Sonata III 500 is a mainstream high-quality mid-tower case from Antec, coming with a 500 W power supply (Antec EarthWatts 500), a three-speed 120 mm fan on the rear and a very beautiful black finishing. Let’s take a look at this case from Antec.

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Figure 1: Antec Sonata III 500 case.

As you can see in Figure 1, Sonata III 500 is made of zinc-coated steel (a.k.a. SECC) with automotive black paint applied. Its front panel is made of plastic and a door covers its external bays. If you pay close attention you will see that there is a lock on the front panel and on the side panel, making it more difficult for someone without the key to open the case’s front panel or side panel – but not impossible, as the key used is similar to the keyboard lock key used when computers still ran on coal.

In Figure 2, you can see the front panel with its door closed and, in Figure 3, the front panel with its door opened.

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Figure 2: Front panel with door closed.

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Figure 3: Front panel with door opened.

As you can see Sonata III 500 has three external 5 ¼” bays and two external 3 ½” bays, plus two USB ports, mic in jack, headphone jack and, what is quite handy, an eSATA port. It is really good to find a mainstream case with an eSATA port, as users are more and more opting to have an external hard disk drive for backing up data or for carrying data around and without questioning eSATA is the best option available today, as it allows the hard disk drive to achieve the same performance as if it were installed inside the case.

In Figure 4, you can see the rear side from Sonata III 500. There you can see the rear 120 mm fan and the power supply that come with the product. This case has seven expansion slots, just like 99% of the cases on the market today.

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Figure 4: Rear panel.