External Appearance
It's obviously a departure from usual Cooler Master styling; it forgoes the usual flat front face for a more curved look, complete with door to hide your external 5.25" and 3.5" drives and a protruding structure to allow the front-mounted cooling fans to work, replete with painfully cool blue LEDs.
The front bezel construction is entirely aluminum, anodised with a black colour. You get stylish chrome-look surrounds for the power and reset buttons, blue power LED and a natty set of Cooler Master and Wave Master logos in white, to finish off the front aesthetic. The material of choice does have its downsides though, as well as the inherent weight benefit. Fingerprints get attracted to the surface like nobody's business. While it seems like less of a problem with anodised aluminium, expect to see my grubby mits in some of the shots, the flash seems to bring them out nicely.
It arrives well packaged, for those worried about problems after transit. Aluminium isn't the strongest material in the world; you trade off strength for weight, but Cooler Master pack it well.
The top of the front bezel is a door that hides the external drive bays.
See what I mean about fingerprints? Don't worry, the case doesn't look like that under normal lighting, the camera flash is adept at bringing them out. The door itself is weighted on the hinge and keeps itself closed by using a magnet. Swinging the door shut with a gentle push will get it close enough to closing for the magnet to do its stuff, pulling it gently over that last inch or so. It's a right sided hinge as you can see, a departure from what you usually see on most cases that have doors.
The bottom of the front bezel is where most of the action is at, especially in the dark. The two front mounted cooling fans also have blue LEDs mounted close by. The LEDs are powered by 4-pin pass through Molex connectors.
Finally, you can also see the paint effect used for the side panels. The deep matt effect is reminiscent of a car paint finish in some respects and it's similar to what Antec finish their black Sonata in. It's very mirror-like, showing whatever is in the near vicinity in a subtle, deep, mirrored fashion. I'm a fan of the effect, but like anything aesthetic, you might hate it.
