Buy Antec Aria MicroATX Cube CaseAntec Aria MicroATX Cube Case Product Description:
- Accepts motherboards up to MicroATX
- 300 Watt power supply with universal input delivers quiet, stable power
- Four drive bays provide convenient expandability
- Front-mounted ports and 8-in-1 card reader deliver maximum flexibility
- Includes rounded Cobra IDE cable
Product Description
Antec 15130 Aria Small Form-Factor MicroATX Cube PC Case - Tired of your boring, bulky computer? Take home the cleverly compact Aria case and discover just how versatile a cube-shaped computer can be. Whether you'd like a quiet, elegant, and immensely capable multimedia PC for your living room - or perhaps a perfectly portable gaming computer for your next LAN party - Aria is the natural choice. Low profile, small form factor allows Aria to fit almost anywhere; Measures - 7.9(H) x 10.6(W) x 13.2(D); Weighs - 10 lbs (4.6 kg) Includes Antec's unbeatable 3-year parts and labor warranty
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Great Case... minor limitations...
By A. Wilbur
I really like this case. The only real downside is that it is limited as far as cooling is concerned. In SO MANY other ways it is almost limitless, especially when compared to other cube cases. This is the ONLY CASE of this type that you can completely customize yourself! That has to count for something! Anyhow, customizability comes at a cost. The way standard mATX motherboards are designed causes the cooling problem. The CPU sits partially under the PSU (an unheard of full 300w one). This could be fixed with a custom motherboard for the case, but then the whole customizability bonus is out the window and you have a pre-built shuttle box.
You can fit pretty freakin' large heatsink in this baby. I am using a Thermalright AX7 which measures 80mm tall including the 25mm tall fan... its on the large side. The fan just touches the PSU on the side. I am able to remove it and reinstall without taking the motherboard out of the case btw. Many other quality heatsinks can fit in here and still have a good 10mm clearance with a full 25mm tall fan.
The case could cool a little better with some type of an intake fan, but when it was made, they made a choice to make it a quiet pc case, not a case made for overclocking. Even with great flow, how great can the cooling be in one of these cases be anyway? Geez... Oh well, anyhow, it is very very quiet. I really love the 120mm fan in the PS. The slot fan that's included probably isn't doing much, but it can't hurt.
It really is almost unbelievable that this thing can have three hard drives! I even had three in it at first because I had two that needed data taken off of the two extra, and it worked quite nicely. I don't know why anyone would permanently need more than one but... who knows. The front faceplate covering the optical drive is quite nice. I was glad to not have to buy another drive and instead use my current beige one.
What else haven't I mentioned? Well I didn't know that it had two front blue LEDs until I plugged it in. They're pretty neat, and if you don't like them, you can choose not to plug in the molex cable that is giving them power. Also, not many mATX boards will have the correct headers to power the card reader, both USB connectors (three USB headers needed in total) and firewire. That's something to think about when selecting your board.
Taking the case apart is also really easy. I've taken this thing apart so many times its not funny. All you need to do is remove one thumb screw that keeps the top in, slide the top back and up to come off, then press a tab on the side and push the side panel forward to come off (repeat on other side). The cage holding the optical drive and hard drive flips up and lifts out easily. You can even take it out and set it on top of the back of the case without removing any of the IDE or molex connectors (I just did this earlier today when I removed and replaced my heatsink).
Overall I really love this case. I would give it a 4.5 if I could. The ony bad part really is the cooling, but I would rather have a quiet pc running at these temps than a louder one. Oh, and the side panels seem to get scuffed easily, but they all seem to wipe off, no real harm done.
Also, let me say that most AMD processors aren't in trouble until they reach 80C, 60C really isn't anything to worry about. Stock computers with cheap coolers aren't cooling any better...
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
What a case! (Except for the card reader).
By R. Hook
My old motherboard died from bad capacitor plague 4 weeks ago and after 6 years of service, it was time to look for a new solution. I decided to use a Micro ATX motherboard so this meant that i didnt have to use my old noisy ATX tower. I looked around for new cases and found a lot of reviews and excitment about the Antec Aria. After a long time checking i finally bought one.At first I was a little suprised by the size of the case..it was bigger than i imagined. But once i put it on my desk it made a lot of sense because its footprint is small. The build quality is superb. All the materials feel well built and professional, the chassis is aluminium and the side and top panels are insulated with plastic to reduce noise. Even the rear of the case looks cool with the huge 12cm fan. The hard disk and DVD rack is genius and i like the fact that i can put 3 hard disks in at the same time (Would be very useful for a home theatre).Building it was quite a challenge and it helps if you have small hands. I inserted the cpu, ram and all the cables on the motherboard before i put it in the case and this helped a lot. I just wish that i removed the case's powersupply before i installed the motherboard because there is not much room to move.I imagined (from the words of Antec) that this would be "the worlds quietest pc" but noise is noticable due to my cpu fan (AMD Sempron 3000+) and the complete lack of sound insulation on the front of the case. There is only thin shiny plastic here along with a thin steel grate for ventilation. I will probably get an aftermarket cpu fan to fix this problem. Happily, the PSU fan and the included cyclone blower are unnoticable and seem to extract quite a bit of hot air. Note: The PSU fan can be plugged into the motherboards "case fan" header so you can monitor its speed!Im not so happy about the included card reader, it just does not work! When i was first trying to re-install XP from the boot cd, the computer would crash badly with a blue screen of death complaining about a usb hub. Once i disconnected this though, my re-install went perfectly. Even after i installed Service pack 2 and all the latest updates from Windows update, i receive the same blue screen error. I have sent an email to Antec and im waiting for their response to that issue. Ive even tried using headers on a PCI USB2 card to see if my motherboard was the cause of conflict. Needless to say, i still get the same BSOD error.So overall, im happy with my new computer except for the card reader. PS: Make sure your DVD recorder has its eject button on the far right side of its face, so that you can use the beatiful drive cover. Its a lot more elegant than my old mac g4 and g3 drive covers..they were shockers. And make sure your motherboard has a ten pin firewire header for the front port!**15/02/2006 update**- I contacted Antec about 3 weeks ago about my card reader problem. They said that my unit must have been faulty so they sent me another one (at no charge). Im happy to report that the new reader performs perfectly.- Also, i fitted a Zalman CNPS7000B-ALCu CPU cooler to reduce my CPU fan noise and the computer is now pleasantly quiet. Just like the way Antec advertised it.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful.best microATX case
By Dumb as Mud
Don't worry about heat. With a all time 50% cpu load the cpu and motherboard increased only 10 degrees each without cyclone blower. The design inside of this is most unusual. With 3 hd and one cd drive in bay, it will take some planning and practice to finally hook up power cables and controllers without blowing your stack, very compact. And when booting up you discover you need to go inside a few more times you won't find it to be much fun. The case comes with many extra cables that take advantage of features on motherboard, pretty exciting, have a few more to try out, one is a fancy audio header. Installing the cards is more trouble than standard cases but also better, warped cards don't do well. Taking out the power fan noise is a big improvement, now I can hear the TV and radio, but a stock Intel cpu fan is to blame for the rest. The usb ports and card reader in front actually work no problem on a Asus TUSI-M motherboad. There is also room on pci slots for 3 cards and the cyclone blower on top. With 3 hd's pci slot #3 must use a half size card or the side hd will hit it. It took 5 hours and 15 minutes to transfer old into new, with only one cut and one dead video card. There are no quality control problems with this. It is running a pentium III 1.2ghz (107 degrees) The Asus is 113 degrees, and without the low speed cyclone blower, and the drive bay is maxed out, and 3 card slots full. Once again you will be quite surprised with the design inventions in this and very high quality, but the manual has poor information/ instructions, but good english.
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