Assembly
Assembly
This was yet another simple budget build that went off without a hitch, so there isn’t a whole lot to comment on regarding assembly. There are, however, two areas worthy of mention: the CPU cooler and the Antec enclosure.
Cooler installation was rather simple, entailing removal of the attached Intel mounting hardware, application of thermal grease, and clasping down the familiar AMD socket clip. While secure, this clip limits installations to vertical airflow; sufficient, but not exactly ideal in today’s installation.
As with many of Antec’s original Solution-series enclosures, accessing the internals of the NSK 4482B requires removal of the top panel prior to the side panels. Overall, this is a clean, well-built case, although many of its features aren’t exactly geared towards the enthusiast.
For starters, there’s no access cutout in the tray, so be prepared to remove the motherboard should the desire arise for an exotic cooler upgrade. This is unlikely to be an issue for the target consumer though, as airflow itself is limited to the one rear 120 mm exhaust fan, and room to add just a single optional 80 mm intake fan behind the front bezel.
Lastly, depending on the individual application, the case could limit the length of add-in cards to 9.5 inches. Our ASRock motherboard uses the 2nd expansion slot for the primary graphics card. While this GeForce GTX 460 is roughly 8.5 inches long, the power leads prevent use of the bottom HDD bay. This is a limitation of the enclosure’s fairly small footprint. Though, had Antec shortened the removable 3.5” drive cage to include one less bay, we’d be able to pop in a massive 12” graphics card and had room for a larger intake fan.
Incidentally, this would be the only PC you'd want to contemplate building right now (since the new Core i3s don't come out immediately like the i5s and i7s do- and the Pentium G8XX series doesn't allow overclocking of its platform.)