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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
*UPDATED* WITH A HD FIX! Sleek, beautiful case that shouts quality and craftsmanship, October 26, 2007
I basically divide cases into 3 types:
1. Economical cases which serve only to hold your hardware.
2. Gamer type cases can be cheap or one of the finest on the market, but they all offer features that make them flashy, such as windows, lights, etc.
3. Luxury cases I define as cases that are solid, very well built and made of top end materials, but are more artistic and stylish than gamer cases and are appropriate for your home office up to your corporate office.
This is one of the finest "Luxury" cases I have ever built a system in, and I have built well over 50. An aluminum skin all around with noise blocking material installed from the factory is just the start of a long list of quality features.
I would have liked to have 1 or 2 more 5 1/2 bays, but that is more of a personal preference. Above that, this is a solid, stunning case (much more so in person) that will leave most buyers content with their decision to buy this one.
UPDATE: After building several systems in this case for customers, a serious flaw became very apparent. The HDD (Hard Drive) bays basically act just like mini toaster ovens on the drives due to the enclosed design and lack of any ventilation or cooling. After doing a dual OS system install on one computer, the two installed (Raptor 150's) were so blazing hot you couldn't hold them in your hand for over a second.
REMEDY: Normally I would discontinue using a case with a flaw like this, but I like this case so much I decided to search for a solution instead, and found a great one if you WATER COOL your PC.
Get one Koolance Hard Drive Hydra-Pak soft Cooler #HD-50-L06 (HD)for each drive. The cooler fits between the drive and the removeable hard drive tray and fit right back into the slot. You CAN NOT use the Koolance dual drive cooler due to the way the hard drive bays are designed on this model. This solution allows you to "sandwich" the water cooling Hydra-Pak between the HDD and tray and have the water connections easily available on the back-side.
I water cool all my systems, and this solution turned a serious over-heating and HDD killer into a constant 20-24 temp. reading on the hard drives at all times (readings from a Koolance Exos 2 LX at both idle and heavy, sustained system testing)! If your not up to speed on temps., that's a pretty impressive range for a hard drive under heavy use. Went from a problem to a positive if you have decided to use water cooling on your new rig.
If your not water cooling, don't mess around too long before finding a good air solution or you will be replacing your hard drives and having the huge headache of re-installing everything back on new ones. The extreme high temps will be a huge burden on your HDD's over time if it doesn't knock them out sooner than later and cause a source of high temperature inside your case that makes all the fan cooling just that much more inefficient. The High Performance Raptor 10,000 drives I was using produce more heat than normal 7,200 drives so the problem may not be as extreme using most hard drives, but it will still be an issue that needs to be addressed sooner or later.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
High quality, spaceous and quiet. A beautiful furniture addition!, November 26, 2007
I wasn't looking for a new case when one of Amazon's competitors, via a marketing email, brought the Cooler Master Cosmos to my attention. Then again, I've been looking all my life for a case as beautiful, spacious and quiet as this one.
All the research I did online, and there are many places that have the specifications, beginning with Cooler Master's own web site, and quite a few with reviews, convinced me the price was worthwhile for what will likely be my last computer case. By the way, Amazon had the best price.
I placed my order late on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, taking advantage of free shipping, and was pleasantly surprised and very pleased when it arrived on Wednesday (before the holiday)!
The manufacturer's box comes with an outer shipping sleeve, which I'm amazed arrived together with the box, since there was nothing holding it in place. Packing is adequate, and there was no damage beyond some to the cardboard sleeve.
Optimum use is made of internal spaces to pack (read hide from view) the smaller parts, and it took me a while to locate everything mentioned in the parts list.
How fortunate that my company dismissed us early on Wednesday, because I could not wait to get this beauty home.
The case comes with four 120mm (4.72") fans installed. One in the base, one at the rear opposite the CPU fan, and two in the top. There is an ample hardware package in the form of an accessory carrying case (advertised as a freebie) containing a screwdriver key ring, cable ties, tie mounts, motherboard stand-offs, and all the screws for motherboard and peripherals you could need. Not that you need too many for peripherals, as I mention later. Not sure either, where to keep the accessory carrying case.
The case is bigger than you'd expect for a computer case. Though at 23.5" it is equal to the full tower it is replacing, it is both substantially wider (at 10.5"), and deeper (longer?) (at 24.7") than the tower case. The bottom rails provide ample lateral support and nicely complement the two upper rails/handles which make moving the case much easier than most. They are also very convenient when turning the case onto its side to work on the innards.
The finish is a beautiful combination of machined aluminum and black acrylic, with a black mesh front panel behind the reversible front door. The side panels are the full size of the case. They release simply by lifting the appropriate lever on the back, and then lift up and outwards to disengage the bottom lip from the base.
Inside, there is more space than you'll know what to do with. For me, removing memory no longer entails first removing a disk drive! In fact, my full ATX motherboard now has a full six inches clear between it and the hard drives.
Regarding the hard drives; one reason for the increased width, is to accommodate mounting the internal hard drives from side-to-side in the case, using HDD racks that are each secured by one finger-turnable screw. There are six such racks. Drives mount on edge, using four special screws (provided) that go through grommets in the rack to attach the drive.
The case accommodates either 5 x 5.25" exposed drives, or allows one 5.25" bay to be used to install a 3.5" drive. The mounting bracket and front bezel is provided for the 3.5: drive. However, Cooler Master "strongly recommends" the lowest exposed bay (5.25") not be used for installing any device that is bigger than 3.5" "to guarantee optimal thermal performance for HDDs". Mounting the 3.5" drive is tricky, and requires patience. See my notes later.
The exposed 5.25" drives mount simply by pressing a button catch to release or engage two locating pins - no more screws!
I was initially taken aback when I found that the power supply mounts in the bottom rear corner of the case. Unlike my previous tower cases where it was installed at the top drawing hot air from the CPU, Cooler Master, in my opinion, has placed the PSU in the ideal position, where it neither adds to, nor is affected by in-case heat. Air is drawn from outside through the bottom of the case, and exhausted out the back.
Fan placement is ideal, with one fan on the bottom introducing fresh air, one exhausting at the rear, directly opposite the CPU fan, and two exhausting from the top, where one expects hot air to migrate. The side panels are adequately padded with soundproofing material. All fans operate at low RPM, and the overall effect is a system that is substantially quieter than my old tower with its three 3" fans.
A definite plus is the externalized connectors on the front (actually top) panel. The cables included with the case enabled me to connect the four previously unused USB ports on my Intel DP965LT mobo. You'd think the six that are externalized via the back panel would be enough, but I have steadily added to my USB peripherals, to the point where the four are a welcome addition! I was also able to connect the unused 1394 connector on my motherboard using the provided cable, and found an unused SATA port (eSATA cable provided) so that I now have all three port types available on the front panel.
The following bear mentioning, but don't detract from the beauty of the case, or my award of 5 full points:
1) Mounting the 3.5" exposed drive is tricky, and requires a lot of patience, due to the tiny screws that go into the mounting rails. The push-button catch can easily be removed for this exercise, so that the left-hand side screws can more easily be inserted. Not so for the two on the right, where the tiny screws have to be passed through tiny holes in one metal plate in order to screw through a second plate into the mounting frame. I dropped each screw multiple times, which caused them to disappear between the metal plates and required rolling the case to bring them into places where they could be retrieved using a magnetized screwdriver. Definitely an area for improvement. I do not plan to replace that drive anytime soon.
2) The knobs on my SoundBlaster Audigy 2 protrude, and don't allow the front door to be closed. This has necessitated permanently removing the door, which is a pity. I have asked Cooler Master if they have a solution for this issue.
3) Hardly a complaint - The RC-1000 has one fewer exposed drives than my old case. Also, though Cooler Master claims 5 exposed 5.25" bays, they also recommend against using the bottommost one as anything but a 3.5" bay. Still, I can live with 4 x 5.25" drive bays instead of five.
4) I would have liked a dust cover for the front panel externalized connectors. This would also help keep my two-year old grandson from pressing the power button, which he loves to do!
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nearly Perfect, February 22, 2008
This is a terrific case that is nearly perfect. What would have made it perfect was if it had active cooling for the hard drives. Out-of-the-box, the case has no fan directing air over the hard drives. What that means is that if you have multiple hard drives--I have four installed so far--those hard drives will run hotter, which may negatively affect the drives. The solution (which is more of a preventative measure) is to move the snap-on intake fan with bracket from the bottom of the case to over the hard drive cage, which reduces the number of expansion slots, and to obtain another 120mm fan to replace the intake fan at the bottom of the case. Otherwise, the case is perfect.
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