Antec have really gone the extra mile with the Antec Three Hundred Two, improving on every aspect of the original Three Hundred and still managing to keep it within the same price range, which is quite an achievement in its self, with a slightly wider chassis allowing room for cable management behind the back plate and cable management holes being added being the biggest feature to be overhauled, which are both a welcome addition to this chassis.
While much of the looks are the same as the original, the gentle curve added on the front panel helps give the chassis that extra touch of style, as does the embossed Antec logo on the rear side panel, but over all the style of this chassis is clean and tidy, with build quality that is as good as we’ve come to expect from Antec and better than I expected within this price range.
Clearly Antec have listened to what their customers want with the features on this chassis, moving the fan controllers to the rear of the chassis is a big step up from the internal switches on the original Three Hundred, giving you two fan speeds to either maximize your cooling or minimise your PC noise levels dependant on your situation, add to that the water cooling capabilities, which are limited, but are certainly better than not having support for them at all.
The only problem I ran into with this chassis is the 2.5″ drive mounting point on the back plate, which became a little obscured by our motherboard rendering it useless, fortunately we only have the one SSD installed so it wasn’t an issue for us, but it’s something worth keeping in mind if you’re looking to purchase it, but overall this really is a minor issue, it’s still an improvement over the old design which didn’t have any SSD mounting points.
So overall then a pretty impressive chassis, sure its not the greatest case ever made, it was never designed to be either, but given that you can pick this chassis up for around £50, which is an amazing deal for a chassis that supports water-cooling, has pre-installed speed controller fans, USB 3.0 ports on the front panel, cable management, great build quality, plenty of room for additional fans and water cooling and comes fitted with quick release drive bays. So while I could easily give this chassis our Bang for Buck award, I am awarding it our Editors Choice award, if your looking to build within a tight budget, or if you’ve spent all your money on graphics cards and have little left for a good chassis, you’re going to have a hard time finding this many features on any other chassis within this price range.
Lovely case from the outside, bit ugly on the inside but then again there’s no side window so it doesn’t really matter.
I am sure the SSD on the motherboard tray is to be mounted on the rear, thus avoiding the motherboard 😉
You know, that never occurred to me, I’ll hang my head in contemplation and shame immediately.
Power supply cooler should be mounted face down to get some fresh air from outside. Actually thats why they put a hole in the bottom.