Review
- Introduction
- Specifications and Packaging
- External Impressions Part 1
- External Impressions Part 2
- Internal Impressions Part 1
- Internal Impressions Part 2
- Installation experience and Conclusion
2x 120mm fans on the sides (A12025-12CB-3BN-F1) with Red LED for the 2x 4x 3.5″ HDD bays, 3x 5.25″ bays just above it. There’s an 2.5″ bay just below the HDD bay- for your notebook/2.5″ drives. As you can see there’s a large space empty between these bays which is occupied by the toolbox. There’s a very large cut-out on the CPU side of the motherboard plate and there 2 cut-outs just above it. Towards the left its for re-routing 8 pin cables and on the right to reroute any cable such as for fans or anything else. There’s a lot of cable tie clips on the back of the motherboard panel, enough to secure all the cables in its place.
As said on the previous page you can install the 2x 120mm fan on the left side panel. There’s a single sheet of dust filter sandwiched between the metal mesh and the side panel that’s clipped together. The holes of the dust filter is as same as the mesh itself- and the screw holes. If its not aligned properly, you need to shift it around a bit to get it in place- unless you want to tear through the dust filter while installing the fan.
Not sure if its effective and redundant at the point of writing but then if you think about it having too much dust filters will block a lot of air to come in. If you’re buying a case to have fool-proof dust free system by having such dust filters, then you’re going to have better luck keeping the place as dust free as possible and/or not having the system on the floor especially if your place accumulates dust on a regular basis (one of the cons in living in a humid city). Dust filter prevents large amount of dust from accumulated inside the case. If the dust filter stops the dust from entering in, then eventually it will block a lot of air and then that’s not going to be good for your system.
I guess that also explains the tilted honeycombed shaped vents right on top of these vent on both the side panels. Its not just for this pc case, but for any cases.
The hard drive is easy to install, just put the brackets in and slide it in from the right side of the case. Personally I prefer having rails than having brackets. Having a very large access on the section where most of the cable is routed through is something I’ve been wishing to see on cases on a regular cases. This hole is BIG!!!
There’s a 200mm fan on the top with thick blades (enough to get a cut on the finger if you manage to trap your finger in the middle like I did). So far, the cases I’ve seen with large fans are more like spinners because I can’t really feel any air being push in/out at all. But the ones I’ve got my hands on in the past had thinner-than-this transparent blade with dinky little lights. So fans on this case is more of a fan rather than a “spinner” with LED lights- atleast upto this point. Looking at the holes on the top panel, it looks as if you can install radiator with 2x 120mm radiators.
To remove the top panel, you’ll need to push the the secure latch from the inside of the case first and simply push it out. Snaps back on easily, its removing part that you need to balance. There are 6 secure latches for the top panel, 4 of them as you can see highlighted in green and 2 of them on either side of the 5.25″ bays On the base one thing to note is that you can install upto 4 2.5″ drives, as shown on the picture. You can always install 120mm fan in the place where the toolbox occupies space- and/or even remove the 2.5″ tray and install another 120mm fan.
Every 5.25″ bay cover has a dust filter sandwiched between the plastic bezel and the meshed frame. One of the 5.25″ bays has a 3.5″ cut-out on the mesh.
From the top: The 120mm fans on the HDD bay has 2 wires: one is the 3 pin header and the other one powers up the LED fan. One the second picture, the brown/black coloured insulation wires are fan controllers for the front 120mm, 2 of the 3 pin connectors are for the top and for the rear fans. The other 2 leads are for the LED header on the front 120mm fans.
Do note that CM has 6 speed fan controller on the front and if you’re using you own 3 pin based fans, when you decrease the speed of the fan, so will the LED lights. So the LED leads are pretty much useless unless you use these for the fans provided by Coolermaster or if out of the blue the separate LED lead becomes a standard.
