Quiet Antec Cases Roundup
For most folks, a home server chassis needs only meet two criteria: hold a lot of hard drives and remain unobtrusive. A case that holds a lot of hard drives might have trouble remaining visually unobtrusive, but that’s what closets are for. Instead, it is often more important to find a good, quiet case. Any of the Antec Sonata and Performance One cases in this roundup should do a fine job as a reasonably quiet standard chassis, though it sounds like the Sonata might benefit from some sound dampening before loading it up as a server chassis. The adjustable fans should also help in balancing sound and cooling.
The three system cases from Antec that I have tested today are all very quiet (at the minimum speed of the preinstalled fans, of course) but also very different. The only thing they have in common is the handy and easily accessible block of I/O ports. The quality of manufacture is high with every product, too.