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Physical design
The Fusion resembles a brushed-metal stereo component on the outside, complete with a blue-tinted VFD display and a big round sound knob. If you're not paying attention, you might miss the hidden optical drive door and frontpanel USB ports. At a glance you can't tell the difference between the Fusion and an ordinary home theater component.
Internally, though, there is a world of difference. While working inside of it, I frequently thought of the Fusion as a converted 3U server chassis because it is built so much like one. There are two 120mm fans on the motherboard side of the chassis, and a bracket for a not-included CPU hood or 80mm fan in the rear. The hard drive cage is in the front, and fits two side-mounted hard drives. Technically you can fit two 5.25" drives in the other drive cage, but one bay is mostly occupied with the frontpanel VFD, so realistically you can only use one optical drive. Most CD/DVD drives these days have the eject button positioned in the lower right corner of the drive's faceplate; if yours is located anywhere else on the drive, it won't work with the Fusion because the integrated frontpanel eject button won't line up properly.
You can fit a MicroATX, FlexATX, or Mini-ITX motherboard into the Fusion, but ATX, BTX, and MiniATX boards won't fit. There is room for a maximum of four peripheral cards or backplate panels.
The frontpanel VFD and sound knob are tricky because they require special software in order to function. Unfortunately, GNU/Linux and the *BSDs don't yet have drivers for these devices, so if you're planning on building a Freevo or MythTV system, you may want to avoid the Fusion for now. Update: The iMON plugin for LIRC seems to be able to control the VFD in GNU/Linux. I haven't tested it, but it reportedly works with silimar or identical VFDs to the one that is used int he Fusion.
Power supply
The included power supply is a special-issue Antec HE 430W. Instead of the standard HE 430's detachable cables, the model included with the Fusion has integrated power cords like most other power supply units. There are five Molex connectors, one mini-Molex, and two SATA power connectors as well as a PCI-E and 4-pin voltage regulator connector. The ATX connector itself is 24-pin, but the 4-pin block on the end is detachable for 20-pin motherboards.
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| Antec Fusion: front view |
Assembly
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| Antec Fusion: the cable pass-through (click to enlarge) |
The Antec Fusion chassis does not include any kind of manual. In building a system with this case, I would have liked to have had a diagram explaining what all of the extra cords, cables, and connectors were and where I was supposed to plug them in. Fortunately most things are self-explanatory if you have built several computers in the past; if you have not, I'm sure you'll be quite puzzled. The missing manual can be found in PDF format on the Antec Web site.
There are three distinct chambers inside of the Fusion. One is for the frontpanel and hard drives, one for the motherboard, and one for the optical drive and power supply. The primary reason for doing this is to isolate heat and noise, though I'm not sure that noise isolation in a system like this is as important as choosing low-power components that don't require heavy-duty fans to cool them.
I had some trouble -- or rather, a little frustration -- in getting all of the requisite cables through the pass-through in the partition wall that divides the motherboard compartment from the PSU/optical drive compartment. There's a plastic slide that you have to take out before you can pass any cables through the hole in the wall. Then you have to feed through power cables for the hard drive, fans, frontpanel audio knob, and motherboard, and an IDE cable going the other way for the CD or DVD drive. I found that it was impossible to use a standard IDE ribbon cable; round cables were the only kind that I could comfortably pass through the partition hole.
Another weird part about system assembly is the hard drive cage. You actually have to put screws into the side of the hard drive through the bottom of the Fusion chassis. That means you have to flip the whole case on its side or top to install a hard drive. The included silicone grommets, which you must install yourself by putting them between the screws and the hard drive, prevent noise from hard drive vibration.
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| Antec Fusion: top view (click to enlarge) |
I was really amazed by how quietly the system ran post-build. I used a VIA EPIA CN13000G, which only has a small chipset fan for CPU and chipset cooling, and the system was quieter than a whisper. If you choose to go with a higher-powered FlexATX solution, though, expect to hear the CPU fan as well as you could through a normal tower chassis.
Conclusions
Antec definitely has a winner with the Fusion chassis. It has a good power supply, it's attractively designed, supports many different internal components, operates quietly without sacrificing cooling ability, and has some innovative frontpanel mechanisms. As a GNU/Linux user I'm disappointed at the lack of support for the frontpanel display and volume knob, and I urge Antec to release the requisite drivers to the free software community so that OSes other than Windows can take full advantage of this enclosure.
The price is a lot higher than most of Antec's other computer cases, but the unique styling of the Fusion makes it worth that much more to DVR system builders who don't want a beige PC chassis in their otherwise attractively decorated living room. While companies like Casetronic make smaller designs specific to Mini-ITX boards, and a few others make Shuttle mini-PC clones, none of them come close to matching the Fusion's "living room theater" style.
Internally I suppose this case could be a little easier to work on, and you definitely don't want the Fusion to be your first system build, but it is quiet and appropriately sized, so I suppose some concessions must be made to the Fusion's intended purpose of being a DVR chassis.
Overall I highly recommend the Fusion for a home theater system based on Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition. GNU/Linux users (Freevo, MythTV), on the other hand, will have to wait and see what Antec does with the Fusion drivers.
| Device | Home theater/DVR chassis |
| Manufacturer | Antec |
| Device support | Up to three 3.5" hard drives (only two in the standard bracket), one 5.25" drive, two 120mm case fans (included), MicroATX/FlexATX/Mini-ITX motherboard. Comes with 430W power supply with two SATA power connectors, five Molex, one mini-Molex (required by the frontpanel audio knob), and one 24/20-pin ATX motherboard power connector. |
| Market | Digital video recorder system builders |
| Price (retail) | US ~$200 (Buy one from Amazon.com) |
| Previous version | N/A |
| Product Web site | Click here |