Remember Cooler Master's Cosmos case? I certainly do: for both the time I spent building last year's Dream Machine in it, and for the general controversy my glowing review of the case drew from a subset of Maximum PC's devout readers. I don't think I'll go to my grave without being reminded that the Cosmos' hard drive air cooling situation may not be ideal if you're running, say, a six-drive array.

But that was then. This is now, and Maximum PC is proud to note that we're one of the first--if not the first--to get our hands on the new extension of the Cosmos series. It's called the Cosmos S, short for "sport." Or a misspelling of the word, "Cylon," because I swear to the Twelve Colonies, this thing looks like a toaster. That said, it's a great-looking, second-generation case. And Cooler Master apparently listened to our forum users, because the Cosmos S now comes with a fan that shoots air right over the four hard drive bays. No, I couldn't resist that last part.

Some other fun factoids: you can still mount three fans on the top. The side panel doesn't come with soundproofing, but there is a huge, 20cm fan now attached. For obvious reasons, this also eliminates that little VGA cooler bar. You can slap nine 5.25" devices in the case if you don't use the included hard drive bay, which itself supports four drives. Front-panel support continues the holy trifecta of USB, Firewire, and eSATA. Oh, and you start your system with a touch-sensitive button akin to what you'd find on Seagate's FreeAgent Pro.

All in all, neat stuff from Cooler Master. At least, based on a cursory inspection of the case thus far. I plan be doing nothing else until we get this sucker reviewed for either the Web or the May print issue. Who knows what we might find once we start the official review process of this jet-black chassis!

Just for comparison against the above product shot: