53
there but at least it does give you the option of adding them so that you have
2:58
airflow going directly over your graphics cards
3:01
or graphics card i guess if you don't run two which most people don't
3:05
from the front of the chassis nice thumb screws those nice wide thumb
3:09
screws so it's easier to get a grip on them than the uh than the smaller head
3:13
thumb screws we're gonna take the side panels off so the side panels use a
3:17
pretty standard finish it's not quite that super matte finish but it's also
3:21
not glossy so it's going to be fairly fingerprint resistant but not perfect
3:27
i mean if you keep your case reasonably clean it's not really a concern on the
3:31
side you can see we've got a punch out for a 120 millimeter fan so that's gonna
3:36
blow directly over your graphics card so it's all about graphics card cooling the
3:39
way i would probably set this case up for optimal cooling would be two 120
3:43
millimeters as intakes in the front and then i would set this one right here
3:49
up as an exhaust because most cards these days i mean it depends what you're
3:52
using but if you have an NVIDIA reference card for example it's going to
3:55
be drawing air in on this side and kicking it out on this side so you want
3:59
to you want to help it rather than work against it so let's look at the inside
4:03
of the case as you can see it's a fairly basic
4:07
uh chassis in terms of its construction we've got one two three four five
4:12
six five three and a half inch drive bays we have our SSD mount here at the
4:17
bottom so you can see they've retrofitted it with that so you're just
4:20
gonna screw these in from the bottom you can mount one SSD here and it can still
4:24
support its full complement of three and a half inch drives even if you do that
4:28
there are the mounts for your five and a quarter inch so there's no tool-less uh
4:32
stuff going on in this chassis it's very basic i mean tool-less if you're only
4:36
going to build the system once isn't that big of a deal it's only if you're
4:39
doing frequent modding you're going to want to consider maybe getting a higher end chassis such as the 900 which uses
4:44
thumb screws to mount the drives for example all right here we've got our
4:48
motherboard tray which features a nice big cutout so no matter where your
4:52
motherboard positions the CPU socket you shouldn't have any problems swapping out
4:56
a CPU cooler even if uh
4:59
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
5:03
or anything like that here's power for our top 140 millimeter
5:08
fan we've got all of our front leads for the front power switch front lights
5:12
actually what do we have on the front of this case let's have a look so we have
5:16
two front usb 2 ports we have a microphone port headphone port
5:22
and a power switch oh okay there's a reset switch in there so it's hard to
5:25
hit by accident that's a really uh thoughtful feature actually
5:30
all right motherboard mount you've got room for your standard atx motherboards
5:34
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
5:39
mounted power supply this is one of the first value chassis that did offer the
5:43
feature of the bottom mounted power supply remember ntec did pioneer that
5:47
with the p180 at least on the mainstream i mean
5:51
there's always a modder who's done it before someone else but
5:55
they were the first ones who brought a mass production case to market with a
5:58
bottom mounted power supply okay we've got a 120 millimeter fan in the back
6:03
that comes pre-populated with a 120 millimeter fan this is one of their
6:08
tri-cool fans so you can set it to low medium or high uh the one on top is
6:13
actually not a tri-pool so that one runs at full
6:16
speed regardless so the total fans that you can populate in this case are 140 up
6:21
in the top 120 in the back and then two more 120s in the front as intakes
6:28
all right in terms of accessories there's not a
6:31
whole lot going on here this is our entire accessory box
6:35
thumb screws other screws
6:38
that's it so if you want you know fancy add-ons
6:43
then look elsewhere i suppose
6:47
cable management so we've got a little we've got little
6:50
zip ties back here for managing cables on the side of the drive cage so this
6:55
will allow you to hide your cables if you're using a non-modular power supply
6:59
you can just bundle them all up here tie them down and that would probably be the
7:02
best way to go about that so i think that's pretty much all i have to say
7:06
about the 300 i don't think i ever showed a view from the back so that's
7:09
what it looks like if you haven't seen one before don't forget to subscribe to
7:13
Linus tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos