A Closer Look

The front of the Antec Fusion is made of a single, five millimeter thick aluminum piece. It looks great on the case and should fit perfectly on an A/V Rack. The back of the case does not feature anything out of the ordinary. As you can see a power supply is included with the Antec Fusion. The bottom of the case does have some unique features. Antec decided to use two solid and two rubber feet for the case. This gives the case a solid stance and does absorb some vibration. There are four holes to secure hard drives from the outside of the case. It would have been better if Antec already placed some sort of mountings inside the case, instead of forcing the user to secure hard drives on the bottom of a potentially full case during installation.


One one side of the case there is only an air grill, while the other side features two large 12 cm fans.


The front can be divided into three parts. All the way on the left you will find the LCD and the single optical drive cover. The usual front I/O connectors, consisting of two USB 2.0, one FireWire and headphone/microphone jacks can be found in the center. All the way to the right you will find a large volume knob, a small reset button and a power button. All of these are made from aluminum, to keep the high quality look and feel of the case.


You have to remove a single thumb screw to take off the top cover of the Fusion. As you can see there are three general compartments - one for the mainboard, one containing the hard drives and a third which houses the power supply and optical drive. The PCI slots for the mainboard have air vents while there is another grill above the mainboard as well. The air vents inside the PCI covers are rather large, as compared to the fine variants used in the Thermaltake Lanbox we reviewed here. The power supply is placed upside down inside the case, but you may choose to turn it around if you wish. Antec has constructed the case so that you may use any normal ATX power supply within the enclosure.


The two afore mentioned fans can be found in the mainboard compartment These two fans blow air out of the case and use a 12V Molex connector. The interesting part here is the fact that each of the fan comes with a switch to vary the speed at which it turns at. Antec has also placed a plastic sliding door between the power supply and mainboard compartments, which should aid in cable management. The screw to secure the door is easily accessible as long as the case is empty. You will have problems reaching the screw as soon as a mainboard and graphic card are installed.


The optical drive can can be removed to allow for easy installation. Even though it may look like two drives can be installed, this is not the case. The top space is blocked by the LCD. Antec will also be offering a budget case, based on the same internal design of the Fusion, but without the display. These have the NSK model name and will also feature two optical drive bays. The hard drive mount can be taken out of the case by removing four normal screws. There are rubber mountings to absorb any vibrations the hard drive may produce.