Cooler Master Cosmos SE Case Review

[jschsc]

I really like mine. No complaints. It is pretty big, slightly smaller than the very large full tower. I thought it was pretty quiet as well. Much more so than my CM Stacker 830 aluminum case. As far as the handles, I think they are good for lifting and the bottom ones create a nice air gap, plus they are aluminum. They also create a positive 4 point connection with the feet on floor substrate. This case is also much lighter than the all aluminum stacker case I mentioned.

 

[Myrkvidr]

The handles, more or less adds to the look, and strangely enough, some guys take theirs to a Lan party.

If you're bringing your case to a LAN party, it just can't be big and jaw dropping enough - I wanna see people go "WTF?!?" when they're looking at my rig 😉

Was this case not available 3 months ago?

Aye, I wrote the article for THG Germany some months ago - took some time until it went through the translation

Is it not the idea of using radiators is to avoid using tall CPU coolers? The biggest concern for watercooling in regards to the top radiator mount is clearing the tall memory heatsinks that some memory manufacturers use.

I just mentioned this because nowadays you could build a rig with an ultra silent CPU cooler due to low TDP and still want to use a watercooling solution for a high TDP gfx card.

 

[Haravikk]

Some of the flexibility issues mentioned are why I wish more manufacturers would just provide a case full of 5.25" drive buys. I got myself a cheap case by MS Tech for £30, but it's about the same size and has a 9x 5.25" drive bays but, surprisingly given the price, comes with a heap of plastic brackets you can screw into the bays to adapt them for either hard drives or fans/radiators. It even has quick-release brackets for every bay, and that fit pretty well (well enough I'm not bothering to use screws).Other than those kinds of touches the case is cheap, but it doesn't look too bad and also has a gap in the upper case where you can fit slimline fans, which I also liked.My point is though that given that a cheap case can do this I don't see why high-end cases can't do similar with more robust drive bay adaptors. For example, fan/radiator brackets that have rails for sliding 3.5" or 2.5" drives into, this way you can have maximum flexibility and minimal fuss, and the case design is much simpler; just give them rubber washers or whatever and you can keep the whole thing quiet too. Plus with 5.25" drive bays the whole height of the case you can move bulky items like an optical drive to the bottom of the case; I know it seems a weird place to put it, but you usually only have a PSU down there anyway, so it's not really the best place to put your intake fans anyway, meanwhile an optical drive should run just fine down there.It's the same with cases that don't offer quite enough space for fans and radiators at the top; at least with this case you could probably get (or create) a fanless radiator to mount in the upper part of the case, with fans of your own inside to blow the air through.At least this particular case in the review has plenty of cable routing options, that is by far my biggest gripe on otherwise good cases. That said, I really don't like the styling of this case much, and I just don't think it's worth the money given how awkward it sounds to reconfigure; a little extra effort from Cooler Master could have solved those problems.

 

[Alex_23]

Good exterior but bad interior, the monkey that designed this case doesn't have a clue about airflow basics. I was very exited about this case but no more, i'll go with the cm 690 III window edition.

 

[gto23]

Good looking case but thats all, the interior its just...crap. Airflow my arse, maybe its good for the ones that want to use liquid cooling with everything.

 

[zeekstern]

I purchased the Cooler Master Cosmos SE Full Tower case for $129 a few days ago and am very impressed with the quality of the case. So far my only complaint is the lack of good documentation. In fact, the documentation is the worst I have come across in a long time. While they do have pictures, many do not make sense. For example, the instructions to install a 360mm radiator in the front goes like this:"Install a 360mm radiator in front". Thats all the verbage. Then it has two illustrations. The first one shows the front of the case and 8 screws with lines on them. The second picture shows the front of the case with 4 screws. The first illustration also has lines with arrows pointing toward the case. The second illustration shows lines with no arrows. Both are small enough for me to have to use a magnifying glass. That is it!!If you are not experienced in building PCs, I think you will find the documentation almost useless.Other than the lack of decent documentation, I think the case is fantastic and would still recommend it to anyone.