One nifty feature of this case is at the bottom of the drive bays, it case a hidden box that clips in and holds your screws, pcie covers etc.
Inside the box you find the included screws 3.25" drive bay converter and 8pin CPU power extension.
The Logo'd panel covers the slot.
The Front panel.
All the usual stuff, plus an in-build fan controller than handles power and lights for up to 4 fans.
Stripped out the old rig. At this point I discovered that I had my tube of TIM in the bottom of my parts box and it got squashed
. The H100 that I had installed in the old rig to test, hence stayed attached to the CPU.
The parts
First thing, remove the side panels.
At this point I discovered that Coolermaster employs a Gorilla specifically for putting in the thumb-screws.
You will need a screw driver to remove any factory installed thumb screw!
Off with the side! OH MY GOD CABLES!!!!! looks like a bag of spaghetti in there!
Top removed, hello useless filter. Why do the put filters on the top of cases? Especially when it comes factory set up as an exhaust? Boggles the mind it does...
Now to remove the crummy stock 200mm top exhaust fan and useless rear 140mm fan (Coolermaster, stop putting rubbish fans in your cases!)
Plenty of room for the H100 now
. Note for custom cooling there is room for a 280 or even a 320 size Rad in this position.
Empty rear fan slot
At this point I discovered a problem, the case handle was not going to allow the installation of the second
120mm pull fan for the H100
I took a drill to the rivets and removed the bracket. There is enough room under the top cover so that later I can fabricate
a new bracket and reinstall it over the fan. Why Coolermaster did this instead of having a bracket that will accept
a 120mm fan under it as standard I have no idea.
You also have to bend up the little tabs that used to hold the filter in place to install the 120mm
Now I can install the Motherboard and H100 combo.
Case comfortably swallows them up without further problems.
Push fans installed. Went with Corsair AP120s for this application. Whole lot quieter than
the stock fans at low speed, while pushing more air. Also the blue rims tie them in nicely
with the Asus motherboard.
These fans will be connected directly to the PSU to run at 100% all the time.
The cuts on the right fan are where I had to make room for them
to fit over the ram in the old setup. Much more room here!
Stock fans go in as the pull fans. These ones I connected up the the Corsair controller so they can ramp up if
required.
Power supply and Ram installed
There may only be one cable cut-out next top the PSU, however it is huge!
Now time to do the hard drives. Coolermaster has used these 4into3 drive bay modules in this case, with a pre-installed
red led fan in front of them.
The modules are removable, and rotatable. You can have them orientated front to back or side to side.
There are vents on both side panels so in the sideways setup, air blows out the side of the case.
Everything is held in by thumb screws. Thanks to Coolermasters gorilla though, you will need a smallish screw driver to remove them.
The thumb screws that hold the modules in place are much longer than a normal screw. Losing one of these would be annoying.
The bays come installed in the sideways orientation. Here is the drivebay with the modules removed.
plenty of room for radiators/reservoirs etc if that is your cup of tea.
The modules themselves
Samsung do make their SSDs look pretty
. nice texture to them too.
The HDDs fit into some standard tool-less bracket which slide and clip into the module.
The SSD simply screws into the same bracket, no need for converters etc.
I installed the modules with the bottom module holding the drives in the sideways orientation and the top (empty) module
front to back to pull fresh air into the H100.
View looking through the case from the front. Took this photo after completed build is case you are wondering about the cables etc.
Also note the x-Dock. It is a 2.5" hot dock bay.
Asus DVD drive
Not tool-less 5.25" bays. Old Fashioned screws are the go here!
In goes the 660Ti primary graphics card
560Ti Twin Frozer II
Now for my least favorite part of building a PC - the rats nest
Yucky
improving..................I think - the collection of small cables on the left is for the in-built fan controller.
It controls 4 fans and has separate controls for Leds so you can turn them on and off. 8 cables total.
You also have front USB2 and USB3 cables, Molex power cable for the x-dock and fan controller
plus you usual power/reset/activity leds and sound/microphone cables.
Having a lot of gadgets in the front of your case makes nice cable management hard.
Better
argh! that'll do.
The Business side
Put my Noctua fans on the side panel as intake fans. Luckily the grills are double meshed to hide their ugliness!
Panels on and LEDs turned on
Lights out and we find that the LEDs on the fans are very soft.
Fired up some Folding to do a soak test. 24c room. H100 on low fan setting, very happy with these temps
They are a bit hard to read.
660ti (Top card) 67c
560ti (bottom card) 58c
CPU 58-64c (Idles at 24-28)
I'll load up a few more photos of the completed build a bit later.
A few thoughts:
The Good.
The build went relatively smoothly. The case is well built, and has plenty of room.
Overall the quality is good. The soft touch plastic (it's almost like rubber) on the top and front is
really nice.
There is plenty of room up top for a 240mm Radiator. A 280 would fit without a problem and you may even
manage to get a 320 in there with a bit of dremel work.
Long graphics card will easily fit without have to remove the HHD module. Though that is incredibly easy to do, just remove 2 thumb-screws and out it comes.
Plenty of room for long PSUs, though a longer one will cover the cable hole to a degree, that probably will not be an issue
because the hole is so big.
you can fit 9 HDDs in the front bay, plus you get a nifty little bracket that fits into the bottom of the case that can hold
another 4 SSDs.
The hidden box to hold your pcie covers/screws and other stuff is excellent.
Being able to turn of the LED's is nice for those of us who don't like a disco!
There is a version available with a side window for those who like a disco and/or show off their gear.
The top handle has a good solid feel and the rivets holding it are substantial. It would have no problem holding the weight of a fully loaded system being carted around.
It needs to be, this is a heavy case. It comes in at 14.4Kg (31.7lbs) empty. A full system could easily tip the scales at 20kg (44Lbs)
The Bad.
The stock rear and top fan are rubbish.
The Fan controller. It's only a single channel, so even though it has 4 connections, they are all stuck at the same setting.
The controller also has the most annoying beep known to man. It sounds like a cheap microwave
.
and it goes off every time you press a button.
Not being able to fit 2 120mm fans above the case without modding it.
This to me is the cases biggest foible. You can fit one up there no problem, and there is room, had Coolermaster
designed the bracket correctly, to fit a second one in there and not have to change to removable top panel.
It is very easy though to drill out the rivets on the handle to fit in the second fan; making up a new bracket for
the handle should not pose too much of a problem (I plan on doing that next weekend, so look out for more pics then)
That's about it for the negatives. Overall I would score the case an 8/10. It's a good solid built, lots of room and expandability options.
Airflow is excellent, as you can see from the results of my soak test with the H100 in low speed.
I would be happy to recommend it to anyone looking for a roomy, relatively portable case. At it's price point I don't think
you can get better.
The H100
Can't say I'm particularly impressed with it. It performs only about 3 degrees better than my old HR-02 Macho with 3 more fans.
Also, then screws that Corsair provide in some situations are too long and you can end up screwing them straight into the radiator. Lucky they go into the fins, rather than the channels, and are located in an area that gets no airflow so it does not change the cooling performance any.
It's still annoying though, so you need to be very careful installing one.
Thanks for reading.
post edited by Simba123 - 2012/11/12 19:23:16
