Customer Reviews

Cooler Master HAF ATX Mid Tower Case, RC-922M-KKN1-GP (Black)

5 star:		(112)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I saw the previous review and was really shocked that someone gave CoolerMaster a low score. Here's my own take on this.
I was deciding whether or not to build my 2nd custom PC system or get one pre-built online. When I was building the 'dream system', I saw this case as an option. After deciding between 932 and 922 (both are relatively new models) I decided to actually build my system myself (again!!!). I was previously using RaidMax (Sagita series) case and Antec. After I saw the 932 in person I was shocked at how much bigger the case was compared to my Raidmax, so I decided to get a 922 (which looks better by the way), and I'm glad I did! I'm a serious overclocker, having my fans running at 100% speed (sorry no liquid cooling here:)...yet). The salesman mentioned that this case is the quietest he's ever seen, and he was right! After overclocking my Core i7 and jumping the fan speed up to 100% I still couldn't hear the PC. It was much better than my old Antec case, and way-way better than Raidmax. Inside there are plenty of options on the setup, as I was easily able to include my CoolerMaster V8 fan control on the rear (by the PCI slots), and my GTX285 - there's room for 2 sli video cards, eventhough the manual says you can put 3 in tri-sli mode. There's even a cool button on the top of the case where you can turn on/off the red led light on the front fan. One of the things I wanted to mention is: if you decide to overclock your pc, you'll need to add more fans. With the stock fans: front, top and rear, my cpu cores average 50C when idle - considering I got V8 as a cooler. The better setup would be to add 1 more front fan (there's room for 3! ), and a side fan as another intake.
Now, before I was really looking for a transperent side-panel. After having this case, I'm really into these classy-looking 'see-behind-my-fan' types of cases. By the way, BOTH! of the panels are easily taken out - that really helps to install cpu cooler as there's a square cut out specifically for mounting brackets.
Overall, I'm super-impressed with HAF922. Considering it's not a mid-tower, rather it's a full-size, it's really quiet with it's fans at or below 19db @ 1800rpm. Lots of options, even a 5'25" conversion drive, which took me some time to figure out where it was :), easy to setup, and very solid. I'm now considering replacing my old Raidmax with the 922 HAF. Great purchase!

After spending countless hours of searching for a new case, I must say I am quite satisfied with the case. The fans that come with the case are very quiet. Wish my new video card fan was a bit quieter... Anyhow, the case is very sturdy and SPACIOUS. If you are a neat freak like me, cable management is super easy with this case. There is enough space to put anything you can throw at it in this case, while keeping your components cool. However, there is one minor drawback with this case. I had the machine on for 3 days, and there was a lot of dust on the CPU fan and other components. I guess it's a trade off for having a great air flow system. Overall, I am happy with how it goods and how it functions. Also, you can find many reviews on [...]. Just search for "haf 922".

After reading review after review on different cases I finally decided on this one. I am glad that I did. There is a ton of room to work in this case and it has the room to support the larger video cards and power supplies out there. I was worried about the HAF printed on the side being obnoxious but it doesn't look as bad IRL as it did in the pics. Make sure you check the dimensions, the case was a little bigger than I thought it was going to be but it didn't end up being a problem.

Everything mounts and aligns properly with minimal effort. Routing wires in this case is a joy when compared to some of the other cases I have used. They throw in some zip ties and with them you can neatly and effortlessly route and hide most of your cables. They give you enough space under the motherboard tray that you don't need to pack the wires and try to get the side of the case on before they all pop out like with some other cases. I agree with others that the case sides could slide into place a little easier but I have dealt with worse.

The included fans are quiet. I ended up replacing the rear 120mm fan with a Noctua and adding a couple more 120mm Noctuas to the side panel. They aren't pretty being brown and all but they are very quiet. There are no removable filters that I see but it does look like there is a finer grade of mesh behind the outer mesh in the front. I have always found that I get just as much buildup inside whether I have filters or not. Twice a year I just take my PC outside and hit it with compressed air from a air compressor. Any dust buildup is solved in a few minutes.

All the drive mounting hardware seems to function well. I like the removable drive trays. They seem easy to work well and help reduce the drive noise. I didn't use any internal optical drives in my build but the push button mounting seems like it would function well.

All in all I think this is a great case and expect it to be spending quite a few years in service. It is going to take something pretty special to make me want to give up this case and even then I'll probably just keep it as a second box.

The sides do not come off as easy as I would hope. For a big box that retails for as much as it does that should have been a given. It is made of good quality metal so it weighs a ton.
Some small parts were missing but I had replacements.
No filters are designed for this box so I made my own which will not be that easy to clean thoroughly as they are taped in. I highly recogmend that you make filters as it has a lot of large vententlation openings much bigger thatn the fan size, that dust is going to rush in without filters.
So as a cool running, almost too big, nice professional looking, good quality box I would say it's great.
I am dissapointed that I have to struggle every time I have to open it and keeping it clean is a major issue.
After all, the purpose of keeping a cool box is for better running longer lasting parts, but if they get covered with dust then you lose all that. And, if it is a big hassle to open the case, you won't be as likely to keep it clean.

I decided to build my first PC and saw a favorable review of this one in a PC magazine so I checked it out. I then researched other comparable cases but finally settled on the HAF 922. The one negative that was written about this case was that there was no removable motherboard tray. I found that due to the room in the case and width of it, along with the space behind the MB tray for cabling, etc. this was not an issue. The fit and finish are very good and the 3 stock fans that come with it along with the stock cpu fan and cooler keep the components cool. I do not overclock but run an i5 processor with no special cooling. The MB controlls the fans and much of the time they run at 40% speed, which saves energy. I'd buy it again.

Well, about 4 months have gone by since I purchased this case...I needed some help from Cooler Master since the red led fan is running at 470 rpm rather than the 700 it is supposed to run. Bios and MB software both confirm this. No biggie right...just ask for a replacement...wrong! I registered this case for warranty purposes when purchased. Now CMaster reports it is out of warranty, which is different from their original confirmation of 2 years. No biggie,,,just contact them and get corrected...wrong...no live chat is available and they do not respond to emails and there is no phone number to talk to a real person(this effort has been going on for over a week).....so...today i purchased a replacement fan from Amazon!! If warranty support is not an issue, case is great. if it is, might want to compare mfgrs customer service as a part of buying decision.

The Cooler Master HAF ATX 922 mid tower case is huge compared to what you normally see as a mid tower case. In particular it is very long. It is so long that it barely fits on the desk with out crushing the wires at the back. I like the HAF 912 better and it looks identical and has the same quality but lacks tool less features for the external drive bays. With the 912 if you need to accommodate a very long graphics card you can take out a section for extra hard disc drives. My card fit right in though.

Having said that--- this is a great case with one design flaw. First the good . It looks great and is very high quality. The space on the back behind the mother board makes it easy to hide the wires and make things neat. The tool less features for the hard drives works great as does the locking system for the DVD burners. I put a Sony card reader in and it looks great and fit right into the front grill with a removable 3.5 inset. This gives it a professional look. I just wish it came with two of those 3.5 adapter grills---USB 3.0.

Now for the bad. A case of this quality should have filters that can be removed without disassembling the case. It should be set up with slide in slots for filters so there is no need to disassemble any thing. I do not consider a set up that clamps the filters at the corners and center as acceptable because the filter is going to break over time as it is bent to remove it.


Cleaning filters should be routine maintenance that requires only minutes. The exhaust fans do not need any filters. All intake fans should have them.

On the 922 case there is a screen installed between the front grill and the front intake fan. After five months the fans started sounding loud. What I found was the screen behind the front grill was clogged. To get to it I had the remove six screws to release the front of the case. I could then pull the front out enough to pull out the screen. Unless you use a magnetic screw driver the screws end up falling into the case. You certainly do not want them loose in the case. It is some what hard to find them and even more hard to get them. I ended up using a magnet. The screen did stop a lot of fine dust from entering the case. I hate to remove it but this is too much to go through to clean a filter.


UP DATE 6-7-11
I have found that if I put a vacuum hose directly on the front mesh it pulls the interior screen back and sucks the dust back through the front with out disassembling it.

I really like this computer case from CoolerMaster. I bought this for my first build. It is just the right size, not too big and not too small. It's so easy to do anything inside this case like installing the harddrives in the tool-less bays, the front panels pop out easily for installing drives in the 5.25 bays, and ample room for cable management. It looks sleek and sexy with the flat black finish and the cooling capability is great on this. This thing fit my MSI 460GTX 1gb video card with ease and room to spare, and fit my Coolermaster hyper 212 heatsink great. I even have room to mount a side fan. The front led is not that bright which is great and the tower has a button to turn it off if you want. For anyone building their first rig or tenth rig, I highly recommend this case.

The reason I gave it a rating of 4 is because of two things. The first is that in the default picture for this product, it looks like there is a 200mm red led fan in the side window, this can be misleading (if you don't read the entire specs) as it only comes with three fans (top, rear, and front). Secondly, the top 200mm fan stopped working after 10 seconds of booting up my new computer. I heard some beeping come from my motherboard right before it died, maybe it shorted out? I tried plugging into another system fan connection on my mobo and nothing, it's dead. I'm in the process of RMA'ing it. Hopefully coolermaster won't have me send back the entire case because everything else works beautifully. For the meantime, I rigged the stock intel 60mm heatsink fan that came with my i5 processor ontop of my case to draw the air out, a little noisier than I would like but somewhat effective and temporary.

Bottom line, money well spent. I got it on sale on amazon for 89.98. If I can get a new fan replacement from them no problem, then coolermaster has won my business far into the future.

After reading all the other 922 reviews I had to get one for myself. I was not disappointed in the least. I consider this case a mid tower+ since it is larger than a typical mid tower case. There was plenty of room for my hard drives, video card, large cpu cooler and more.

The screw-less design for the hard drives and dvd rom was better than any other case I have ever set up. I really like the fact that the videocard/pci slots were standard screw in style because I have had problems before with non screw in cases ruining gear/not allowing a proper ground from that aspect.

One small aspect in which I had a problem with was having the power supply at the bottom the power cables to hard drives were stretched pretty tight. The case is very quiet and the exhaust air keeps very cool compared to previous cases.

I will be buying this case again when I have to make another computer!

First of all, this thing is a beast! Tons of room for you to waste money buying components you don't need just so you can look and them and feel good about yourself ;) Air flow is exceptional, especially if you take advantage of the various fan mount locations. The black exterior with the HAF on the side, the mesh side panel and front slots and the raised power button platform give this case a very rugged/industrial/almost armored look while at the same time not lacking in cosmetic features. The quick release buttons for your numerous optical and hard drives are very convenient. The case comes with 3 fans and has space for two additional ones (1 on the mesh side panel and one on the bottom in front (toward the drive bays) of the power source. Combine those with a nice aftermarket CPU cooler, memory cooler and video card cooler and you'll have yourself a mini hurricane (minus the rain or course) going on inside your case (thats a good thing imo).

These are just nitpicks and don't even rate taking off half a star (if i could.) It can be a little tricky to get your drives to lock in place using the quick release buttons. You have to just kind of feel for the little metal knob to sit correctly into your drive but it's not difficult. Also I think the interior would have looked better if it was the same color as the exterior but I can always change that myself.

Just a note... Some people (who I assume are less knowledgeable builders)have complained that there appears to be no way to mount a 3.5" drive in the 5.25" front bays...I guess either they were unaware that the case comes with adapters to make your drive fit the 5.25" bays...or maybe they didn't come with their particular case. It's pretty simple so don't pull your hair out over such an easy fix.

Great mid case. Very roomy. Very very cool looking especially for the relatively inexpensive price tag. Did I mention its HUGE?

I just got the HAF922 from Amazon! As always, it arrived fast and best of all shipping was free to Hawaii! :)

I did a lot of research before I pulled the trigger on this case, since I am in Hawaii and we tend to have a higher ambient temp than most others. I was debating on a Antec 900, but since I used an Antec 900 for a friends build just the week before, I knew that the HAF922 would be an easier case to work with and also I wanted something different. Don't get me wrong, the Antec 900 is a great case and you can't go wrong with either the Antec 900 or HAF922.

Now, just a fair warning, this case is big! Bigger than any mid-tower that I have worked on. Pro and con of this is that, pro: lots and lots of space to work with! Con would be the sheer size of the case. It's 2"-4" longer and about an inch wider than most mainstream cases, so make sure you measure the area you're planning on setting this up.

All the design elements are nice... from the tool free drive bays to the cable management! The mb cutout is especially a nice feature for those of you planning to upgrade your cpu cooler later and need to add braces. Although I traditionally like to screw mount my drives with a silicone washer to limit noise/vibrations, the tool free design works very well. The 90 degree turn on the 3.5 drive bays is great for cable management.

I didn't have too much trouble with the front panel USB port as another poster said, but I haven't used it all that much. Also, the quality of the case was top notch with no loose areas or missing parts. The side panels do need a little umph to open, but no big deal. I would rather have a tighter case to limit vibs anyway.

The little improvements that CM could make for this case is to add LED to the top fan as well as the front fan, add filters (more on that later), paint the interior of the case for added protection and maybe add taller footing for better air flow.

Now the need for a filter. The amount of airflow on this this is amazing, however, the vent holes are huge... they are meant to be huge to maximize airflow. Now adding filters may reduce the airflow but at the same time will cut down on the dust collection. It would have been nice if they included a filter kit, but then again, if you're buying this case, you know what you're getting. I added a filter from an old CM elite to the bottom of the case and will be adding a filter to the side panel as soon as my side fan comes in. Those two (2) little adjustments will help tremendously without impacting performance.

I am also thinking of painting the inside of the case, but that's for another day..... :)

Well, if you decide on the HAF922, you won't be disappointed. Great case!!!