Interior Impressions


The interior of the Sonata III is relatively spacious with more than enough room for installing the vast majority of large and small computer components. We will see during the installation process just how much we can jam in there.

Some of the stand offs are pre-installed but the majority of them will have to be installed to line up with your motherboard of choice. The interior also holds the usual cables for the front panel ports as well as the included Earthwatts 500W power supply.


The 4 hard drives are mounted on removable trays which slide and lock into slots behind the front air intake. These are quite easily pulled out when you need to install a hard drive and any unused tray should be removed from the case in order to increase airflow.

The main drive rails (they are purple) are stored behind each of the Sonata’s three 5 ¼” drive bay covers and can be removed by pushing out the drive bay cover and sliding out each rail.


As already mentioned, the rear fan is a 120mm Antec TriCool which has a small switch attached to it that is used for increasing or decreasing the fan speed. It draws air out from the case and can be set for one of three settings: 1200rpm (nearly silent), 1600rpm (a sound that is easily drowned out by a CPU fan) or 2000rpm (screaming loud). The default setting is 1600rpm which is a good balance of noise versus airflow. The only minor problem with this fan is that it lacks a 3-pin fan header for your motherboard. This means you will have to connect it directly to a power supply Molex connector.

The front area of the case is taken up by the three 5 ¼” drive bays, two external and four internal 3 ½” drive bays. The Sonata III also has a few more cable pass-throughs that its predecessors and this is nothing but good news for people who want to hide as many cables as possible. The interior of a standard ATX case is usually the worst place to attempt cable management but Antec has done some good interior designing and provided us with some nooks to tuck away cables. You can also see four mounting holes on the outside of the hard drive cage; these are used for mounting the optional 120mm front fan. While it cuts down on some interior room, it is highly recommended that you add this fan.


The space provided for power supply mounting proves to be a bit of a pain if you want to change out the included Earthwatts power supply. This is because the main cross-bracing rail is riveted in place so it cannot be removed if you want to slide out the power supply. In addition, there is no removable back plate to the mounting area so nothing is coming out that way either. This leaves you with only one option if you want to upgrade the power supply when you have components installed: removing your motherboard and then sliding out the power supply from under the cross-bracing. This is annoying to say the least and I am sure that there will be many people out there who will wish Antec had spent a few bucks to make this cross-brace removable.