Antec LifeStyle Solo ATX Quiet ATX Mini-Tower Case (Piano Black)

See it at Amazon.com for $58.98

Average Customer Rating
(5.0 out of 5)

Amazon Customer Reviews

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Essentially, a Black P150 Without Power Supply

As I write this, Amazon has no information posted about what this Antec Solo "Quiet Mini Tower Case" is. So, as a stop-gap until I can get some pictures posted and a proper review written, here's the information directly from Antec's spec sheet:

Case Dimensions: 17.5"(H) x 8.1"(W) x 18.5"(D)

Drive Bays: 8
- Front Accessible: 3x5.25", 1x3.5"
- Internal: 4x3.5" or 3x3.5" with HDD suspension

Expansion Slots: 7

Cooling System:
- 1 rear (standard) 120mm TriCool Fan with 3-speed switch control
- 2 front 92mm fan mounts (fans not included)

Main Board Size: 12"(W)x9.6"(L)

Weight (net/gross): 25.3/30.3 lbs, 11.5/15.7 K

Motherboards: Standard ATX (web site says also microATX)

Special Features:
- Internal mounts with rubber grommets
- Optional HDD suspension system
- Poly carbonate side panels to reduce noise
- Advanced cable management system
- Front USB/FireWire Ports

Package Includes:
- 1 Tower Case
- 1 set of screws and motherboard standoffs
- 1 Installation manual

I've provided Amazon with a link to Antec's product brochure, but it hasn't shown up yet. Go to the Antec site (obvious URL) and navigate through Products -> Enclosures -> LifeStyle Series -> Solo for more information.

In a nutshell, this is a very nice, black, heavy, steel (not aluminum) mini-tower case designed specifically for quiet operation. Some of the highlights are 1) the sound deadening insulation on the side panels, 2) an included drive suspension system for decoupling the hard drive from the chasis, 3) a 120mm low RPM exhaust fan, and 4) the ability to add your own, quiet, efficient power supply (I'll be adding a Seasonic S12-430).

UPDATE: I've uploaded three pictures of the case. The sides and top are a very shiny black and the front looks like brushed aluminum.

UPDATE 2: I've got everything transferred over to the new Antec Solo from my old Lian-Li PC-60H1 case and can now add some personal material:

- First, when you get your new case, make sure you remove everything from the box and the case. The manual and various other pieces of paper are in the top "eggshell" type material under the cardboard liner. Also, the bag of screws and standoffs is tied inside the top 5.25" front accessible drive bay and the six drive rails should be someplace on the bottom of the case. In mine, four of them were in their built-in holder on the bottom and the other two were floating around under the hard drive cage.
- Second, only the left side panel and the front fan cage use thumb screws. All the rest of the removable connections are regular screws. One really nice touch about the thumbscrews is that they're attached to their object (i.e., they wont' fall off and get lost when you disassemble the case). I just wish everything else used thumbscrews.
- Third, there's no built in case speaker. As long as I never have to listen for BIOS error beeps, that won't matter at all. I suppose I could hook things up to my Audigy sound card if I had to. But, it's not really needed.
- Fourth, and probably the biggest lack, there's no removable motherboard tray. That makes getting the motherboard into the case and connected a bit more difficult than it should be. I had to temporarily remove the 120mm TriCool rear fan to have enough room to get my old MSI 865PE-Neo2-FIS2R motherboard into the case.
- Fifth, and the biggest problem for me (though it's not fully the case's fault), the combination of my 865PE-Neo2-FIS2R and Zalman CNPS7700-AlCu CPU Cooler did NOT fit in the case. The thing barely fit in the Lian-Li (maybe .25" clearance). In this case, the cooling fins physically run into the power supply (maybe .25" overlap). I had to use some brute force to get the motherboard/cooler combo in and the heatsink fins are sort of squished. Not a pleasant activity, but it works.
- Sixth, and very surprisingly, even though I used the built-in drive suspension system, I could still clearly hear the ramp-up whine and drive seeks on my Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA - ST3120026AS drive. I had to put the drive back in my GUP SmartDrive enclosure to quiet that down. I'd been hoping to keep the drive out of that since it raises its temperature by about 10 degrees Celcius.
- Seventh, there are a lot of sharp edges in the case. I cut a finger while working in it.
- Finally, on a positive note, I bought this case to try and reduce the noise of my computer. Purely, subjectively, as I'm sitting here with the computer by my feet, I'd say the noise level has dropped by at least half. I did install a new Seasonic S12-430 power supply when I put the system together instead of using my old Antec TruePower 430. So, I don't know how much noise reduction is due to which item. But, from what I can hear of my Zalman CNPS7700-AlCu and VF900-Cu, most of the improvement is probably due to the case. I was hoping that I wouldn't be able to hear the fans at all, but while I'm sitting right next to the computer, I still can. If I walk a few feet away, however, I can't tell it's on. As a bonus, my CPU temperature has dropped about eight degrees Celcius. But, I think that might be due to the new power supply dumping less heat into the case right above the CPU.

Overall, and primarily because of the dearth of thumbscrews and lack of a removable motherboard tray, I'd probably reduce my rating from its original 5 stars out of 5 to 4 stars out of 5 if Amazon would let me. Otherwise, I'm very happy with the case.

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Best Case

Wanted to add my own little review of the Antec Solo case for people so that it may help them. I ordered mine with free super saver shipping. It arrived in 3 days, shipping from Pennsylvania to Raleigh, NC.

It was shipped in a large cardboard box with packing paper stuffed between it and the retail box. The manual can be found inside the upper case holder.

After taking off the plastic, a stunningly beautiful case is revealed.

The case has thumbscrews for the left side panel that do not disconnect from the panel. This way you can't lose them. The right side panel is held by regular screws. I first found the loose drive rails and took them out of the case. I installed the power supply. You have to hold the PSU in place and screw at the same time; because there is very little metal to hold the it in place. I screwed in 5 more motherboard mounts for my standard ATX MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (I already had the CPU and cooler installed). Then, I dropped the motherboard down onto the mounts. It was a very tight fit to drop it down. You cannot fit both hands on either side and drop it down. I had to turn the board diagonal to fit it down there and even hold it by the CPU heatsink for a second. No damage though.

I then hooked up all the case cables for the front. They were excessively long; however this came in useful for me with the audio and firewire cables for which the ports are at the rear of the motherboard. The cable management hooks were an incredibly useful feature.

I then installed the optical and floppy drive. The front bezel can be removed by pushing the 3 black tabs through the left side towards you and swinging the front bezel towards the right side of the case. Then lift up and it comes off its hinges. Antec uses its typical drive rail system with one drive rail on each side. The tab to remove the drive faces the front of the case. Drives are added and removed through the front of the case. A 5.25" adapter is used to mount any 3.5" media drives. Screw holes for mounting the 3.5" drives are on the bottom of the adapter. I connected the power and IDE cables.

Then I removed the 3.5" drive separators from the chassis by removing the front fan cage so that I could use the suspension system. This is done by again removing the front bezel (if you haven't done it), loosening the thumb screws to the fan cage and swinging it towards you and lifting up to remove it from the hinges. Then I pulled the drive separators out by their rails.

Next, I installed all the PCI cards and my graphics card. They did not fit snug against the case, although I think it is likely that my previous case (Antec Lanboy) warped them. Then I put the case where I planned to have my computer set up and installed the hard drive. I had to have the fan cage removed to install the hard drive. I placed the hard drive through the elastic-like suspension cords and it fit ok. I tried twisting them once and it felt more snug so I left it like that.

I stuffed excess PSU cables in the space between my floppy drive and the optical drive.

I then closed the case up and connected all the cables. I didn't have any trouble with sharp edges and didn't get cut. I didn't expect everything to have rounded edges and the most frequented sections seemed safe enough to me. Upon booting, I was greeted something that I was hoping for greatly from this case. NEAR-SILENCE. The Antec-Tricool at its lowest setting was not obnoxiously loud. The larger noise-maker was my CPU fan. After slowing it to about 50% of its full speed, it was much more bearable. Previously, I had removed my active cooling solution for my nForce4 chip and replaced it with the passive Zalman NB-47J because of the extreme amount of noise it made. I did have to remove 6 pins from the heatsink in order to fit it onto the chip and leave room for my ATI Radeon x800XL.

Cooling is better in this case compared to the Antec Lanboy (which is notorious for bad airflow). My CPU temperature in the Antec Lanboy idled around 38-39 C. Under load the temperature would rise to 45 C with the CPU cooler at 100% rpm (12V).

In the Solo, the chipset heatsink felt warm after I had left the computer idle for a while. I was in an air conditioned apartment set for about 21 C. With this configuration I got the following temps in deg. C using Everest Ultimate and confirmed with Speedfan/MSI Core Center (CPU fan at 50%):

CPU TEMPS
Idle : 34
Prime 95 - In place large FFT : 40
Prime 95 - Blend : 33
Half-Life 2 - Lost Coast : 34

GPU TEMPS
Idle : 44
Prime 95 - In place large FFT : 44
Prime 95 - Blend : 43
Half-Life 2 - Lost Coast : 44

HDD TEMPS
Idle : 39
Prime 95 - In place large FFT : 39
Prime 95 - Blend : 44
Half-Life 2 - Lost Coast : 41

After running these tests, I touched my chiset heatsink again and it was quite warm to the touch, but not hot or burning. The air blowing out the back of the case was always cool. I did not try any 92mm fan configurations because I do not have any on hand.

I tried playing Warcraft III and Counter Strike Source for a few hours and the chipset heatsink did not appear to overheat enough to cause any problems. nForce4 Zalman NB-47J heatsink temperatures were taken with an infared thermometer.

CHIPSET TEMPS (C)
Off: 28.6
Idle: 43.0
3hr WCIII: 48.2
1hr Counter Strike Source: 50.2

Optical drives painted with Krylon Fusion black satin look great with the case!

Pros:
excellent build quality
cable organizer is a great feature
very quiet
good airflow
quietest and best case I have ever dealt with

Cons (but more like quirks):
not enough railing for the PSU to sit on
front bezel cables are too long
no removable motherboard tray
92mm fans in front instead of 120mm
installation manual is difficult to understand at times

My system is: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Winchester w/ Zalman CNPS-7700Cu | MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum w/ Zalman ZM-NB47J | ATI Radeon x800XL | Fortron Source Blue Storm 500W | 1GB Crucial Ballistix PC3200 | Seagate 7200.8 250 GB with NCQ | Antec Solo Case w/ 1 Antec Tri-cool | NEC ND-3520A 16x DVD-/+RW | Samsung SD-616 16x DVD-ROM | Generic Floppy | Linksys WMP54G

This review with images can be found at Silent PC Review's forums under the Topic: Antec P150: Back in Black? [called: Solo].

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Great Case

This case, the Antex Solo, is a good choice for a medium duty computer. Every aspect of the case exemplifies quality, from the finish on the exterior to the provision of a cable management area to the drive mountings. About the only thing to complain about is the lack of a motherboard tray. The SOLO is the black version of the P150 and comes without a PSU. The color is very black with a very high gloss finish. The front panel is silver plastic with black trim. It swings open to allow access to the two 92mm intake fans with their washable filter and behind those, the bank of 3.5" drives. You can mount either four in the provided trays with their acrylic mounting grommets or three suspended in elastic bands. There are four slots for 5.25" drives one of which has an adaptor for a 3.5" drive. These slots are exposed to the front. The front panel also features two USB ports and one FireWire port, mic and headphone plugs, the power and reset buttons (indirectly lit with blue LED) and the drive indicator with its blue LED. The left side panel comes off with the unscrewing of two captive thumb screws to allow access to the main bay. There is adequate room for just about any PSU, I used an Antec NeoHE 550. At the back there is a mounting for a 120 mm exhaust fan. There are 8 expansion slots. The right side panel also removes to provide access to the cable management area. This consists of a series of hooks to wind up excess cable on before it goes into the main bay for connection. The construction of the case is steel and soundproofing coatings have been added to the major interior surfaces. The one aspect of the case I felt could be improved was the lack of separation of the PSU from the main bay so it would not be sucking up hot air to try to cool itself with. That just makes for a hot PSU with a fan spinning noisily. It would require a modification of the basic construction but I would recommend Antec consider this change. I installed some cardboard baffles to separate the upper part of the case from the main bay. This makes the PSU pull its air through the upper drive bays. In operation, the case is very quiet. My motherboard is an Asus M2N32 SLI Deluxe fitted with an Athlon X2 4400+ AM2, 2 x 1GB Corsair 6400C4 and two BFG 7900GT. I have both Plextor 716 slot load and a Samsung tray load as well as a pair of 74 GB Raptors and a pair of 250 GB Samsung Spinpoints. I used Nexus fans and a Zalman CNPS 9500 cooler. This is a substantial amount of gear but when the machine is on, there is just the barest whirring, even when its cranking. The only drive noises I hear are the opticals spinning up. All in all, its an execellent case.

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Antec SOLO - Is This Thing On?

Pros: Style, Solid Construction, Great Airflow, Very Quiet. Hard drive bays can be accessed from front without removing side panel. Choice of hard drive bungee cord mounting or effective silencing grommets in easy-access trays. No fragile door covering Optical drives or switches. Adequate room and cooling for huge video cards like the x1900.

Cons: Front Panel Audio is not HD-Audio compatible. The front swing-away panel isn't quite perfect, and the Power Switch button may not alighn perfectly with the switch if not shut properly. The PSU is difficult to access with a CPU heatsink installed.

My new Video editing system uses this case, and with the addition of an Intel HD-Audio 3.5" front panel, it suits my purposes perfectly. Hours-long Capture and Render sessions are pleasant with no noticable noise from the computer. Even better, the system runs cool with no overheating.
The lack of a front door blocking the Optical drives is a great convienence when burning many DVDs.
As I use 2 92mm intake fans (not included) set to a silent 5v, the intake Air Filter is very effective.

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Going SOLO

Great case. I've built a couple of boxes and this is by far the nicest case I've used. No sharp edges, plenty of room, nice looks, and great features inside that allow swapping components in short order. The only drawback is that it doesn't have a removable MOBO tray, but that's a minor issue. Overall a very nice case.

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