DH Review: CoolerMaster Cosmos S Chassis

Zardon

Read The Review Here
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Building on the tried and tested Cosmos 1000, the Coolermaster Cosmos S brings some very welcome improvements, such as an improved cooling solution and a more aggressive look. The king has died, long live the new king? Let us find out.

WhO_KnOwS

Judas

i got a quesiton...


with the new design.... did they leave plenty more room for you to feed the cables through the motherboard mount plate up behind and over top to say plug in a 8pin p4/p4-2 connectors and still be able to close the side panel up close without there being any preasure?

(hard to see clearly in the pictures.....)

another is i instantly dislike how they changed the multiple hardrive bay to the rather poorer access design used in the cosmos s.... the 1000 with the 6 removeable bays were imo excellent.

improvements made yes.... agree.. but i think they screwed over the advantages that the other older case had as well....

only thing that pisses me off about my cosmos 1000 is the fact that the expansion slots.. the bottom one is a royall bitch to put back in with the placement of the plastic brackets and lack of room to get your fingers in there to put the sucker in... swear i could replace all the hardrives faster then i could get in that one damn thumbscrew....

WhO_KnOwS

That part of the design did not change much, if at all. As you can see in the last bunch of pictures, the "back" side still has a centimeter or two of room when the side cover is on. You can forget about having molex connectors hidden back there, but the 24pin and 8pin power cables fit the space just nicely.

I agree that the 4 hard drive bay module is a step back from the old system in terms of accessibility and ease of installation, but as far as customization (sacrificing the 3.5 devices for 3 extra 5.25 slots) and looks go, the new system is better.

werty316

Excellent review and personally, this is what the Cosmos should have been like in the first place.

geraldmango

That is a gorgeous case. I loved the first Cosmos (hey its named after the DH theme!), but I damaged mine.

I will order this once it is available, love the power button, thats sexy.

Alex

expensive but typical coolermaster quality.

Great review as usual guys, nice images, like the soft focus shots, very atmospheric.

slugbug

Nice review of an even nicer case

Judas

i really really don't understand the concept of having more 5.25 drive bays... seriously, i've yet to see a single SINGLE system on the internet or for myself somewhere... that makes of anything more then 2 of the 5.25 drive bays.. the rest are all empty.... This is usually in the enthusiasts area to..... i can see anyone doing audio related stuff having front bay ports for thier audio and whatnot.... or someone maybe having a drive bay for hot swap hardrives perhaps...

But if anything, the room for more hardrives is one thing i've noticed that makes sense.

either way... i've not place 6 sata drives nicely in that rig where i can comfortably and easily remove... and the cable management would be a supreme disaster in comparison.....

Zardon

well just because you dont use it judas doesnt mean others wont. I have 4 used in my case. I however still prefer the PSU at the top of the case for a few reasons.

Lelisevis

Hmm difficult choices. I'm very impressed with this case, though the lack of physical reset button and the hard-drive cage which i've came to hate in my Armor is putting me off a bit. Cable routing could be a problem too.

Whats making it an even more difficult choice is the Coolermaster Stacker 830 Evolution - Nvidia Special Edition is now pretty much the same price and is one nice looking case.

Given the choice what would people go for? Got the big 30 coming up in april and my wife has offered to get me a new case. Maybe you'd choose neither and have a better choice. Be happy to consider other options. Gotta be good enough to cool my rather toasty hardware, with quiet running coming an equal first place.

werty316

I also prefer the PSU at the top of the case unless the board is upside down so this way routing the 8-pin cable isn't a pain.

Judas

it's not the fact of there being 4 hd bays....

it's the fact that they are now mounting in the manner that is just a little more impractical vs the 1000's with it's side vertical mount.. and beyond easy hot swap system...

Judas

actually considering, with the extender that comes with it.... it's not at all bad... sure the extra length kinda sucks.. but not in the method of routing the cabling through to the back and up and over again.....


i definitely prefer the bottom mounted psu by far..... WAY easier to do cable management and keeping things neat and tidy.

Zardon

Not really. its almost exactly the same either way if you do it right. I mean i have made builds for people with the PSU at the top and they are quite a bit tidier than even the image you posted.

A PSU should not be bottom mounted IMO and I have never really liked this design decision. Heat rises, its a basic principal. The heat from the motherboard, CPU, graphics cards rises to the top of the case, the PSU helps expel it. At the bottom it doesn't do this and its creating its own heat into the mix and the bottom mounted fan on many of these PSUs is rendered useless, pointing out the bottom of the case. Sure you can add top mounted fans, but I would prefer both. The only defense I hear for mounting a PSU at the bottom is "neatness" which is rubbish and "it runs cooler and makes less noise". If you have a good quailty PSU and rear fans, it wont make noise and it helps work in conjunction with rear and top mounted fans.

Judas

Well with the cosmos cases.. the psu can be mounted in any manner you wish.. either psu fan intake down or up... (flipable)...

Alot of the psu's i've seen don't move all that much for air.. some do.... not many.

I see no issues at all, considering that the cosmos already (all 3 of the cosmos 1000's i've had) come with fans premounted a the top (2) and in the front and bottom...., i only added the one to the back as well..

With my cable layout, there are no extra cables dangling anywhere at all, they run straight in behind the hardrive bays and completely, utterly out of site..... it's much more difficult to do that in a top mounted case as things typically want to slouch and hang..... the biggest reason my cables look like a larger mess then usual is the fact that with 8 sata cables running around and up..... as well as the extra 4pin molex to sata power adapter (as the gamerxstream 700 watt only has 6 sata power plugs).

If i were running only one hardrive and the one sata dvd/rw drive... things would be a hell of alot neater...

imo it's personal prefference at this point. Things just feel much more roomy and conveinent... less crap in the way.

Zardon

Which is useless as hot air rises, it doesn't sink. flipping the PSU will do almost nothing.

They aren't mean to unless the heat gets too much, then the fan kicks into higher gear, its a nice security option for many people without many case fans. We aren't really discussing if the decision to put the PSU at the bottom will cause huge issues, im more stating its a poorer thermal design decision. Which it is.

Sure, and thats your prerogative, however as a matter of physics and cooling I have always been against this case design. Not because it doesn't work and hardware will "fry" but because when the original template for case design came into play and engineers said "well heat rises, lets put this here to help expel heat and control ambient temperatures", it was actually RIGHT.

Actually your cables are very in sight Judas, if you wanted to do a very neat job you would have shrink and perhaps even a special matched rear plate to hide them totally, there is nothing better about your cable routing that a top mounted PSU, in fact you are seeing the cables firstly entering the front bit then coming back out again. if you had top mounted it you could hide the cables coming down much easier, especially as quite a few of them in most cases, such as the 12v CPU feeds are top mounted, not bottom mobo mounted.

Personal taste I guess, but we fail to see eye on this as we do with almost everything else we discuss. I mean I wouldn't have a gamexstream PSU in any machine i own and thats just a starting point ....

Mousey

[edit, gone]

Googled it and answered my own question, PCI-E Molex *rolls eyes*