Round the back and underneath
The rear layout pretty typical but, unusually for a case in this price range, a PSU ships is fitted as standard.
While the absence of any special features marks the Sonata III as being at the budget end of Antec's range, it's still disappointing not to see any water-cooling ports given that one of the main selling points is low noise.
The next thing that bothered us was that the right-hand side panel - the one around the underside of the motherboard tray (and on the left in the image above) - is riveted in place.
Antec might argue that it's not necessary for the panel to be removable since the case is designed so that you don't need to put screws into any drives from that side but our view is a little different.
That's because we discovered that we couldn't easily get at the three covers to the front 5.25in bays that had fallen inside during transit. So, what would have been a 30-second job with a removable side panel turned into a five-minute precision operation to ensure they came out unscathed.
The high-gloss paint job - piano finish is the technical term - does look smart and, happily, didn’t have any obvious blemishes. Two thumb-screws are used to hold the left side-panel securely in place but it won't budge after they're removed until you use the lockable handle.
The image above shows how to access the front filter for cleaning - tip the case on its side and the filter slides out from the bottom. It's neat and tidy but could making cleaning a bit tedious if you needed to remove any cables to get the case over onto its side.
As well as having a fancy paint finish, the bottom also has four high-density noise-absorbing rubber feet. They did a fair job and didn’t mark any surfaces we put the chassis on but they're only stuck on (rather poorly) with glue and slide about, suggesting to us that one or more of them will come off completely after a time.
