Antec Overture II (cont’d)
Taking a couple screws off the back of the top cover is all one needs to do to free the steel lid of the Overture II. Sliding it backwards and opening up the case reveals a more compartmentalized design than the Mstation, with much more capacity for additional drives.
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With the three removable drive cages taken out, the interior layout of the Overture II can be seen. The power supply is in pretty much the same place as it was in the HT-1100 case, but instead of extra space on the left for a specialized cooling duct, the Overture puts the extra space to use allowing for two additional hard drives and two exhaust blower fans - one of which remains hidden under the hard drive supports.
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Here, we see the 5¼“ drive cage with our SATA DVD combo drive installed. The cage is well made, with strong, tool-less latches on the top and bottom, but doesn’t allow for any adjustments in terms of drive positioning.
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The internal 3½” drive cage features rubber grommets for silent drive operation and is held in place by rails on the bottom and two case screws on top.
Last, but not least, is the external 3½” cage, also with support for two drives. It’s a definite feather-in-the-cap for the Overture II that with a 3½” floppy/multi-format flash-card reader drive installed, the case still has room for three hard drives, especially considering that HTPCs (in general) can benefit greatly from massive storage banks for video and music files.
Here, a close-up of the hard drive cage support gives us a better idea of how the Overture will help to keep the hard drives cool. Note the second blower barely visible in this picture; it’s oriented the same way as the one to its right.
In context with the main rear 80mm exhaust fan, it looks like the Overture II will have significantly better cooling than the Mstation, especially for any hard drives mounted in the rear cage. It’s time to install the test bed to see if it delivers!
Click to enlarge.
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Tamale - Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - link
The 'POS' power supply happens to deliver steadier voltages to the highest-end gear I've gotten my hands on (and no, the P4 test bed isn't the most powerful thing I've tested it in) than anything else that's passed through my hands, and that includes over a dozen power supplies by high-end manufacturers. I'm no reviewer of power supplies yet, as we're still working on that, but I guarantee you that this is a fine unit, especially for the area of case reviews, because in quiet mode it does a fantastic job of staying silent enough to hear the case fans and still provides rock-solid voltages to a stressed-out system. It also gets warm when in quiet mode in the cases that don't ventilate the power supply well enough, which is another good measure of a case. Perhaps most important however is the modular nature of the unit, and even though I've tried other modular units none were as quiet as the MadDog.Secondly, the thermaltake golden orb II at full voltage is quieter than any of zalman's coolers at full voltage. While I understand that the zalman will probably get lower temperatures, It is absolutely essential that the CPU cooler in my test bed make as little noise as possible, and the golden orb II does just that.
The recurring theme in your post seems to me to be that you want 'the perfect HTPC', but the whole idea of a case review is to isolate everything but the case as much as possible, and sometimes hotter components do a better job of illustrating the deficiencies of units than the latest and greatest.
Trust me on this one, if we used the absolute best gear available the comparisons would be much muddier.
As for the subjective comment, my scale of 1-10 can be thought of as a scale of tolerance.. with 5 basically being the threshold... anything higher than that really is 'too loud for the given application' and anything lower than 4 is 'acceptable'. It's not meant to be a numerically accurate scale of any sort. I felt very comfortable with the final subject ratings I gave these cases, because the Tenor and PC-800B just barely passed my personal threshold test, and I believe most users will agree.
tayhimself - Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - link
I hope you realize other PSUs are likely quieter and more efficient than "Mad Dog". Sure the may be quiet to your ears, but thats too subjective to really mean anything. Sadly, you rate the modular nature as being an important issue when it is not. The PSU getting warm in quiet mode may be a sign of a PSU not getting enough airflow.And you say "its silent enough to hear case fans". While that can be true, the PSU and Tt golden orb noise signatures can drown out subtler differences between the cases in terms of noise of the case fans. This is almost obvious from your review as you dont perceive the difference of 9 dB to be significant. Its better to use quality quiet components so you can tell what the case is contributing to the noise spectrum. Since this is about making case buying decisions, the other factors are best isolated.
Avalon - Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - link
Get crackin'.mrgq912 - Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - link
to tired to read the article but first post.mrgq912 - Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - link
okay now that I have that out of my system. How come you guys never review stuff from alienware or voodoopc. Those guys make HTPC's aswell. I never every heard of the players in this review making HTPC's untill today. Well nice to know i have options.Would buy one if i could, untill then i will live with my ati tv wonder elite.
ksherman - Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - link
uh, cuz Alienware and Voodoo are over priced peices of DooDoo... and because this site is more geared around people that build their own machines...