Cooler Master Cosmos II: Large and in Charge

Conclusion

Being the most expensive case we've yet tested by $100, the Cooler Master Cosmos II had to deliver. It had to be quieter and had to run cooler than anything else. It had to justify both its price tag and its sheer volume. Unfortunately, when you get to something this pricey, justifying the price tag and size becomes more a matter of personal preference and needs than anything that can be concretely quantified.

What can be concretely quantified is the acoustic and thermal performance. On those two fronts, the Cosmos II is arguably the best performing case we've ever tested. While the wins aren't devastating, they are measurable in nearly every discipline. It looks like a refrigerator and thankfully it pretty much performs like one, and that's before you get into all the different ways you can plug water-cooling and whatever else your enthusiast heart desires into it. The Cosmos II can support pretty much any machine you want to build inside it.

So why can't I bring myself to be more enthusiastic about it? It's my understanding the kinks in the build quality with my review unit are worked out in retail models, so that's not really a strike one can level against it. Assembling a system inside it is about as painless as you could ask for, all things considered. My issues are the price and the size.

Rosewill may not be the most beloved brand among enthusiasts, but there's no denying their Thor v2 provides comparable performance to the Cosmos II at roughly a third of the price. Sure you sacrifice five of the Cosmos II's eleven drive bays, but who needs eleven bays? And the Thor v2 doesn't look as nice and the build quality is lacking in places, but it's also smaller and lighter.

I also have to wonder who needs a tower this large anymore. For sure, the Cosmos II is a niche product with a price to match, but cases like these used to be halo products. As I mentioned before, when you can get an X79 build in a MicroATX case without sacrificing too much in the way of features or performance, who needs a machine this big?

Ultimately the Cooler Master Cosmos II isn't my cup of tea, but I think it really does come down to a matter of personal preference. It's big and some might even say beautiful; other's will just call it oversized and look for something more svelte. If you have need of or just plain want a case like the Cosmos II, you can at least rest easy knowing it's very hard to find a better performer on the market.