Computex 2008 Preview: Antec Skeleton Case Prototype
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 30, 2008 3:07 PM EST- Posted in
- Anand
Antec gave us a sneak peek at an early prototype most controversial case design yet: the Skeleton. It's a totally open air case design, your motherboard is mostly exposed and sits on the upper level of the "case" while below it you have room for a power supply, optical drive and hard drive. The entire thing is cooled by a slow spinning 250mm fan and there's enough room to passively cool your CPU with a good heatsink.
Availability will be around September of this year and pricing has yet to be determined. What you see in the gallery is a very early prototype, the final product will be made out of better materials and have some minor changes to allow for things like larger video cards.
Gallery: Antec Skeleton Case Prototype
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CSMR - Friday, May 30, 2008 - link
The fan might be very slow running and if it points upwards all it has to do is help convection a little bit.But what about EMI noise? Would that be a problem with no metal enclosure?
mindless1 - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
No, it is much more effective if pointed downward, this has to do with the airflow patterns being different on the intake vs exhaust of an axial fan.Yes EMI is an issue, but whether a problem or not is subject, depends quite a lot on if you have anything close enough that is sensitive to and degraded from that noise pickup.
shaw - Friday, May 30, 2008 - link
I think the noise would make me take a hammer to it. Plus surely it would be over priced.Anonymous Freak - Friday, May 30, 2008 - link
The whole point is that it is *NOT* noisy. It has a very large fan that can spin much slower than a conventional fan to achieve the same airflow. You can use a fanless processor heatsink, and could get away with one of the large passive video card coolers. (Obviously, it's not meant for massive overclocking, just a stylish enthusiast computer. But I have a mildly overclocked system in a conventional case with much less cooling than this thing.)The only "noisy" bit would be to make sure you get a reasonably quiet power supply and hard drive.
mindless1 - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
Lack of sheet metal vibrations are the main gain, you cannot achieve as much cooling by pointing only a larger slow fan at a distance. You will necessarily need good enough passive heatsinks that if you had them in the closed case with optimal design, it'd run even cooler.Try it sometime, take a big fan and use only that, increasing RPM till it keeps parts cool enough.
Fanless processor - not quieter. I can't hear the processor fan inside my case for one good reason, it is INSIDE the case instead of external.
Video card is the harder part to cool, except there are passive cards already that can be used in either case type.
The open air fan will be noisier as-in make as much noise and have that escape into the room, the only real hope for this versus a well optimized case is to reduce or eliminate resonant and transmitted vibrations from a traditional case's metal sheeting which also escape into a room.
The idea that a big fan is magic is not true. It only works up to the point where you have one big enough to run at very low RPM and we are already there with case-internal fans. Beyond that the next tweak is not having any fan situated where the noise has a direct line to the user's ear, rather being absorbed a fair amount by whatever it's bouncing off of, which with a typical system would be the wall behind it.
DawsonsDada - Friday, May 30, 2008 - link
I think it looks interesting. Wouldn't have to worry as much about making sure everything fit okay but cable clutter could be an issue. Hopefully there is some way to route the cables so they don't look like someone spilled a plate of spaghetti on it!gigahertz20 - Friday, May 30, 2008 - link
I can just imagine this thing sitting next to my desk when all of a sudden, I bump something with my elbow causing it to fall off my desk, and hit the exposed motherboard breaking it. Also, just imagine how dusty that thing would get with all the parts exposed. What are they thinking? Who would buy this?kondor999 - Wednesday, June 4, 2008 - link
I disagree. You're assuming that you would blithely (and idiotically) place it in harm's way just as you would(?) a regular PC.I think it's brilliant, and it would be a lot of fun to put all your components "in the shop window", so to speak.
In any case; It's new, different, and daring. If they build it, I'll buy it.
radams - Sunday, June 1, 2008 - link
It would get less dusty than a conventional case since the air pressure would be at equilibrium.ineedaname - Saturday, May 31, 2008 - link
This case is obviously for benching and not really for regular use. Benchers prefer 2 have an open case for doing dice or ln2. This was not designed for regular users who would spill their drink all over it by accident.