Antec MicroFusion (Internals)
Getting inside the Antec MicroFusion Remote 350 is a very straight forward affair. At the rear of the case the lid is secured by a single thumb screw. After removing this screw the lid can be pulled back using the grips on the lid itself and then the fun can begin...
Internal Design
At first instance the MicroFusion Remote 350 appears to be quite the mess inside, though this is because of the pre-installed power supply, fans with speed controllers and the front panel LCD. The power supply is a decent little unit that has been slapped with a high-efficiency 80 PLUS certification. The unit itself boasts three SATA power cables, four 4-pin power cables and floppy disk power cable along with a 4-pin and 24-pin power cable.
Then there are the usual USB, audio and eSATA cables that need to be connected to the motherboard headers. There is an additional USB 2.0 cable which must be connected to the motherboard allowing the LCD monitor to interface with the supplied software in Windows.
Another three 4-pin power adapters are used to power the case fans. Each fan has its own speed controller allowing to set the fans to one of three presets (low, medium and high).
The physical design of the MicroFusion Remote 350 is quite good and nearly everything has been made easily accessible for a simple installation process. I say "nearly" because installing the 3.5" hard drive is a bit of a pain and getting to it once everything is neatly installed can be a bit of a pain.
For example, in order to access the 3.5" bay a thumb screw must be removed along with another less accessible screw but that's the good bit. For some reason the LCD panel mounting bracket conflicts with the removal of the 3.5" bay and therefore needs to be removed first. The user will need to pinch and hold the side latches while pushing down on the top of the LCD bracket. The LCD will then tilt back into the 3.5" bay while the user must be careful not to touch the face of the LCD display.
Then finally once the hard drive is installed the procedure must be carried out again in the reverse order. Thankfully installing the 5.25" optical drive couldn't be much easier and even installing the Micro-ATX motherboard is relatively straightforward.
The cooling design is well executed and we expect good performance out of the MicroFusion Remote 350 when testing this aspect of the case. The left panel houses an 80mm intake fan towards the front which draws in cool air and blows it over the hard drive. Then at the opposite side towards the back there are another two 80mm exhaust fans which remove the hot air from within the case.
At $190 the Antec MicroFusion Remote 350 looks to be a tempting offer providing users with an impressive cooling system, quality 350-watt power supply and a small LCD panel. The case itself looks quite nice and because it has been constructed entirely from steel it is extremely durable though at the same very heavy for such a small HTPC case.
Next, we will be checking out the rest of the cases in our round-up. Then don't skip our thermal tests, round-up impressions and wrap-up before deciding on your HTPC case pick.