The Case
I arrived home to find a large Coolermaster box waiting in my room for me, the
packaging it came in was superb, the case had no visible markings on it at all
even though the box had some damage. The box contained; the case, a comprehensive
instruction manual, a bag of assorted screws and some keys for the door.
This is the first time I have seen an Aluminium case "in the flesh"
and I must say I was very impressed with its looks. This case is pure brushed
aluminium all over. The quality is superb and the case has a real feel of sturdiness
to it.
The door of the case has two holes for the Power and hard disk LEDs, as well
as a lock. The ultra bright LEDs that are supplied are very powerful. The case
comes with 2 keys for this lock and it works great. Unfortunately, I found the
case door would not close properly when the lock was unlocked, this made it
slightly annoying having to lock and unlock the door every time I needed access
to the front of the case. This is fine for the professional who is using the
case as a rackmount server case as they would need to lock the case to keep
the door closed. I found one of the bad aspects of the case.
The front of the case has 3 5-¼ inch bays; these came with all the faceplates, ideal for people who want to stealth their drives. Below these drives there is a grill, not only does it look great but it also provides ventilation for the two 80mm fans that sit inside the case. The front of the case has a power button but no reset button, something that may get irritating. Although the power button is made of plastic it fits in with the case and has a nice spring to it.
Below this grill we have a fine mesh, this mesh has a huge 120mm fan in it,
this area according to the pictures on the Coolermaster website can have an
extra 3 drive bays fitted into it. Great for anyone who wants a great quality
aluminium full tower. The fan also provides cooling straight onto the internal
3-½ inch bays. A very nice feature if you have SCSI drives in there that
can get very hot.
As is shown here the case is quite deep, with gorgeous brushed aluminium sides. These sides are very easy to remove and I had no problem with slotting the case back together again.
At the back of the case we can see the amount of space that is allowed for the
PSU. This is a very nice feature; in some cases the PSU is a very tight fit
and does not get ventilated properly- this is not the case here!
Inside the case we can see that at the front we have a removable drive cage
for mounting the CD-ROM drives in, and another at the bottom for the 3 ½
drives. These are removable which is very useful for mounting the drives. The
case also allows these units to be mounted either horizontally or vertically
depending on whether the case is mounted in rack style or used as a tower. I
tried the case in a rack myself and found it to fit perfectly. Another useful
aspect of the case, when it was rackmounted, were the two handles on either
side of the door (above and below the door when used as a tower) these could
be used easily to move the case.
The bottom of the case reveals four feet, these feet are black plastic, they
are sturdy and all level. I really liked this feature for when I was using the
case as a tower. They raise the case slightly from the floor, which protects
it a little.
