Antec Veris MicroFusion Remote 350 HTPC Case Review

Interior Impressions Cont’d

In keeping with the rattle free, vibration free, low noise philosophy of this case, the motherboard area is not removable and is an integral part of the chassis. This also has the added bonus of giving this case a good bit of rigidity. Also on the positive side is the inclusion of what Antec refers to in its mechanical drawings as a Link Bar. This bar braces (or links) the back of the case to the front, adding a good bit of rigidity and minimizing longitudinal flexing, which can be a major concern with cases of this type. Of course, this bar is easily removable by simply flipping it up vertically and then sliding it out of its notch. This makes installation of the motherboard possible but we do highly recommend reinstalling it when the installation process is complete or you may end up with some unwanted noise or vibrations and flexing.


As with laptops, the ability to properly cool the various hot running computer components is a major concern as you cannot just stick more fans in without increasing the size of the case. The most common way to help alleviate this issue is by making cooling zones which with the help of air restrictors and air deflectors make separate cooling chambers inside the case. This is exactly what Antec’s designers have done with this HTPC case.

In this instance air enters the hard drive area, cools the drive and is then passively exhausted out the top of the case. This is what Antec calls the “first chamber” in its two chamber design while the second and larger chamber is the motherboard area. As this chamber houses the majority of the hot running components in any computer system, it gets two fans versus the one for the hard drive chamber.


This small yet ingeniously cleaver piece of plastic can be unscrewed and then repositioned into any of three pre-configured places along back of the case, allowing you to properly position the air deflector / restrictor for maximum effect. This in and of itself is very clever but this little bad boy is modular and has a total of 4 extenders. If you want a long deflector, use all four; if you want a small one use only one (or none!). In a nut shell this allows you the ability to tweak the size, shape and air flow characteristics of the two air chambers.


This combination of recycling the air and forcing it to cool what would be considered multiple cooling zones in a standard size case gives the MicroFusion 350 the ability to keep the major components of your system cool with only a moderate amount of air. Since it does not need copious amounts of air, it does not need a large number of large, high-RPM fans; which in turn allows this case the luxury of being fairly quiet in operation. This at least is the theory but reality has a nasty habit of turning theories on their ears and end up being something all together different. In a nut shell, the MicroFusion 350’s noise profile all depends on what setting you chose for those three 80mm TriCool fans (the integrated PSU fan is self regulating based on heat levels).


The three 80mm fans included with this case are, as noted earlier, Antec TriCool 3 speed fans. These 80mm 7 bladed fans are rated to move 34CFM with an impressive 3.04mm H20 static pressure. Of course this is only at their top speed of 2600rpm. In a great move, Antec has included the full specifications of these fans in the MicroFusion 350 Remote’s manual. At their medium setting (a nominal 2000rpm) they move 26CFM and only have 1.79mm of static pressure. At their lowest speed (1500rpm) they will only move 20CFM and have a down right anemic static pressure of 1.0mm H20. On the positive side they are extremely well behaved at medium and slow speeds and are in fact down right quiet at their lowest setting. It is too bad they have to sacrifice so much static pressure and air movement to do so.

The 3 samples which came with this particular case did have the typical whirring and clicking noise we have come to associate with the TriCool lineup. However, the amount of vibration and noise was very reasonable even at the medium setting and it is only at their highest setting did the amount of vibrations and noise created by these fans become truly noticeable. With all that being said, these fans are quite tight and displayed very little shaft slop and almost no off axis slop. All in all they are decent 80mm fans and I personally wish they had been around years ago when 80mm was the “king of the hill”, as it would have saved me many hours of volt mod’ing my fans. The only thing we wish Antec had done was make them temperature speed adjustable as you physically have to crack open the case and slide a 3 position slider on the fans “pig tail” to manually change their speed.

From a structural, design, feature list and even ascetics point of view this is a very, very sweet case. It has a lot of things going for it, all of which have been intelligently designed and laid out in a dual chamber design to maximize the moderate air flow afforded to it by its 3 small fans. With all this being said the only negative design aspect we can point to is the limitation the height restriction puts on CPU (and to a lesser extent GPU) cooling potential. If this was even two years ago this limitation would be a real deal breaker; but as there are now numerous cool-running dual, tri and even quads core processors out there (all of which should fit inside this self imposed limitation) it is not such a big deal. Just remember to be careful in your CPU and HS&F purchases! Later in the review we will go over these options and discuss their relative merits of them.