« Zalman 9500 CPU Fan | Main | Apple 1GB nano iPod Announced »

Antec Fusion Case

Antec announced last week what sounded like a replacement for their popular Aria case. The press release states the new "Fusion" case will be available on March 1st at a price dependent "upon final feature set." I don't know if that means you can add optional features or whether the press release was written before the design was finalized.

In either case [pun intended - ed.], there isn't much else known except for what's in the press release:

  • 430 watt power supply (PSU).

  • Dual 120mm cooling fans.

  • Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD).

The VFD will probably get most of the attention but what's important to me is the power supply. What with the higher energy consumption/heat output of modern CPUs and the need for multiple hard drives and at least two TV tuners (for regular and high definition), a high power PSU is required. So I am very glad I had not yet purchased a case for the media PC I am putting together.

But all may not be better in the new case. It is unclear whether the addition of the VFD means Antec sacrificed the Aria's 8-in-one card reader. If so, you'll have decide how important that was. For me, I don't think it much matters since I would be using mine to view/record video, not still images. That said, if you need to transfer still images to the drive you could always use an USB-based reader.

All-in-all, unless th Fusion is more expensive than the Aria (about $129USD), I'll probably buy the Fusion.

Lunch time update: I've been able to find a picture of the case and I'm very disappointed that it appears to be a variation of the Overture II case rather than the Aria. That is, rather than being a small form factor type case, it appears to be the similar in size to many horizontal desktop cases (i.e., larger than what I want). Sigh. I guess I'm back to looking for a small form factor case that takes standard micro-ATX motherboards and has a PSU rated at higher than 300 watts. I hope Antec will update their Aria but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Antec Fusion case.

Comments (1)

sjon:

I checked their rackmount cases, and I like those.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on February 7, 2006 6:34 AM.

The previous post in this blog was Zalman 9500 CPU Fan.

The next post in this blog is Apple 1GB nano iPod Announced.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Powered by
Movable Type 3.34