Cooler Master ATCS 840

Originally Posted by E.E.L. Ambiense
Bless Cooler Master. I was hoping B-T would have a look at this sucker, I just didn't know it was going to be that quick! I'm seriously considering doing an extensive mod on one of these.

I can't wait to see a slew of mods based on this chassis.

Originally Posted by Tim S
I can't wait to see a slew of mods based on this chassis.

It's only natural. There will be a slew of them too! It just looks like a bloody perfect chassis to work with. Really, there just isn't much I'd change on it, other than the quick-release drive rail things. I've never liked those. I'm an old school screws-through-holes kinda guy. :)

At first when I started seeing spy pics of this chassis creeping up on the net, and seeing that they put the two large fans up top, I was like, "oh great....no rad support..." I'm glad my suspicions were unfounded! Nice of Cooler Master to do that. It seems very modular and flexible with what you can do with it.

Do the ball bearings for sliding the motherboard tray in vibrate in use?

Any loose parts of a case vibrating can drive you nuts when trying to silence a system.

Originally Posted by genesisofthesith
Do the ball bearings for sliding the motherboard tray in vibrate in use?

Any loose parts of a case vibrating can drive you nuts when trying to silence a system.

they're TINY and very very well fitted - we didn't notice any vibration from them at all throughout our testing.

Woah it's a beauty :o Kinda sorta looks like Silverstone cases, but adds a couple of features.

Originally Posted by Baz

Quote:

Originally Posted by StephenK
Any thoughts on increasing the air cooling performance? Although this looks like an opportunity for me to try my hand a watercooling maybe :)

A truly top quality case though. Beautiful :)

It certainly seems that cases with side panel intakes get a huge boost in air cooling performance - the HAF 932 and the akasa Omega both use this to good effect. Cut a 230mm blow hole into that nice big side panel and i'm sure you'd see temperatures better than those we say in HAF 932.

I was gonna say the same thing, every time I remove the side panel the temps spike up few degrees on the 932.

Planning a mod based on this case right now, just waiting for them to release it so I can get one in and start putting it into CAD and then start designing the mod.



its a beautiful case in an of itself, but is probably the only case ever to make me want it no matter how much it costs.

That's one of the most impressive Coolermaster cases I've seen in a long time. (I've bought 3 Silverstone cases in a row).

I do wonder about those thermal tests though. Surely most people here choose their own case cooling based on their system - rather than using what the manufacturer provides?

Speaking of Silverstone... I'm hoping this rather tasty case will keep them on their toes. I've always though Lian Li were better for workstation type machines tather than gaming...

Has anyone noticed that the noise from really big fans is fine in the same room, but can be quite loud through walls and floors? (especially wood floors.) It seemed with one of my old systems that the hum could be heard in other rooms, but in the same room it was whisper quiet... Maybe just that house.

Deleted

Originally Posted by Tile
Several people that work with high-performance parts told me that the longitudinal hard drive cage is the better design. Another thing that I don't like is the non-standard fans and when they wear out you're out of luck trying to get a replacement.

And they design cases that ship hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of units?

I deleted my comments around here because you considered them spam but I hate when case manufacturers are doing things the wrong way.

I can't tell; are the HDDs soft mounted? Is the typical aluminum "hum" still present? What are mechanical acoustics like (HDDs, bearings, panel rattle, internal fans- clicking, buzzing, etc.)? Do the fans have any unwanted acoustic characteristics?

Can you tell I'm a quiet nut? ;)

High ambient temperature for this test; couldn't postpone it by a couple of hours for results more consistent with your existing fleet?

Hows the connection of the front IO to the mobo when you pull the tray out? Is it necessary to disconnect those before you pull the tray?

probably will go for this case, even though i'd be looking at $600NZ, it seems to be a great case that would last me a couple of years

.

Originally Posted by Tile
Another niggle this time with the review itself is the 404 error when trying to open the 4th image on the 2nd page.

Can't help but feel that someone is just looking for problems :p

Originally Posted by StephenK

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tile
Another niggle this time with the review itself is the 404 error when trying to open the 4th image on the 2nd page.

Can't help but feel that someone is just looking for problems :p

Actually Tile was right on that one, and wanted to comment on that but forgot, the colon was missing from the file name so. imagejpg instead of image.jpg. Easy to spot this yourself.

About the comments on the HD rack, I can imagine the hatred for this like i have a natural rage against any consoles. I stopped whining about that a while ago. Instead Tile could just buy the case and mod his own HD cage version into it. Problem solved.

From now on I will be absolutely pasive around the forums.

You should make another CPU temperature test but make airflow guide from (for example) cardboard which forces top exhaust fans to draw air only from above CPU instead of everywhere.
One user reported 10C CPU temp drop with such arrangement in Cosmos so uncontrolled airflow isn't minor thing.

Originally Posted by DeSean
Has anyone noticed that the noise from really big fans is fine in the same room, but can be quite loud through walls and floors? (especially wood floors.) It seemed with one of my old systems that the hum could be heard in other rooms, but in the same room it was whisper quiet... Maybe just that house.

Big low speed fans generate more harder to hear low frequency noise which penetrates walls and structures better.
Low frequency noise (basically vibration of molecules) might make some objects to vibrate at their resonant frequency making it audible, also size of room etc could amplify it at certain position. (try positioning speaker at different distances from wall and listen behaviour of low frequencies)

Originally Posted by Furymouse
Hows the connection of the front IO to the mobo when you pull the tray out? Is it necessary to disconnect those before you pull the tray?

Isn't there general rule for these situations: Not if you can stretch cables enough! :D

Originally Posted by Tile
From now on I will be absolutely pasive around the forums.

Nobody said you should not comment, they asked you to stop spamming all of the case reviews with the same groundless nonsense.

It's not just here though, you've been spamming the Xtremesystems forums with the same rubbish, everyone over there is telling you the same though...It makes...no...difference!!!

What nobody seems to understand is why you wont stop, to make matters worse I dont know how many of us with traversley mounted hard drives tell you that it's not a problem! However you still fail to listen and are adamant that some high tech hardware guy told you that such mounting increases the chance of failure!

Well most modern hard disks have manufacturers warranties which state operating temperatures from 5 to 55 degrees C! You can wrap your disk in a plastic bag and it'd probably be fine! Hard disks are probably the component in your computer which require the least amount of cooling!

Now stop the madness! Until you have some hard evidence and not just some hearsay, on second thoughts perhaps you can contact Adam & Jamie and ask them to clear this up once and for all!

Originally Posted by zr_ox
on second thoughts perhaps you can contact Adam & Jamie and ask them to clear this up once and for all!

please don't, there are enough people taking their crap as scientific evidence when half of it has no science whatsoever to it.

admittedly some of it is decently interesting, but lacks the depth required for serious testing or proof. (most likely due to their time and budget constraints, as well as requiring entertainment value)

Looks like you're saying that I am "spamming" the case reviews because I find niggles and flaws even in the perfect cases. That's it.

Originally Posted by zr_ox
Well most modern hard disks have manufacturers warranties which state operating temperatures from 5 to 55 degrees C! You can wrap your disk in a plastic bag and it'd probably be fine! Hard disks are probably the component in your computer which require the least amount of cooling!

At work, we enclose hard disk drives in near-unvented solid aluminium enclosures and they withstand 24 hours of 50 centigrade in the oven. Disk drives are quite dandy things, until you shake them.

For those looking for a quiet case - take the review findings here about case noise with a HUGE grain of salt. The problem: as was the case with the HAF test, a passively cooled GPU was used inthe build by bit-tech. As anyone knows who's done a high end build in the last three years using a decently quiet fan on their CPU cooler, by FAR the major source of noise in a high end gaming system (aside from case fans) is the fan on any current high end GPU - it completely masks the HD and CPU sounds. So from this review, we know the case fans are quiet; but what we can't know is if the case is any good at masking fan noise from a GPU card. Other reviews of the HAF out there make it very clear that (contrary to the view expressed in the bit-tech review) that case if very noisy when used with a high end video card as its honeycombed case does nothing to muffle sound. Hopefully the 840 is better in this regard due to its more solid construction but there is no way of knowing from this review, and the two large blowholes at the top of this case could let a lot of the GPU sound escape. We will have to await other reviews before knowing; too bad given the quantitative comparisons bit-tech runs don't test for this crucial factor .