 Welcome to an unboxing that I'm actually quite excited about. This is the Antec 25, no no, just Antec. They're just celebrating their quarter century of quality and innovation, which I think is very fair to say, with a little 25 after their logo. But this is the Solo 2, which sounds like an upgraded Solo, but what it actually is, is the quietest case they've ever produced. It also has a lot of features that we have yet to see from Antec, and some features that have become Antec staples. So we've got internal USB 3 headers on this guy, which is a first for Antec, and then we've also got some previous innovations, where they're basically taking everything they know about silent computing cases and they are putting it in here. So, the sticker's really in my way, but let's say a few things first. Okay, so there's a dual layer design. So, it's a 1mm steel slash polycarbonate top and side panel design. What that does is it isolates heat and deadens noise. So we saw multi-layer panels introduced on the P180, so this is an older innovation. We also have dual hard drive mounting options, so you can either use grommets or even a suspension to mount your hard drives. We've seen this in the past, so that is not really a new thing either. Here we have an anodized aluminum front panel, which is something that is relatively new for Antec, because they don't really do the aluminum front panels, but it's in my... Okay, based on the pictures I've seen so far, we're going to get the case open in a minute. It looks like it's going to look awesome. We've also got a matte black interior, which they've started doing on their higher end cases. Finally, high end I.O., so two front panel USB 3 ports with internal motherboard connector for unparalleled data transmission. That might be a little bit of an overstatement, unparalleled data transmission. I mean, there are things that are faster than USB 3, but I see where they are coming from. And it's certainly better than having those USB 3 connectors that are more of a pass-through, rather than using a proper internal header, because most of the new motherboards, your P67s, your Z68 motherboards, are going to support just fine. In terms of packing materials, we've got about an inch of foam on all sides of the case. Looks good. And let's pull out the case itself. Now, based on some of the reviews that I've seen of this guy, supposedly it is even better than the Sonata series, the quietest case ever produced by Antec, so that is a very serious claim. And let's have a look at how they have achieved that. So first of all, they've achieved it by confusing me about which direction it opens from. There we go. Let this baby open. Ooh, that looks nice. That is actually a very, very nice front panel finish, so hold on. Let's start with the parts that are less interesting, like the manual, and that's pretty much it. Okay. So we have a piano black powder coat finish on the top. So you can see on the top we actually have an exhaust vent here, like we saw on the original P180. No shroud on it, just a regular exhaust vent. The sides are also piano black, a glossy finish. Here we are. You can see that there. The whole case is using very soft, I did want that there for now, I can move closer if it helps though, very, very soft rubber grommet, so that should actually deaden any vibration being passed from the case to the table or the desk that it is positioned on. I'm just going to run through the specs really quick with you here, guys. So elegant appearance, yep, we can see that. Dual hard drive mounting system using tray mount with pre-installed silicone grommets or suspension mounts. Two external 5-1⁄4. This is something I really like to see. Fewer 5-1⁄4 inch, because most people are not installing a ton of 5-1⁄4 inch devices, something like, you know, your drive and then maybe a fan controller is about all you really need. So instead, they've taken more of that internal space that's available to them and they've allocated it instead of to stuff that people are less likely to use. Here is the internal design, so there's your plastic layer as well as your metal layer. That plastic layer is going to help to deaden sound. Okay, so instead they've allocated it to longer video cards, so you can install a huge video card in this case with no complications and then more options for mounting your 3-1⁄2 inch drives. Very, very good idea right there. Next we've got the removable power supply support beam, so we'll have a look at that in a minute. Front accessible flip down drive cages. What's a front accessible flip down drive cage? I guess we'll find out. Give me a second, I'm going to have to figure out how to open this. There we go, I figured out how to open it, so there's just a few little tabs here. So you just bend those back, you open up the whole thing, and there is the flip down front accessible hard drive bays. Now you can also see you can install a 120 mil fan here and then for additional internal cooling, and this is really neat because this looks like a case that doesn't have much ventilation on the surface, but for additional cooling you can throw another fan here in the front which is going to directly blow cool air onto your graphics card and when you look at this from the side you can see there's actually significant ventilation space not only on the right hand side, but also on the left hand side of the front panel, so those fans are not going to be starved for air, but by blocking the entire front of the case you're going to reduce the amount of noise that gets transmitted directly to someone sitting in front of it. So let's have a closer look at the front. I don't know how to get you guys a good angle on this, but this is a really neat finish. It's not like very coarse brushed lines, it's very very very fine, fine brushed lines on the anodized aluminum which actually has a very cool, a very sort of matte look until you get really really close and then you can see the brush, it's kind of a neat effect. We have a hard drive LED here, power reset, front audio ports, USB 3 and front USB 2, there's your stamped Antec logo and that pretty much does it for the front of the case, and look at that, more ventilation down there. So because you're held up by these feet you're going to be able to get a little bit more fresh air to that bottom fan which as I mentioned before there is going to be blowing directly over your graphics card. So let's have a look at the internal layout. We've got all of our included screws, some zip ties, some good stuff like that for building your PC back here. We've also got, ah here, okay, so you can either install three drives using the trays or you can use the suspension mounting system which is included with the accessories here to install two drives. Now given that most people are not at this time installing more than a couple of drives, I mean especially if you're building a new system, you can buy three terabyte hard drives these days, what's the incentive to install eight drives in your system? So here we go, oh no, there's the suspension. You know what, let's go ahead, I'm going to reopen this from the front here and I'll show you guys the suspension system. So I didn't screw this all the way back in unfortunately, so that'll save us some time. So yeah, if you're not installing a ton of drives you just pull these guys out. There's the grommets, so that's the one way of mounting. These are compatible, two and a half inch drives as well, you can see the spacing there for your two and a half inch SSDs or even hard drives. And then here is the suspension system, so you run your drives through these and what that does is it completely isolates any vibrations from the drive away from your case. I mean don't transport your system around like that, that's more for stationary systems in your office, you know, don't expect to ship it across the country using the suspension, but it's there as an option in case you want it. In terms of the rest of the internal layout, we've got our front panel connectors here, including an internal USB 3 header right there, so that's going to plug directly into your motherboard instead of routing around the back to the I.O. shield, as well as your front USB 2, your front audio, and then your front panel switches for your power, your reset, all of that good stuff. We have an enormous cutout for CPU heatsink mounting options, so if you have a backplate, there is no way with this case you're going to have to remove your motherboard in order to install a CPU cooler with a backplate. You just take off your other side panel and you screw the backplate in from the back, no worries about that. Okay, um, you know, here, give me a sec, I'll be back with a big video card. So here's a Radeon 699 for scale to show you guys how much extra space there is in this case for ginormous video cards, so no worries as far as that's concerned, as long as you've got some external exhaust going, you can draw fresh air in from the front and you are good to go. We've also got an included Antec Tri-Cool fan, you can see the little Tri-Cool switch is built into the back here, so we've got, oh, no, that's a dual cool, so it's got a high and a low setting on the back of the case, and it's also got built in silicone grommets, so check this out. So you're actually mounting it using grommets, and then it also has isolators, see the orange isolators here on either side, to keep it away from the case, whether you have it exhausting air or whether you turn it around and use a watercooler like the Antec 620 or 920, you turn that around, draw in fresh air to cool your CPU, and it's going to still be isolated from the case. Alright, we have a power supply support bar here, which you can remove just by taking out a couple screws if you do not need it, and that's pretty much, oh, this is smart, I didn't even notice what this was for, so what this is for is so you can take a power supply with a 120 mil fan and you can mount it either way, and that 120 mil fan is going to take in fresh air, so this is kind of like a bottom mounted power supply, but it's in the top, that's very, very cool. So what it means is your power supply takes fresh air here, blows it out the back, and doesn't interfere with the cooling of your system at all, very neat feature. Seven PCI expansion slots, so that's standard, and then you've got your tool-less optical drive mounting rails here, and I think that pretty much covers everything I wanted to say about the Solo 2 from Antec. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.