Over the past year we've tested more than twenty different enclosures using our existing testbed and produced a mountain of comparative data. The goal of the undertaking is produce actual case reviews rather than testing enclosures in a vaccuum. Our approach has allowed us to compare both cooling performance and acoustics between the cases we've tested.

That said, it was really our first effort at such an endeavor in some time, and since we started some minor inconsistencies began to creep up in our reviews and between test cases. Now that we have data under our belts, we're now taking measures to correct those inconsistencies for future tests, improve the quality of our results, and allow for more reliable comparisons. In other words, we're about to revamp our case testbed and methodology, and hopefully this setup can last us through the next year.

The Cooler Master Cosmos is more or less legendary among top-of-the-line enclosures. It's not hard to see why, either: it's big, it has loads of expansion, and it looks like a giant refrigerator...for your computer. That said, some time has passed since the Cosmos originally landed with very little in the way of updates. Today, Cooler Master brings us the long-awaited update, the Cosmos II. With a $349 MSRP and a shipping weight of nearly fifty pounds, this enclosure is oversized in every way. Will it retain the cachet of its predecessors, though, or have advances in the computing market since the era of the original Cosmos left the Cosmos II a shiny relic of a bygone era?

It's a treat to get one of Cooler Master's enclosures in for review: they've been at it for a long time, and they have cases that cover virtually every price point on the market. They manufacture my personal favorite Micro-ATX budget enclosure, the Elite 360, an attractive $40 devil that makes for a fantastic budget HTPC case. They're also responsible for the crowd favorite enthusiast juggernaut, the Cosmos. What we have in today isn't the beast the Cosmos is, but it's not the pint size player the Elite 360 is either. From their Storm series of gaming cases we have the Enforcer. At an MSRP of $79 it lands right between our incumbent In-Win BUC and the budget ninja BitFenix Shinobi. Can it beat them both?

CES 2011 has kicked off in a major way and the talk on a lot of vendors lips is Sandy Bridge: what it means, what it brings to the table, and yes, how to capitalize on it. But Sandy Bridge isn't the only big thing going on here; we had a chance to sit down with Corsair, Kingston, Zalman, Zotac, Patriot, A-Data, Thermaltake, and Cooler Master to see what they had on the horizon. These are some of the trends and noteworthy products we came across.

Christmas time is coming and perhaps you want to give your significant other a new PSU. "Hey honey, check out this awesome new power supply I got you so you can... um...." Anyway, we gathered up several high-end power supplies from manufacturers all over the world, and we're here to see which one comes out on top. When you're looking at 1kW and larger power supplies, determining the "best" product isn't easy, as the manufacturers have different opinions on what is important. Some will go for pure efficiency, others for lower noise, or better cooling, etc. You'll have to decide which features are the most important, but let's look at this quintet and see if any can clearly rise above the rest.

The Silent Pro series is one of the best-known series power supplies from Cooler Master, previously covering range from 500 to 700 watts. The range has now extended to 1000W with two models rated at 850W and 1000W, including flat connection cables found in higher power classes. Today we are looking at the latter. The 1000W model comes with a 5-year warranty, promises a maximum efficiency of 86%, and uses a single +12V rail. Excluding the motherboard connectors all cables are fully modular. Cooler Master also makes note of the high quality of selected components. Even though the housing of the PSU seems to be very similar to the smaller Silent Pro, a different ODM is responsible for the manufacture. On the next pages we will explore the design and topology and see if Cooler Master is able to keep their promises.