Antec shows line up down in Las Vegas

ANTEC USED CES this year to showcase a raft of new products, and a goodly number of updated ones. They ranged from the ordinary to the curious, cheap to expensive, but they all had one thing in common, they all appeared solidly built.

One of the most chunky pieces of metal was the Phantom 350, a fanless 350w power supply. Yes, you heard that right, a completely fanless power supply, for those into low noise PCs, this is the one for you. It combines the legendary Antec quality with high efficiency parts, and a massive, heavy, ribbed aluminum case. The entire case acts as a heatsink, and runs utterly silently. For $169 MSRP, it looks like quite a deal.

There is also a mostly fanless Phantom that packs over 500w coming soon. I say mostly fanless because there is a fan in it, but for most of the units operating life, the fan will be off. This low speed, large diameter fan only kicks in when power draw is very high, meaning hat the bigger Phantom will be free of fan noise most of the time. There are also other ratings and form factors in the works, but those are stories for another day.

Antec also has a more conventional, and much lighter Neopower power supplies coming out. The three models are rated at 380, 430 and 480w, and all come with a single 120mm fan for low speed, quiet operation. Unlike the Truepower power supplies, this one does not have a Molex 5v/12v connector on the back, what will you plug your cigarette lighter adapter into now?

Moving on to cases, Antec again did not disappoint. They were showing 2 standout cases. The first was an update of the portable Lanboy case called the Super Lanboy. It comes with easy carry straps, a removable docking toolbox, and enough LEDs to make a casino designer cry foul. It is bright, no doubt about that. The Super Lanboy also comes with lots of drive bays, USB ports, and everything else a gamer could reasonably ask for in a convenient case. This is a well designed case.

A slightly less conventional case is the Aria, a neat little MicroATX case. Imagine a shuttle box enlarged by about 50% in every dimension, and you get the idea. It is right between the Shuttle and the Monarch Hornet. The top slides off, as do the sides for easy access, and the drive cages come out with a slight tug. The Aria is targeted at gamers and other highly mobile users. It has a few less feature than a full sized case, but what did you expect, it is much smaller. This one is definitely a worthwhile addition to your spring small form factor shopping list.

The last class of things Antec has on display was the gadgets, lights and widgets category. All the usual suspects were there, and as usual, there was a single standout. The cleverly named Antec Notebook Cooler is just that, an X shaped flat, perforated panel with 2 fans in it. Powered by a USB port, it blows cool air in from under the laptop, keeping the underside ventilated, and the user with less potential for burned thighs. While this was one product I was not expecting, I came away impressed.

The second widget was a drive cooling bracket. If you take a close look at a hard drive, you will notice that the cover is a light metal sheet, the bottom a circuit board, and the sides are heavy chunks of metal. Because of this, much of a drives hear is put out from the sides, not the top and bottom. The Antec cooler pulls the heat off of the sides of the drive, through hollow tubes, and out the back. It is the first cooler I have seen like this, and it looks rather interesting.

Antec had a host of products at CES, and there was no 'loser' among them. Everything just did what it should have, quietly and unobtrusively. There was nothing which had a cheap feel to it,everything there looked built to last, with long warranties, leading me to think Antec knew it built everything right. µ