Welcome back! At the end of February we tested the Antec Overture desktop case and found it lacking in cooling efficiency. We are now only a few months later and they’ve already updated the design in order to solve this issue, have they succeeded? Read on to find out.

On the exterior only a few changes can be noted, the case still looks “the part” and will fit nicely in your multimedia home. In this review we will only be discussing the changes when compared to the original, for more details on the Overture desktop case please click the photo below!



So Antec went back to the drawing board in order to come up with ideas on how to improve the airflow inside a desktop case.



So beside the things mentioned on the sticker in the photo above, what has changed ? ->

What has changed?

The top panel now features ventilation holes, they are however situated over the PCI slots and not the CPU area as I’d hoped:



The right side of the case now features a 80mm output fan:



And the former 92mm temp controlled rear fan has been replaced with a more regular model which runs at full speed 24/7:



And last but not least, to improve cooling for the video card, the PCI back plates now features “breathing”-holes:




What has not changed

Although 4 additions/changes were made to the original idea, I still encountered 2 issues which were still there. The first one is hard to resolve as this will mean they have to change the dimensions of the case or rethink placement of the HDD rack:



There is not much room left between motherboard and the HDD rack, this can cause problems when you use larger CPU heatsinks. Putting the HD’s vertical will spare some room but will allow less HD’s to be installed.

The second unchanged attribute of the Overture is the fact that the PSU still sucks in cool air from outside, then warms it up and blows it out into the case. This approach heats up the inside rather quickly.

Let’s find out how the changes that were made effect the thermal performance of the Overture ->

Test setup

JMke's Test Setup
CPU	P4 2.4 “C” @ 3Ghz - 1.6v vcore
Mainboard	Chaintech 9CJS Zentih
Cooling	Swiftech MCX478-V + 80mm Aerocool Extreme fan
Memory	2 * 256Mb PC3700 OCZ
Video	nVidia TNT2

Room temp during testing was 24°C, full load temperature was obtained by running 2 instances of Folding@Home during minimum 30minutes.

First I installed the system into the original Overture, it ended up looking like this:



Load CPU: 72°C / System: 47°C

Now we switch to the revised version:



Load CPU: 68°C / System: 45°C

4°C drop between the 2 setups and without any increase in noise as the extra 80mm in the revised Overture is virtually silent. While the CPU temp is now outside the *danger* zone, it still comes really close. I decided to swap the PSU fan around so it would blow hot air outside the case:

Load CPU: 67°C / System: 41°C

The drop in CPU temperature is not very encouraging, but the overall system temperature has gone down by quite a bit!

I think the only effective solution to reduce the temperature of the CPU, is to increase the airflow in that area specifically, I noticed some empty space above the PS/2 and USB connectors and was thinking of adding 2x40mm fans. Such small fans are fairly silent and can remove hot air effectively without adding extra noise:



I have yet to test this out as I’m building up the courage to use a Dremel on this case (since last time I kind of messed up the great looking top panel and had to ask TerAngreal to fix it for me).

Onto our conclusion ->

Conclusion

The original Overture was a good looking multimedia desktop case which missed the airflow; the new revised version sports the original’s looks and adds some turbulence; this translates into lower system and CPU temperatures.



To go back to the drawing boards after a product has been on the market for an extended period of time shows true character from the Antec crew, their revised version is a large step in the good direction of providing the end-user with a plug and play desktop case which can house high end systems. Although maximum temperatures still come close to *alarming* levels, they have some degrees to spare.

The only fool proof way to get the CPU temperature down is: ducting. Many OEM manufactures cram hot CPU’s into very small desktop cases; the only way they can get away with this is the fact that they incorporate custom ducting vents into their designs. By guiding cool air to the CPU they can run any system in a small closed environment.

The challenge when building a case which has to fit a multitude of systems is to do away with the heat generated in the case, without compromising compatibility, Antec does a great job with Overture when used with systems <2.4Ghz (P4) <1.8Ghz (AMD); Once you cross that speed barrier you have to start thinking of building some air ducts inside the case to keep the CPU cool!

The Overture does away with heat more efficiently as its predecessor but needs some extra cooling vents to really allow HOT systems to be placed inside.

I would like to thank David from Antec for letting us test-drive the revised Overture.



Questions/Comments: forum thread