Customer Reviews

Antec Take 4 ATX 8 Drive Bay 450-Watt Rackmount Case (Black)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Antec has always been known for its quality products. This case is no exception: plenty of ventilation, rubber vibration isolators, and all that jazz.

Still, Antec has managed to make mistakes.

The cablesfrom the power supply unit are simply too short. The SATA power supply cables are too short, as is the 4-pin 12V. Be prepared to spend another $30 on extension cables.

If not for this silly shortcoming, I would have rated the case higher.

This case is well made. I'm very happy with it. The power supply cables to the motherboard could have been longer by 4-6 inches however. With the Intel motherboard I used, one of the cables (the 4 pronged motherboard power cable) is such a tight fit, it's like a tightrope.

This case features a locking front door. Mine arrived from the vendor with a broken hinge. Antec Customer Service promptly sent a new door. However, this soon developed a broken hinge. 90% of this door is steel yet, the part most subject to stress- the hinge- is made of plastic! This hinge will not support the weight of the door. The power supply unit (PSU) that comes with the Take 4 is a 450W unit. However, I could not get it to supply enough power to operate an Intel Duo Core processor. I replaced it with a better quality 500W PSU and everything runs great. However, the original PSU features an air duct that brings in air from the front of the encloure directly to the air intake on the PSU. A nice feature. However, the new PSU's have the power outlets right where this air duct joins the PSU. So, I had to completely remove this duct. In summary, there are three features of this unit that you will pay for but may end up scrapping- the front door, the PSU and the PSU air duct. It would be a better deal if 1) the door hinge was metal. 2) you had the option of deleting the PSU and its ductwork.

Another unfortunate design feature is the spacing between the Optical drive bays and the hard drive bays. If you want to utilize an IDE CD/DVD unit and an IDE hard drive, you'll have to locate a special IDE cable that is longer than the standard one- if they exist. Most of the current motherboards have only one IDE connector. They should have placed the 3" bay on the left with the optical and HDD bays next to each other.

I bought two of these cases and have them installed in a rackmount desk unit. The design is nice and elegant for an office setting, and the cases are decently quiet if you set the two speed case fans to their lower setting, which is adequate cooling in most setups. The nice thing about this 4U version versus the 3U model is that the power supply is located on the left as opposed to the majoririty of cases like the 3U Take 3 model where they are on the right. The benefit of this is that the case fans are positioned right next to the CPU cooler on most PC ATX motherboards. HOWEVER, as the previous reviewer pointed out (and I wish it had been posted before I bought mine), the power supply cables are too short for some configurations, and is a silly oversight on Antec's part. It depends on your motherboard and hard drives if this will be a problem. One of my cases has an Intel board and all PATA IDE drives, and in that case the cables were tight but just long enough. The other board is an ASUS with all SATA drives, and in that setup the 12V CPU power, the 24pin mobo power, and the SATA power cables are all too short. This was a pain to deal with because it delayed my ability to build the PC by at least a week while I ordered extensions, and the resulting extra wires and connectors both clutter the insides of the case and could result in reliability issues at some point. Despite this problem, the case is relatively inexpensive from Amazon simply because of the free shipping option, so even with the cost of the extensions I consider it a decent deal. I would rated it with fewer stars except the previous reviewer already pointed out its only real drawback.

There is one other thing to consider with this case if you also get the Antec 20" or 26" slide rails made for this case as I did. If you have a rack unit that is not built with a frame, but one that uses L-shape rack rails mounted inside its housing like my desk, the slide rail ears won't fit correctly. I've never mounted a case and slide rails in a rack frame, but I assume the ears are designed to fit them and not something like a desk or roadcase. This is pretty frustrating and I still haven't found a way to mount the slides without actually grinding or machining the ears down so they'll fit. This won't affect you if you only want to mount the chassis itself, but if you get sliders you should make sure they will mount in your setup.

Despite these issues, I'm pleased with these cases. They are nice looking, relatively quiet, cool, sturdy, and having the four hard drive trays makes it a snap to swap them around.