Case And Power
Case: Antec Three Hundred Illusion
Everyone loves a high-quality case, yet CPU cost put a severe bind on our budget. When faced with the choice of a low-quality chassis with price-boosting add-in features or a high-quality stripped-down model, we threw features to the wind and picked the one that offered the best ventilation and durability for the money. We're function over form guys, after all.
Read Customer Reviews of Antec's Three Hundred Illusion
For $10 more than the basic Antec Three Hundred, the Illusion adds two lighted intake fans. Given the graphics cards we have here, we wish it had been three.
Power: Seasonic SS-850HT
Following up on the value home runs from Gigabyte and Antec, our choice of power supply appears to be a stunning value. Seasonic is one of the industry’s most reputable manufacturers, and we found a model from them with two giant 40 A 12 V rails for only $120. An 80 PLUS Silver rating is icing on the cake, or perhaps a silver lining.
Read Customer Reviews of Seasonic's SS-850HT
Oh, and it’s not modular. Our power supply selection followed the same concept that we used for picking the case. When faced with the choice of a high-quality unit with few added features, or a lower-quality unit with many added features, we put quality over features once again.
Cable management could be a problem for some builders, but our case has adequate room to store the unused leads. The Three Hundred similarly lacks a window, which is probably a good thing when we have so many unused cables to route.
