In Figure 4, you can see the front of the case with its front door opened. One of the main flaws of Sonata III 500 (at least in our opinion) was not fixed on Sonata Elite: the power button is located behind the door, making you to have to open the front door every time you want to turn your computer on or off. After a while it is really tiring.

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Figure 4: External bays.

A difference between Sonata III 500 and Sonata Elite here is the removal of the two external 3 ½” bays that is still present on Sonata III 500 but not on Sonata Elite anymore. However Sonata Elite comes with an adapter that allows you to install an external 3 ½” device (floppy disk drive or memory card reader) on any 5 ¼” bay.

Sonata Elite, like Sonata III 500, doesn’t come with fans installed on the front panel or on the side panels.

In Figure 5, you can see the rear panel from Sonata Elite. The case comes with a 120 mm fan with a switch to select between three speeds (low, medium or high) attached to the rear panel. This is a terrific improvement over Sonata III 500, where this switch was located inside the case hanging from the fan. This fan comes with a standard peripheral power connector, so you can’t install it on the motherboard to monitor its speed. Above the expansion slots there is a mesh for air exhaustion, to be used with a blower that comes with the case and about which we will talk in more details in the next page.

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Figure 5: Rear panel.

The rear panel comes with a tab for installing a padlock (or warranty seal) to prevent unauthorized persons from opening the case.

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Figure 6: Tab for installing a padlock or seal.

Now let’s take a look inside Antec Sonata Elite.