Antec is a manufacturer of computer hardware. Not processors or motherboards or other extremely important parts, but mostly power supplies, cooling fans and processor heatsinks, cases, cables, external drive enclousers, replacement case LEDs, and rackmount accessories. Their products are quite popular with the DIY/overclocker crowd, mostly due to their asthetically pleasing sense of design and their penchant for bright, non-traditionally-coloured LEDs.
The company was founded in 1986 in Fremont, California, where it remains to this day, though it maintains additional offices in Europe and Asia. Most of their products are fabricated in mainland China.
They really seem to have a genuinely good insight into the DIY market, and they outfit their products to reflect this. Their power supplies (which are reportedly made by Channel Well Technologies and simply branded by Antec -- who knew?) are all now made of aluminum and usually have at least one exhaust fan and one intake fan (sometimes one or more of each), and a three-pin plug that goes into the motherboard to monitor the fan speeds and operating temperature. Their extremely attractive line of Cobra rounded IDE cables are probably the best available, as they're designed to eliminate external line noise and other interference. They're wrapped in aluminum, rubber, and nylon, and feature a grounding strap, which significantly reduces interference and improves performance. Not to mention they're really cool looking -- "Cobra" is not a misnomer, as the nylon wrap resembles the skin of a (admittedly thin) snake.
Antec also sells various customisation kits, which consist of pre-modded replacement case panels, LED-enabled case fans, cold cathode lighting, and replacement power supply enclosures, which are made of clear plastic and evenly-placed LED lights.
Almost all of their inside-the-case products are available in ultraviolet-reactant wrapping, which makes for some interesting effects if you've got black lights (and a panel window, of course) in your case.
Most of their profit comes from reselling their wares to parts retailers. Indeed, they sell a very small percentage of their products on their own. CompUSA, in fact, sells many of their products at an acceptable markup (usually less than 5%), though better prices can be found by looking around PriceWatch a bit.
Antec manufacturers and distributes these product lines:
- Cobra ATA 133/floppy cables (also available in UV)
- LifeStyle, Performance and Solution drive enclosures
- 1U, 2U, 3U and 4U rackmount server enclosures
- TruePower, SmartPower, and Solution ATX power supplies
- Alienware ATX midtower cases (fabricated from a mold also used by Chieftec and Chenming)
- iLuminate lighted case fans, power supplies and monitor-mounted LEDs
- Unbranded thermal grease, fan grills, power splitters, power adapters and diagnostic tools
All in all, Antec is an excellent provider of DIY computer parts, though they're not particularly inexpensive. I use a SmartPower SL400 power supply ($85.00 USD), four of their case fans ($10.00 USD, each), and a pair of dual-device Cobra IDE cables ($15.00 USD each), and have never had any problems with any of them. The power supply and case fans run very quietly, too. I can heartily recommend their products to anyone wanting to build their own box or replace existing parts. They'd all go good with a Lian Li aluminum case and, say, the newest Asus or Abit motherboard.
Perhaps best (or worst, depending on your sense of humour) of all, the product descriptions on their packaging and instruction booklets aren't written in Engrish.
http://www.antec-inc.com/
http://www.antec-europe.com/