Thread: No Side air vent in the chassis

I'm looking at getting the Antec Sonata III 500 case for use with my new core i7 860. I'm not a gamer, and just have a 9500GT video card, 2 or so PCI devices, and 4GB of RAM. Sometime in the future I will over clock it, but not right now. My question is, this case does not come with a side air vent/duct, and so do I really need it for my application? I really like the case, but i need some expert opinions on this one. Thanks!

If you are not a hardcore gamer into serious over clocking while on a suicide mission to save the planet from alien invaders, then you should be okay.

The idea for a side panel vent, duct, or fan is to provide extra cooling for either the video card or CPU depending on the location of the vent.

I do a lot of video editing, Cinema 4d, after effects, etc... So I run the CPU very hard for shorter periods of time ~45-60 min or so. And in the future I’m planning on doing some minor OC'ing to ~3.4 or so, and with a better HSF. Does this change the game at all?

OH and one more thing, i see that you can mount another 120 mm inside the front of the case, but the front is solid so no fresh air can come in, to me that seems like it is useless to add a fan on front of the hard drives like that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but will adding a fan to the front of the case where there is no vent to draw from just is a waste?

According to the photos over at new egg.com, the Antec Sonata III they are offering comes with the Antec Earth watts EA-500 power supply rated at 80% efficiency. I blew up the photos and took a look. It's one of the better quality power supplies that are recommended for gamers on a tight budget. The price for just the power supply is plus shipping. Going by the photos of the Sonata III and the photos of just the PSU over in the power supply section it looks like they are one and the same. GEE! That's like getting the case for free.

My best advice is to take and free shipping deal. Run the system for a while. Determine if ventilation, air flow, and cooling are sufficient to meet your needs. If not, then you can replace the "free" case with something better.