Cooler Master Sniper

Author: Harry Butler
Published: 12th January 2009

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Boom! Headshot!

Popping off the side panel, accomplished by unfastening a pair of thumb screws and sliding the panel free from the chassis, reveals a very spacious interior. In a change from the prototype we looked at back in August, the internals of the case are plain steel rather than the lovely powder coated finish that adorns the exterior.

The same also goes for the inside of the side panels, which have also missed out on the powdery love, which is no doubt in an effort to shave a few dollars off of the production cost. It’s a bit of a shame really as with such a large meshed window there’s a very clear view into the case, and matt black internals would have looked much better and given a more rounded feel to the whole case.

As said, the interior of the Sniper is still very roomy with plenty of space to manoeuvre hardware around inside, something which goes a long way towards making up for the lack of a removable motherboard tray. All the interior materials are just as solid as the core chassis and side panels, and it’s clear that Cooler Master really knows what it’s doing when it comes to build quality - it's absolutely superb throughout.

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While the static motherboard tray only supports up to ATX motherboards (sorry EATX users), Cooler Master has again included a pre-cut hole behind the where the CPU socket is usually found to allow for the easy fitting of back plate mounted CPU coolers without the need to remove the motherboard. We’re seeing this feature more and more these days and for enthusiast systems it’s a big bonus.

The motherboard tray is also well fitted with sensibly placed pre-cut cable routing holes and the concave shape of the right hand side panel also helps to make hiding and tidying cables very easy, with space enough behind the motherboard tray for even the chunkiest of power cables.

There’s further attention to detail in regards to cable tidying with the front panel cabling, which comes pre-zip tied to the back side of the 5.25” drive bays; a nice little addition especially as finding space for all those cables can be tricky.

Sadly though it’s not all good news, with a major flaw in some the front panel cabling. We’ve already talked about the nifty ability to control both fan speed and fan LED lighting using the front panel and while Cooler Master has included extra connections to tie two additional fans into the control system, they use just 2-pin fan connections with plastic shrouds, meaning conventional three or four pin case fans won’t work without some heavy modification with a pair of pliers – not something we can recommend to a modding novice and it’ll invariably invalidate the warranty too.

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This flaw also means that not only will your standard fans be incompatible with the Sniper’s fan controller, but you’re also not able to connect the case's rear 120mm exhaust fan to the front panel fan control – yes, it’s a total face palm moment. There’s simply no reason why Cooler Master couldn’t have used standard 3-pin fan fittings here, and it severely limits what could have been a wonderful little feature.

However, negatives aside there’s still plenty of good stuff in the Sniper, with the usual excellent Cooler Master drive mounting mechanisms for both 5.25” and 3.5” drives both included. The five 5.25” drive bays all make use of the excellent push button mounting system and the 3.5” drives are all mounted using toolless drive trays fitted with vibration reducing rubber mounts.

While there are cases out there with more drive space, the crucial point here is that all five 3.5” drive mounts are sufficiently spaced so that all can be filled without any danger to drive temperatures. There’s even the option to entirely remove the 3.5” mounting cage to improve airflow if you’d rather mount your hard drives into adapted 5.25” bays, although the process is a little tricky.

Rounding out the internals is the PSU mounting, located in the floor of the chassis with pre-cut ventilation holes for cooling 120mm fan equipped PSUs. While there are rubber anti-vibration strips to cut down on fan noise, the PSU mount is crucially missing any sort of dust filter – a real oversight as a floor mounted PSU as without a filter will soon suck up all the dust, hair and other rubbish that finds its way underneath your PC. It’s a clear oversight as every other intake on the Sniper is fitted with an (eventually) removable dust filter and no PSUs come with them pre-fitted, not even Cooler Master ones.