Overview cont.

Internal

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To gain access to the internals, you lift the tabs on the rear, and the side panels bend outwards on their hinges. Annoyingly, this sometimes doesn’t go according to plan, and you’ll have to give it some persuasion to get the panels to bend out. This is tedious as there are no handles on these sheer panels, and you’ll have to claw the top edge to release them.

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Once you’ve gained access to the inside, you’ll be greeted with shiny aluminium rather than dull steel which is a nice sight, but rather wasted as there isn’t a windowed side. You’ll also see the internal cables that are used to power the front illuminations and to provide data connectivity to the I/O panel. The I/O lights are powered by a pass-thru ATX connector which seems odd and unnecessary as it could easily be done with a standard molex, however, the reasoning is that your PSU’s cables may not be long to reach your motherboard; hence why there also an EPS extension cable supplied.

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Drive bays

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The front of the case is where you’ll find the goodies that the case holds. You get a bunch of Coolermaster patented drive clips which use the same principle as a click-in click-out ball-point pen, but instead of a nib being extended, two smooth pins eject which slot neatly into your 5.25” drive. These clips also allow full access to the bottom drive screw holes so you can use screws too if you wish. This system is only present on one side, as with most new tool-less drive holders.

These clips don’t continue down the entire side, as three of the drive bays are used for the HDD cage. It should be noted that there are actually ten 5.25” bays, not seven, as three are used for this cage. The cage allows four HDD’s to be installed in it, all of which require standard screws rather than some funky tool-less method. This is a bit of an annoyance as you’d expect the tool-less idea of the case to continue to these drives too.

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The cage is however vibration proof and de-coupled from the chassis itself with a couple of plates which the case holds, that are then attached to the cage inside by pins and blue silicon sockets. The final addition to the cage is a 120mm fan at the front which is transparent and has the tell-tale wiring letting you know it’s gonna light up when powered up.

Removing the HDD cage is easier said than done, as a) it’s held in place with screws, and b) the drive bays are manufactured to an extremely tight tolerance. Factor in both parts – the case and the cage – are made of aluminium, and you have the perfect recipe for a horrible scrapping sound as you try to force the cage out of its home. After a chat with our CM rep, they explained that this is a pre-release sample, rather than the 100% finished case, and hopefully the drive bays will be made slightly wider to freely allow drives and the cage to be mounted or removed.

Fans

All of the 17dB fans that are installed in the case (I count three; one at the rear, one on the top, and one on the HDD cage) terminate with a standard 3 pin fan plug, and then have a 3 pin to molex converter tacked on the end. This is exactly how fans should be supplied, as its annoying to have to fish out that molex modular cable just to power a rear fan when there is a free mobo fan header right by.

Power supply

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The power supply area is complete with a removable dust filter which can be taken out with a yank of the handle at the back of it. This sits underneath the power supply itself, which has a padded pedestal designed to prevent the PSU from passing its vibration onto the case. This seems a little odd, considering how it screws directly to the rear of the chassis, but it does provide support for longer heavier PSU’s should you be using one.

For this case, that’s quite likely as it’s designed for people who think tri-SLI is a basic computing requirement. You’ll be able to slap Ultra’s in this case to your heart’s content thanks to the drive bays being such a distance away. There are absolutely no clearance issues to worry about, which is a nice thing to see. The power supply itself won’t add any heat to the occasion either as it sucks air in from the bottom of the case, and then blows it out the rear. This makes for a cooler power supply, but less ventilation as the PSU doesn’t vent chassis air. Should you decide that this is what you want to happen, you can mount your PSU ‘up side down’ to get the effect.

Of course, this kind of graphical power is going to be spitting out plenty of heat, and as a result, Coolermaster have a massive 200mm fan (150 CFM) strapped to the side of the case; this looks remarkably similar to Antec’s offering, which featured on their P190 enclosure. It terminates in a 3 pin, and has the molex converter on it too. This fan naturally is guarded by a large dust filter which seems to extend down the entire case side. This is removable and cleanable by undoing a couple of screws and the services of a nearby sink. With the number of dust filters in this case and their size, you’ll have another chore when it comes to spring-cleaning.

Motherboard

The motherboard tray is unfortunately not removable, but there is more than enough space to work inside the case so this shouldn’t be an issue. There are plenty of holes in the tray, allowing you to route cables behind your components making it look a whole lot cleaner and also to allow optimum airflow. There are mounting holes for both ATX and its extended cousin but the holes aren’t stamped with any markings, making the installation of the stand-offs a slightly more time consuming exercise.

Apparently, there should be a sheet of paper attached to the case explaining where the stand-offs go, but our sample had this useful bit of information removed.

The PCI brackets are locked into place with thumbscrews, allowing you to give up the screwdriver when it comes to adding your graphics card.