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I was impressed with this case when I first took it out of the box. It needs some sort of damping material. My motherboard temps were 20 degrees above ambient.
It looks really classy to me. Now it runs cool but the whole case buzzes and rattles. It's huge.
So I replaced all of the fans. It's spacious and easy to work in. But the stock cooling fans don't move enough air.
I sat a jar of change on top of it and the buzzing stopped. I still like the design and features of the case though.
Remember, there is extra foam padding on the covers that take up space so you really only have an inch or so of space between the back of your hard drives and the side of the case. * An ATI HD 5770 card. * Coolermaster Silent 850W Power Supply * M-Audio Delta 1010LT (but this doesn't make any noise)Good Things: * Plenty of room for the motherboard, cables, and large video card. This is not a problem if you only have 4 drives or less. So far with 6 green drives that don't generate a ton of heat, I have had no problems just using the extra fan above the hard drive bay. * It's easy to remove the side panels.
However, if you have more than four drives and/or one or more noisy components, you will be disappointed. In general, no matter what, a case is only as silent as the components within it. * Coolermaster Cosmos 1000. If you are using SATA power cables, make sure you don't leave too much cable hanging out or else you might break your hard drive connectors when putting the cover on. screw in your 120 mm fan into that housing, making sure air is going to blow the right way, remove the hidden 3.5 inch drive bay, and clip the fan housing into the slots that are above the hard drive bays). Even with the sound proof padding and everything there is ALOT of open ventilation in this case and you will hear noise if ANY of your components inside are noisy. I like this case, but it has several problems. * This case is not for wimps.
If your hard drives get hot, better water cool your system or choose another case. I had to give up using SATA power cables and use the old IDE connectors with an SATA adapter at the end to connect them all. * It's easy to put in your drives. * There is also poor spacing between the hard drive connectors and the back of the case. Any more than 4 drives and you better put in that extra fan.
Yay. I put in an old video card with a noisy fan (Diamond ATI HD 4670) and closed up the case just to test how much noise this case shielded and you could hear the thing two rooms away still.I put together a pretty nice PC, and after I list all the parts, I'll tell you what was good and what kind of stunk about this case. You can connect 2 hard drives per cable instead, but then you need to run 3 SATA power cables to power 6 hard drives and let me tell you, it is impossible the way the hard drives bays are spaced. * Not silent; I bought silent everything (fans, case, power supply, video card) and right now this PC makes more noise than my older second PC that doesn't have any silent parts in it at all. Let me tell you it wasn't fun putting this case together with 6 hard drives. * It looks cool.Things That Stunk: * As mentioned, the hard drives are too close to each other.
Make sure that the extra fan is blowing air UP away from the hard drives since the cooling in this case works by intaking air from the bottom of the case and exhausting it out the back and top of the case. If this case is going on top of a desk, better start lifting weights because this case is HEAVY. For one, it is not silent, but that's not coolermaster's fault. Silence really is overrated. It's not loud, and the noise level is perfectly fine, but it's definitely not silent. * The manual is useless (as some others also mentioned).
Overall Impression:If you have less than four drives, and have all silent components, this case is great. For example, there were 3 SATA power connectors on each SATA power cable that came with my power supply; but the spacing between the connectors did not match the spacing between the hard drives. * AMD Phenom II 965 + Gigabyte motherboard * 6 WD 1 TB Green Drives * An extra Coolermaster Silent 120mm fan to cool the hard drive bays. There's no directions or guide as to how to insert the extra HD fan (notice there is an extra black fan housing inside the case. With 4 drives you can space the hard drives out so they aren't so close to each other. * Another problem regarding spacing of the hard drives is that the distance between the SATA power connectors that came with the power supply did not fit well.
I had to go to Coolermaster's forums and read through many posts to put this thing together exactly the way I wanted.
If you air cool with two vid cards, your asking for trouble. I had this case for about a year. I would not purchase this case unless you plan to water cool. Found out the hard way. After burning my cpu and hard drives, Im moving on to another case.
I am very happy with this case. My only complaint is that the thumb screws for the panel plates are not as easy as they should be.
The build quality is exceptional with many nice touches throughout like easily accessible dust filters, reversible door, lots of cable ties, robust jack panel, and the nicest panel latch mechanism I've seen. And there are cases with better cable management. And most importantly, it will hold the hardware of the foreseeable future. The biggest disappointment is the cable routing. And be warned that the next generation of high end cards like the ATI 5870x2 and NVidia 300 series are going to be as long as 12 inches. The rails make it easy to slide around instead of having to "walk" it like you do cases with rubber feet.This is about the quietest case you're going to find that has the cooling necessary for high end, overclocked hardware. It keeps my overclocked Intel i5-750 and ATI 4870 at reasonable temperatures while only producing a muted whoosh.
But I'm glad for it. This case is a bigun. Well, it has some flaws. There are cases with better cooling. Then why don't I give it 5 stars. There are cutouts to route cables behind the motherboard but it's not deep enough and the support rails are flush with the side panel so you can't route over them. A good case can last through several system builds so I feel it's worth spending the money for something high quality and as future proof as possible.I think the Cosmos is the most attractive case on the market short of crazy expensive custom painted jobs. This thing is heavy when it's fully loaded.
I much prefer it's elegant appearance over gaudy light shows and excessive styling. The system build was easy with so much space to work with. I'm able to keep the main chamber mostly free of cables but it's not as clean of an installation as I'd like.The lack of fan controllers is a surprising omission for a case this expensive that is designed for low noise. But it's not enough. There are some very useful cutouts and a routing path between the motherboard and the drive cages.
And don't discount the value of the rails on the bottom. To achieve it's low noise level it makes trade-offs with slower fans and no side ventilation. If you are going for extreme hardware like multiple video cards, multiple 10k drives and an overvolted CPU then you probably want a case that is optimized for airflow like the CoolerMaster HAF932 or Antec 1200. I had forgotten what a full tower case really meant. The hard drives are mounted sideways so you don't have the usual space to stash cabling there.
If you don't have a modular power supply you're going to end up bundling all the cables in the small space between the power supply and the intake fan. The fans are quiet but they aren't silent and if your cooling needs are modest they could be turned down. The fans are all 3 pin (with included molex adapters) so they can be controlled by the motherboard but not all motherboards have robust fan control and it's simply easier to turn a knob.I wish Amazon let us give half stars because the Cosmos is so good that I hate to only give it 4 stars. There are quieter cases (though just barely).
I got burned (figuratively) by my last case that wouldn't fit the current generation of 10.5 inch video cards. That said, I don't regret buying it and I don't know of another case that would satisfy me more. However, it's not the ultimate in air flow. But the Cosmos' cooling will be adequate for most enthusiasts.So it's well built, has good cooling, is quiet and easy to use.
But I just can't give it a perfect rating with the insufficient cable routing. But there aren't any that combine these attributes while being so easy to work with and so visually appealing.
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