It features three 80mm fans all of which have three speed options which are selectable via a small switch that protrudes from each one - we found all but the slowest setting unacceptably noisy for a home theatre case and even the slowest setting wasn’t what we’d call silent.
Two fans are situated in the main chamber of the case and are fitted in an exhaust configuration. This leaves the task of intake to the third fan and your CPU cooler which, depending on your motherboard, should line up at least partially with the ventilation holes atop the case. The MicroFusion is equipped with a 350W 80-Plus certified power supply fitted with an 80mm fan which exhausts hot air directly out the side of the case and provides plenty of connectivity for a fully fitted system inside the chassis. Our test kit comprised of one SATA hard disk, one SATA optical drive, a micro-ATX motherboard and a graphics card and there were still two Molex connectors and a 5V connector spare.
Because of the MicroFusion’s small dimensions, the expansion slots are half-height so you will need a half-height graphics card to build a complete system inside this case. Most of you will likely stick with an integrated graphics chipset, but if you have a half-height card but the bracket is full-height, removing the bracket is as easy as unscrewing the bolts either side of the outputs and you’re in business.
To give us a little room for comparison, we used the same cooler but unfortunately the Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 graphics card we used in the Sugo was too way too big. As a result, we opted for a half-height ATI Radeon HD 3450 with a passive cooler, as it is more likely to appear in most people’s HTPC systems anyway.
Firing up the small FFT test in Prime95 to put the CPU under full load our Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 maxed out at a very respectable 60 degrees centigrade. This is an especially good score considering the SilverStone Sugo, for all its charm, was unable to provide sufficient air for the cooler to do its job and the CPU reached a roasting 82°C.
Our passively cooled Radeon HD 3450 peaked at a very reasonable 52°C while running continuous loops of 3DMark 06’s GPU tests, which is also an impressive showing with all things considered. The set up wasn’t about the break any benchmarking records but the MicroFusion did a great job of keeping the components inside cool.
Many HTPC cases on the market, despite their good looks, are actually very big due to their full ATX nature. The fact that the Antec MicroFusion 350 is a micro ATX case allows your home theatre system to be considerably more discrete will appeal many potential owners. With media PCs, aesthetics are always very important as it’s likely to be on full view when the Jones’ come over to watch Free Willy and we were particularly fond of the retro style fascia of the MicroFusion so it scored well here too.
