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Antec Three Hundred
First Impressions
The first impression of any case is the box it comes in. I took some pictures so you too could share in the excitement that I felt when I got this box at our weekly meeting.
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After I took the case out of the box and removed the protective covering, I found myself quite impressed with the general quality of the build. Here are some pictures of the case. I'll get into more detail of the various features of this case in a few paragraphs. For now, enjoy the beauty and the simplicity of this case design.
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Important things to notice from the pictures. The top front of the case sports two USB 2.0 connecters as well as a headphone and microphone jack. The power and reset buttons can be found on the left side of the top bezel. This is a good location because you don't have to search around with your hands to find them. When you place your hand on the case, your fingers naturally fall on the power button. Another aspect of the location of the power switch is that the switch does not extend from the surface of the case; there is no chance that in moving around in your room you will brush the power switch in the middle of a hard core gaming session and end up having to restart.
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Another important thing is that the power supply is mounted in the bottom of the case. When I talk about cooling, I will discuss this more but I thought it was an interesting point to make. The contents of the package contained several plastic baggies with thumb screws for securing hard disk drives as well as the cdrom drive. This is a really nice feature for those of us who use (or benchmark :)) lots of hard drives. It's always nice to be able to use your hands to remove a hard drive from your computer instead of having to dig a screwdriver out of your toolbox.
The case has a very sturdy feel. Looking at that bottom picture, you can see how strongly built the mounting hardware in the center of the case is. There are also no sharp edges to cut yourself wide open with: That is a nice feature! As far as general build quality, there are no machine marks on any of the screw holes or fixtures. Every inch of the internal metal sheeting is mechanically polished / textured and the paint lines are clean. Unlike some other cases that we have reviewed, there is no overspray on the internals. You have to admit, this is one sexy case :)
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