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Cosmos S case from Cooler Master tested

by on28 May 2008

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Review: Reinforced with aluminum bars

 

Cosmos S is one of the latest and greatest cases that hit the market lately, and we dissected one of these to show you its pros and cons. We really liked it, and by the end of this review, you’ll more or less get a clear idea of whether it’s worth getting such a case.

It comes in a huge box, so don’t be surprised when you actually buy it, and the box is 32 cm wide, 66cm high and 72cm long. The case itself is smaller, of course, and it’s 26.6cm wide, 59.8cm high and 65.2cm long. A glance at the dimensions reveals that this is a full-tower case.

The case is made of aluminum and it weighs 13.8 kg, whereas gross weight is 17.8kg. The case is wrapped in Styrofoam and is ia nice bag with the CoolerMaster logo, so the case will be well protected, and you’ll get it literally without a scratch.

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The box is nicely designed with enough info to know what you’re purchasing, but the real pleasure comes after you take Cosmos S out of its box.

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Styrofoam keeps the case stable within the box, so it doesn't get damaged in transport.

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Cosmos S, also called RC-1100 by CoolerMaster, is quite easy to move, lift and even turn upside down despite its size. All this is easy, thanks to aluminum bars on top and bottom of the case, so we just pulled on them to get the case out of the box.

Cosmos S is one stable case, and if it was a car, we’d say that sharp turns are a breeze for this beast. The above mentioned bars come in handy, and since we’re using Cosmos S as reference case for testing CPU coolers, we often have to lay it down on the side to mount coolers. If there wasn’t for the bars, the case would probably be scratched and damaged by now.

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The front features ten 5-¼’’ bays for optical drives, but three are already taken up by modules for placing hard disks. If you’re confused, don’t worry, everything will be clear soon.

This next picture shows Cosmos S after a couple of weeks of use, and you can see the hard-disk module in the middle (4-5-6 bays), that we placed in the case afterwards, whereas the first bay houses an optical drive.

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One of the stylish details on Cosmos S is ON/OFF button, which requires no effort to push – all it takes is a gentle touch and the system will start.

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You can see that everything is nicely secured, so that it doesn’t get dirty or damaged before use. Right behind the ON/OFF button you’ll find an easily accessible USB panel. Beside the four USB ports, you’ll also find microphone in, headphones, firewire and eSATA ports. If you don’t like getting dust in your ports, you can easily slide the plastic cover shut.

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The top of the case houses 120mm case fans well hidden under the grill.

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With the case, you’ll get one top case fan, but there's room for two more. You’ll have to take the top panel off to mount them, and a screw on the back panel will take care of that.

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The back panel says a lot about the internal layout, and you can see that the PSU is on the bottom of the case, and that there’s another 120mm fan in the back. CoolerMaster also left options for those who might want water cooling, so there are two outlets for pipes above the rear fan. To the left and right of these outlets are the latches that open the side-panels.

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PSU is not included with the case, and what you get is three 120mm fans and one 200mm one on the side of the case. The following picture shows how a populated back panel looks. There’s a motherboard, two XFX 9800 GX2 cards and Cooler Master 1000M (modular 1000 Watt) PSU.

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After opening the left side-panel, (the one where the motherboard and other components are) you get a chance to see the large 200mm fan which, like the other two fans, uses 3-pin connectors. This means that the fan’s RPM can’t be regulated. Apart from the 3-pin connectors, all fans come with a standard peripheral power plug (molex) adapter, so you can hook them up directly to the 4-pin molex on your PSU. In order to monitor their speed, we recommend you use a 3-pin connector and hook them up directly to your motherboard.

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Removing the side-panels gives access to all the components. Setting up the cables is child’s play, as long as you route the cables to the back, so that branching them out is easier. With a little effort, you can arrange the cables nicely, although in our case it’s not exactly a work of art. In case that 24-pin power or 8-pin CPU connectors are too short to be routed from the back, you can use the included extensions for 24- and 8-pin connectors.

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The bottom panel features a filter, that’s quite easy to take off and wash, and it’s positioned underneath the bottom case fan. A filter was provided for the PSU, too, and you should probably check up on that one more often. Here we see that the aluminum bars really come in handy, and you can lay this case sideways with no fear of damaging it.

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There’s plenty of room inside, and it has some really nice airflow. Two 120mm fans, one on top and the other on bottom, and a 200mm fan on the side made sure of that. Another fan is placed on the 4-in-3 module on the front panel. You can also choose to mount another two fans, one on the bottom and two on the front panel, if you’re using additional modules for hard-disks.

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The mechanism for mounting optical drives is quite interesting, and all you have to do is slide the drive in the bay from the front, and press the blue button that locks the drive in its place. We already mentioned that Cosmos S features ten 5-¼” bays, but since the hard-disk module took up three of those, we’ve got another seven left.

We were surprised to see that only four hard disk bays were provided, but you can use the adapters to mount another four in 5-¼” bays. We asked Cooler Master why that is the case, and to answer our question, they sent us another 4-in-3 module. You can buy these separately for about €10, and they’re easy to mount. One small adapter is used if you want to mount a floppy disk or a card reader.

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The module we bought separately (on the picture below), is painted with Cooler Master’s logo, which is not the case with the ones you get in the box. You can also mount these modules in other cases that feature three free 5-¼” bays.

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4-in-3 module, as the name suggests, can house up to four hard disks. Module’s sides feature blue anti-vibration rubber, but all the disks are mounted normally, with no rubber parts. So, you’ll be using a good old method with four screws, but we think that the above mentioned front-mounting mechanism could’ve been used here, as well.

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If you’re not sure how to mount the motherboard, within the case you’ll find a paper that’ll help you with that. There’s no rule on should you set up the PSU or motherboard first, but it’s simpler if the PSU goes in first. If you choose to take it out at some point, it won’t be difficult at al.

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This angle shows two silent 120mm fans, and their wiring is long enough to reach the motherboard. E-SATA, USB, and the other cabling that’s routed to the USB panel are also long enough to reach the farthest points of your motherboard. We used an ATX motherboard, EVGA 780i, that we easily mounted.

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We already said that there’s a filter beneath the PSU, and it’s easy to take out for potential cleaning. We chose to use Cooler Master’s 1000W modular PSU, to make our cable fiddling easier.

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To make setting up easier, Cooler Master provided a couple of accessories that always come in handy.

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After setting up the motherboard, it took us about half an hour to route all the needed cables. There’s many ways to get the cable to where you want it, and we noticed that finishing touches on this case are just excellent, since we didn’t get any cuts or scratches on our hands.

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Mounting the additional hard-disk module was possibly the hardest part, although it should’ve been quite simple and straight forward. We had to try pretty hard before getting it in, since there’s no extra space, and everything is meant to be packed as tight as it can get.

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After we slid the module in and out a couple of times, the slide-channels got a bit looser and placing other modules was easy. The only drawback, if you could call it that, is the blue color, because the modules included with the case are red. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to choose among differently colored modules.

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In the last couple of weeks, our testing took its toll and we had to swap components on many occasions, but thanks to Cosmos S – it’s never been easier.


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Conclusion

Cosmos S is one of the latest and greatest cases we’ve ever used, but it has its low-points. The biggest one is the price, and €200 is just too much for an average user. We also didn’t like the fact that there’s space for just four hard disks, and for this money we could’ve gotten more case fans. If we ignore these points, then we’re looking at a great, functional and stylish case.

Aluminum bars that serve both as handles and legs are really handy, especially when we lay the case on its side, since they prevent the case from being damaged. There’s enough space for a Quad or Tri-SLI system, CrossFire X, as well as large CPU coolers. The USB panel is well populated and accessible, but the touch-sensitive ON/OFF button is the icing on the cake.

You know what they say – no pay, no play; and although Cosmos S is quite a saucy pay, it’s more play than we ever had a chance to test. Unfortunately, there’s no real restart button that can come in handy, but such things are not enough to snatch the prize from this beast of a case.

So without further ado, we dub Cosmos S a Fudzilla Recommended case.

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Last modified on 04 June 2008
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