Customer Reviews

Black & Silver Micro Atx Tower EA-380 High Eff Psu 80PLUS Certifd

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

 

 

If you plan your projects correctly then you will enjoy the results. That seems to be a fair assumption when it involves finding the right case for your particular needs.
For me, I needed a small case but still a tower design because after trying other designs such as cube cases, htpc etc., they were either too restrictive as far as power supply size or heat sinks.
Antec have always made good quality cases in thier construction and layout in the tower design. This case was not designed for gamers or generally those needing large power supplies over 500w. The equiped power supply that the case comes with is a modest 380 earthwatts.
My needs fit this case perfectly. What I wanted was a smaller tower design for under a desk that would fit a micro atx board, that was quiet, simple in looks, made of quality material. Antec made exactly that. The dual chamber design keeps the system cool. Yes you have to take your time a little more on the build if you decide to keep the hard drive in the upper chamber mounted under the dvd drive, it is a tighter fit. All of this is what you have to expect with smaller dimensions over all but in the end it works and it works very well because antec takes care to keep things designed in a way so that smaller quarters does'nt mean more noise or warmer temps. What makes it work is up to the individual as well, that's where the planning correctly comes in for a good build such as using a cpu & graphics card that makes sense in a case like this as opposed to being more suited for a gaming case with a big power supply.
I give antec an A+ for this case. It has many of the features of its big brothers such as rubber isolation for hard drive mounting, rubber feet to reduce vibration & heavier steel construction. Read the specs for the rest of the features or check out the pictrures for yourself. I did and that's what sold me.

PROS:
I wanted a smaller more compact PC case and the review of this case on "[...]' convinced me to give it a try. A MSI 785GM-E65 micro ATX motherboard fit perfectly in the case. A Scythe Big Shuriken low profile processor cooler fits in the case but required a little finagaling with a short 90 degree screw driver to get the upper clip lever in place. The height of this CPU cooler is perfect for this case. AMD Phenom II X4 925 95W processor is showing around 95-98 degrees CPU temp with this combination. The 380 power supply that comes with the case is quiet and perfectly adequate for a quiet low power PC. The case comes with an Antec three speed 120mm rear cooling fan that is fairly quiet at the slower speed settings but I replaced the Antec fan with a Scythe. The case also has two locations in the front for 92mm fans (one at the bottom and one about midway up below the floppy disk mounting tray. A Scythe 92mm fan fit nicely in the bottom mounting location (installing one is probably overkill). The case can accomodate either two optical CD/DVD drives or a single CD/DVD and a hard drive. A second 3.5" hard drive mounting location is provided on the bottom floor of the case which could interfere with a card installed in the lowest PCI slot of the mother board. No PCI cards are needed in this computer as the MSI board has onboard graphics and NIC so the possible interference is a don't care. Two adapters for mounting 3.5" hard drives come with the case. The adapters make use rubber isolators to minimize vibration and noise which work quite nicely.

CONS:
Location and spacing of the Molex and Sata power connectors on the power supply cabling seems rather hodge podge and isn't very well thought out so plan on using molex to sata adapters if you want a neat wiring installation particularly if you install two hard drives (one in the top and one on the bottom).

The upper compartment for the power supply and optical drives is pretty space limited. Plan on using the shortest CD/DVD drives you can find (ASUS and Lite-On DVD drives fit ok). The I/O and power connectors for these devices need to be in place before you put the screws in to mount the upper CD/DVD.

OVERALL: Antec has designed a well thought out nicely done case. I am impressed by the unique mechanical design of Antec cases I have used. I liked the NSK 3480 well enough to purchase a second one. Amazon free shipping was a plus.

This is a very compact and solid case, as expected. But i wasn't able to fit in my old CD/DVD drive. So I had to buy a new one. And it's not very easy to put two hard disks and one DVD drive into the case. To fit better into the space, you may want to make sure all your drives are running on SATA interface.
The nice thing about this case? it is quiet.

I initially ordered this item on a whim and started having serious buyer's remorse once it arrived. That said, the Antec EA-380 slowly started to grow on me and I consider it to be a wonderful investment. It is a spartan and very sturdy case, which I like. Also, it doesn't have all of the ridiculous led's and features some cases come with. This beast is made of thick, cold rolled sheet steel, probably 14 gauge and a plastic facade. Empty, it weighs about the same as my Lian Li PC-A70 all aluminum E-ATX full tower (~20 lbs)!

I purchased this item for $90 in September or so of 2008, free shipping with an 80% plus power supply included in the deal. In retrospect this was a steal. I had intended to use it as a Home Theater PC, but the aesthetics just didn't fit, so I've made it a workstation in the mean-time and it performs this task very well.

Do note, you will need some clever cable management skills, as the PSU is not modular and is situated on top at the rear, and if you intend to fill both of the top bays, well... good luck. Also, you will need to purchase some after market fans to keep this little guy cool - 1*120 exhaust and 2*92 mm intake fans, but it can handle a top end video card, maybe two if you upgraded the power supply. I had to perform some minor case modifications in the way of enlarging a cable port; no big deal when you have a Milwaukee 12 Amp angle grinder on hand!

I would recommend the following configuration, two Blu/DVD drives and internally, two 64GB Solid State Drives in RAID 0, with a 2.5" laptop 500 gb drive for storage, or a plain old 1 TB Hard drive, they're cheap enough. I believe you can mount three smaller drives with relative ease. Mine runs on a single 128 GB SSD with Windows 7 and an average quad core CPU but is very quick. This was an excellent buy with reasonable room for expansion within a mATX form factor; you get the case, power supply as well as two external and two internal drive mounts. It is an excellent multi-tasker and at the price of a power supply unit or ram alone, quite a deal!

NB: I'd seriously use laptop drives in this case and upgrade the stock fan, most mATX boards come with at least three headers.

Very good quality and finish as always from Antec. Selectable three speed internal fan; very quiet fan and power supply. Tricky, but workable, cable management.

This is a high quality compact case with an 380watt energy efficient ANTEC power supply. First, the assembly instructions could be more detailed, so go slow when getting started. From first inspection, one might be tempted to remove the front facing panel, but don't do this. The 5.25" and 3.25" blanks can be removed from the inside. Installing a hard drive on the bottom of the case will most likely prohibit use of the bottom slot on the motherboard. In my case, I am not using any peripheral cards, so not a problem. In the end, I was quite pleased with the assembled result.

This is absolutely the best computer case I've ever bought / used / seen / worked with. Accessing the inside is particularly well designed, making it super easy to open and work on. As another reviewer mentioned, though, the power-supply connectors, lengths, and options are a bit poorly thought out..

For my needs, this case is the perfect size. I was looking to build a new small-ish computer for an HTPC + general purpose computing, and since my old computer was extremely loud and produced SOOO much heat, I wanted something that was both power-conserving and very quiet, especially since it would be in the living room. I thought about a mini-ITX case, but decided they were too limiting for what I wanted. This case is probably the next best thing.

This case comes with an 80+ BRONZE power supply (PSU), which means it is at least 83% efficient, I believe. Thumbs up to that! That means less heat and more energy efficient. The previous version of this case just came with a standard 80+, so if you read about this case elsewhere, and they don't mention the bronze part, you're probably reading about the previous version. Someone mentioned the power supply had a whine to it.. Mine doesn't whine, but the fan in the power supply is louder than the original case fan on low speed.. I can't hear it if I am 3 feet away from it.. so it's not very loud.

First, the case does have a few points of concern, though..

a) The front-panel audio jacks (on my case, at least) are extremely tight.. plugging headphones into the jack seems wrong for some reason.. It's fits, but you really need to jam it in there. No idea what's up with that..
b) The power-supply and drive bay area is a tight fit for an optical drive. You have to specifically buy a short optical drive.. I don't think this is a big issue these days, but if you plan to drop an older optical drive in there, it might not fit. That's the drawback to this case being pretty short depth wise, which I particularly like a LOT.
c) The case fan is a "tri-cool" fan, which has a switch on a cable that lets you select low-medium-high speed.. However, I couldn't come up with an easy way to get that switch outside the case.. So to change the speed, I would have needed to open up the case.. *However*, on both medium and high, the fan is way too loud for me, so I never would have actually changed the speed.. On low, cooling was fine, anyway.. Personally, I replaced the fan because I happened to conveniently have one... (see below).
d) The power connectors on the different wires coming out of the power supply are strangely configured, and annoying for set-up purposes if you plan to really fill the case up. I had a single molex to dual sata power cable floating around which made it easier for me in the upper compartment.
e) I wasn't impressed with the side duct / air-flow thing.. It made the case louder and didn't show to help with cooling when I ran some tests with the original heat sink/fan for my CPU.

As for good things going for the case..

a) The high efficiency power supply. It might "only" be 380 watts, but in such a small case, it's perfect. You'd need to drop a pretty big video card in there to over-power it.
b) The separate compartments: power supply, optical drive, hard drive(s) in one, the motherboard and components in the other.
c) Ease of working with the case: to access the inside, you remove 2 thumb screws (no screwdriver required) that hold the top of the case in place.. Pull back the top piece to remove it, then the side panel slides up and pops right out. It's an excellent design.
d) The metal used to make the case is THICK, making it extremely sturdy, and heavier for less noise (from vibration).
e) The motherboard compartment is nice and open and really easy to work in.
f) Included rubber grommets for mounting the hard drives for added sound suppression (won't make the case vibrate..)
g) Really, this case is mini! I couldn't ask for anything better. I particularly like that it's not deep.

Other things..

The case is *sort of* limited for hard drive space.. There's 1 bay in the power supply compartment (well, there are 2 bays, but 1 will probably be taken by an optical drive..), and 2-ish in the motherboard compartment.. In the motherboard compartment, one is officially for a hard drive (at the very bottom of the case.., which is a strange place, but it works..), and the other is the 3.5 inch bay for a floppy drive, but you can put a hard drive there.. I bought a 3.5 inch mount that holds two 2.5 inch (notebook) hard drives, and put that in the power supply compartment. It works great!

As for my build, I put an Intel i5-2400 in there, and got a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus heat sink for it.. This fits juuust perfectly in the case! There's probably about 1/2 inch or so space between the heat sink and the side of the case.. Well, I needed to remove the side-duct and cover up the hole.. I then tested with/without a fan, etc, and determined I could run the heat sink fanless, as long as I restricted the airflow from the case fan to draw air across the heat sink.. That left me with an extra fan, which I used as the case fan, and plugged it into the CPU fan controller on the motherboard. Case fan problem solved.

Pros:
- Solidly build case
- Great noise/heat isolation
- Includes a power supply
- Looks pretty good
- Power supply has good efficiency rating
Cons:
- Power supply is a bit under powered for today's computers

Overall:
This case was used to construct a Intel core i5 and it is running great. No heat issues; not very loud, looks good and is very durable. The case was easy to open for construction and so far maintenance has been unneccesary. I did end up replacing the power supply with a higher rated power supply but the computer was running great with the stock power supply. Components:

Components Used:
- Intel Core i5 750 Processor 2.66 GHz 8 MB LGA1156 CPU I5-750BOX
- Gigabyte GA-P55M - UD2 Ultra Durable 3 Motherboard
- Corsair 4GB Dual Channel Corsair DDR3 Memory for Intel Core i5 Processors (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9)
- EVGA 01G-P3-N959TR GeForce 9500 GT 1GB DDR2 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card
- Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD10EADS
- Samsung Internal Half Height DVD-W Supermulti SATA 22X Lightscribe (Black)

Good case. Well-made, quiet, energy-efficient, attractive. Have owned one for 1.5 years. Bought two more.

I bought this case to build a compact, quiet, low-power Core 2 Quad Hackintosh. The build quality on the case is very good, I love the compartmentalized design and while things are a bit tight inside, I didn't choose this case in hopes of cramming tons of components into it.

I upgraded the case fan and swapped out the PSU fan for a nearly silent Noctua fan. Things were good and very quiet: I could barely hear any of the fans and they're what silentpcreview refers to as a "low whoosh" which isn't bothersome.

About a month ago the PSU began emitting a horrible high-pitched whine. Imagine a mosquito buzzing right in your ear, only you can't swat it away. I have to play music to distract me from the noise, but then the music distracts me from my work. If I were just a decade older or had attended more heavy metal concerts as a youth, I might not be able to hear it. As it is, the computer is near unusable because of this problem. I have measured my max power draw with a kill-a-watt (Handbrake transcoding blu-ray rips: mkv to ATV2 format) at under 100W from the wall, so I am exploring the option of a PicoPSU setup.

I'd give the case itself four or five stars, but as the PSU is part of the package and actually detracts from the rest (I'd give the PSU a negative star rating if possible) I think two stars is fair. If it's available without the PSU, I'd recommend the case, just source the PSU on your own.