While the Antec might look more like an AV component, the effect is spoiled by the front USB, Firewire and 3.5mm audio ports, with the green and pink rings around the audio jacks standing out terribly against the black case. It's not as noticable on the silver Fusion cases (although only the Fusion Black includes the SoundGraph LCD). Alternatively, the SilverStone has fold-down flaps to hide the reset button, optical drive, front USB/Firewire/audio ports and memory card reader.

From an engineering perspective, the Antec is seperated into chambers to help with cooling. It also has two 120mm case fans, with speed controls, which can spin slower and thus quieter than the SilverStone's two 80mm fans. Disappointingly, the Antec fans can't connect to your motherboard if you want to control them using software.

The Antec case is also nicer to work in, as the SilverStone has a lot more screws to fiddle with in awkward places. The Silverstone's lid is held in place by four screws, whilst the Antec has one which can be removed with your fingers. The SilverStone's cross bar is also a pain because you need to remove it (another four screws) to get at the hard drive bay (yet another four screws) and some of the expansion card slots. The hard drive bay screws are above holes in the bay, making it easy to lose screws in the case.

Both cases use rubber grommets to dampen vibrations from the hard drives, but just swapping an optical drive, graphics card or hard drive in the SilverStone is a major chore. The Antec is better suited to those who are constantly tinkering with their computers (although you should resist the urge to tinker with a media centre if it's a mission critical part of your lounge room). While the Antec has room for two hard drives, the SilverStone will take a whopping six - although this is obviously crazy from a heat and noise perspective when you're building a lounge room-friendly computer.

The Antec has a spring-loaded optical drive cover which makes a loud clunk when the drive slides closed. As for the SilverStone, gently pressing the top of the two font panels causes them to pop open and then gracefully recline to horizontal.

Think carefullly if you want to your media centre to live in a home entertainment cabinets. Such cabinets are designed to cater for AV components such as DVD players, VCRs and amplifiers - which are generally no more than 430mm wide so you'll be lucky to get more then 445mm to play with (including ventilation space). Considering the Antec is 445mm wide, but the SilverStone is only 430mm, case width alone could be the deal breaker - but be careful of overheating. The SilverStone has the PSU and CPU at the rear, so we didn't have overheating issues when we ran it inside a 445mm wide cabinet with the the back of the cabinet removed, but keep an eye on those hard drives. Sadly the Antec just would't fit.

While the two case are roughly the same price, the Antec lacks a remote control and memory card reader while the SilverStone lacks a power supply and volume knob. Personally we think the volume knob is a novelty anyway - how often are you going to walk over to the computer to adjust the volume when you've got a remote control on the coffee table?

Once we put a fanless Gigabyte NVIDIA 8600 GTS and a Zalman CNPS7500 CPU fan in the Antec we found the 430W power supply was the loudest component, so perfectionists after a silent PC will probably want to replace it anyway with something like a Seasonic S12 430W PSU. If you do replace the supplied PSU, you'll need an adaptor for connecting the LCD to the power supply. Watch the height of your CPU fan in the Antec, the vertical Zalman CNPS9500/9700 CPU fans are too tall.

With a Seasonic S12 430W PSU and Gigabyte NVIDIA 8600 GTS in the SilverStone, and the case fans slowed with Zalman Fanmate regulators, we found the Zalman CNPS7500 CPU fan to be the nosiest component. We're waiting to try a Zalman CNPS8700 CPU fan, but if you used an ATX mobo in the SilverStone you could opt for a larger CPU fan which should spin slower and quieter.

So far the Antec Fusion Black and SilverStone GD01MX seem fairly evenly match, but one has a hidden Achilles heel. CONTINUED