Cooler Master Invents A Cylon

David Murphy — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:45:48 -0600

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:

Cooler Master Cosmos

David Murphy — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:40:32 -0500

Consider this month’s batch of case reviews to be a second chance of sorts, as both companies highlighted this month have previously built total clunkers. Cooler Master threw down the iTower 930 in February, which was the functional equivalent of bringing a wiffle bat to a gunfight. And NZXT troubled us with the Adamas—which sported a relatively mediocre design when stacked up against its competitors.

We tipped our reviewing hand when we chose this case to house last month’s Dream Machine. But that’s just how sweet the Cosmos is. This case looks as good as it functions, and there’s nary a blemish in either area. More important, the case retains enough of a unique look and feel to distance itself from the bevy of generic models we frequently see.

You don’t need to grab a screwdriver to make major changes to any parts in the Cosmos case (aside from the motherboard). The five front 5.25-inch bays use an awesome push-button locking mechanism that, to date, is the best we’ve come across. Tiny thumbscrews hold the six hard-drive trays in place—an elegant improvement over standard drive bays.

The Cosmos caters to the water-cooling crowd with its ready-for-a-radiator ceiling grills, but lovers of the air won’t be left out. A detachable 12cm fan bunker pulls in air from the bottom of the case, and a plastic bar running horizontally across the case draws cool air right into the videocard area. Strangely, there’s no airflow across the hard drives in this case, one of the very few oversights we were able to find with the Cosmos.

A lack of functioning drive-activity lights on the case’s front panel is another stinger, but it’s not enough to destroy the taste of this sweet, sweet chassis.

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Cooler Master Invents A Cylon

Cooler Master Cosmos