When we remove the left side panel we can see where all the wires from the front I/O ports are routed through the case. This should help us keep some of our wires tidy and out of sight. To the right we have the 2 front USB ports, 1 IEEE1394 (firewire) port and a place to plug speakers and a microphone in. This is a nice convenience that saves time and effort compared to having to reach around to the rear of your system to plug things in.

Now we see what lives behind the aluminum front bezel of the Centurion 534. The layout is somewhat standard and before we can install devices in the 5.25” bays we have to remove the front bezel and remove the perforated steel panels that block access to the drive bays. Again there are no tools required to hold your optical drives in place since the Centurion 534 uses tool free design.

Above we have shots of the lower portion of the front of the Centurion 534, with and without the front bezel in place. As we can see the power buttons and front I/O ports are not part of the actual chassis and can be removed if need be.

In the two images above we have a shot of the right side panel. It shows 2 areas with perforated steel mesh. The lower area is just there for air intake reasons and the top area sits directly beneath the black plastic air vent that is used to vent warm air away from the CPU.

Above are a couple images taken during the assembly of our test system. We have built this test system with an AMD Athlon 64 3500+, MSI RD480 Crossfire motherboard, 2 GB of Kingmax PC3200 and a Sapphire X800 GTO2 PCI-e video card. We have a shot of the rear of the case after the system had been assembled. You can see the CoolerMaster Real Power 550w SLI PSU, which we will look at in an upcoming review, the rear I/O ports with the face plate that came with the motherboard and the 120mm fan that we added for rear exhaust.

Pros:
Elegant design.
Well constructed without any nasty sharp edges.
Tool free design for add on cards, hard drives and optical bays.
Ability to use 80mm, 92mm or 120mm fans for rear exhaust.
120 mm blue LED intake fan supplied.

Cons:
No rear exhaust fan included.

Conclusion:
The CoolerMaster Centurion 534 proved to be a decent mainstream pc chassis. The clean and elegant look will fit into any room and look good where ever you decide to place it.

They designed the Centurion 534 with tool free access for all needed add-on cards, hard drives and optical drives. On either side of the aluminum front bezel they also added a strip of steel mesh. This mesh provides additional air intake possibilities and also included a nice quiet blue LED 120mm intake fan that will assist in cooling your hard drives as well as drawing cool air into the case.

The Centurion 534 comes very close to being gold medal worthy but two things have lost Cooler Master this award. There is no inclusion of a rear exhaust fan and we are unsure of the durability of the black plastic clips that hold the AGP/PCI-e cards in place, especially over many system builds.

All considered, this chassis is worthy of a Silver Heavenly hardware award.