When we visited Corsair in the beginning of the year in Fremont, California the company told us about plans to move into the case market. There weren’t actually pictures or prototype builds available at that time which is why we didn’t mention it. Now first pictures are available and Corsair will even show a first prototype sample at this year’s CeBIT which begins tomorrow. We made our way over to Germany to cover the show and want to show pictures from this case already today. There is no name yet for the case and first real samples will be ready in the second quarter of 2009. Tomorrow we will see the mockup sample and there will be more pictures from us as well.

Just a few days left until the gates of CeBIT in Germany will open. Cooler Master sent us a few pictures of what they will be showing in their meeting room at CeBIT. Cooler Master's engineers had the idea to show off what a Cooler Master power supply can handle and built a system consisting of five Mini ITX motherboards with each one Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400s processor. The motherboards are nicely build into a single chassis. The Cooler Master ATCS 840 looks in fact pretty cool with these five systems installed getting the attention it was built for. The clue is that all of these systems are powered up by a single power supply: the Realpower M1000W. The pictures show all of the systems are fully loaded and working fine.

To make it clear that Cooler Master is not doing magic here. The processors have a TDP of 65 watts and fully loaded they might not even pull 300 watts from the power supply altogether. In addition there is water cooling, hard drives and fans but still the power supply might still run only at 60 to 70% of its rated maximum output. If there would have been space Cooler Master should have installed a few more systems maybe. Five systems with only one power supply will look already impressive to most of the visitors at CeBIT though and if you have seen Enermax showing off how they run four CPUs, a couple of graphics cards plus 24 hard drives with one power supply you'll know how to get the right attention. On a little side note I would like to add that the internal of the chassis looks really well made and it might give some ideas to the modding folks out there.

Maybe some people might realize now how low the power consumption could be with some setups and not following the hype about megawatts too easily anymore?

Silverstone has recently uploaded a video showing the robot assembly of one of their power supplies. The video will most likely show the factory of IS Quasar which is assembling many of Silverstone's power supplies in that way. It makes in many ways sense to use such an assembly line because you can pretty much rule out human errors. Please note that only the PCB assembly is done by the robots. The final assembly of the power supply is still not possible with robot-arms so we still find humans in the end of the production line. The shown power supply is the Zeus with 1200 watts which we tested last year. The build quality was indeed above what we normally get to see with other power supplies. The robot assembly has unfortunately nothing to do with the performance of the unit since this is based on the design and topology. You can be sure however that the units assembled in this way have a very good build quality.

I'm still jetting around the world, visiting various manufacturers. Up next on my list is a familiar name for anyone that has ever considered purchasing an aluminum chassis. In fact, Lian Li is practically synonymous with high quality aluminum cases; that's where they started, and they've never really strayed from that path. Other companies have tried to reinvent their product lineup over the years, in an attempt to appeal to a great audience - Cooler Master has similar beginning to Lian Li - but Lian Li has remained true to their roots and continues to focus solely on aluminum case designs. Today, the company remains one of the first names to crop up whenever someone mentions a desire for a best quality full aluminum chassis.

I visited Lian Li first in 2002, and I had some time in Taipei this past week to pay them another visit. Lian Li has two factories in Taiwan, both near each other in Keelung, north of Taipei. In 2002 they had just opened the second factory, and it's nice to see everything worked out well. There are downsides to being as specialized as Lian Li; with the current global economic crisis, Lian Li faces shrinking sales as well. The factories actually stop manufacturing at times when there just aren't enough orders. I have been lucky with my visits, though, and most of the machines were producing the one part or another.

The manufacturing area has many stamping and cutting machines that Lian Li uses to form the aluminum plates into the correct shape. Some thicker parts use a laser to cut the pieces from aluminum blocks. Smaller folding machines mold the flat parts into the proper three-dimensional shapes.

Assembly of the cases is always done by hand. Since the production facilities for Lian Li are in Taiwan, they face higher costs than if they produced the cases in China. Lian Li of course feels that the higher cost of manufacturing is worthwhile, and the result is better overall case quality.

There was only one assembly line running at the time of my visit, producing a Lancool chassis. The cases move through the middle of the table and each worker attaches different parts. At the end, the cases are finished and packaged in a box. Then they are stored in a designated area in the warehouse until they make their way into a container and off to the customer.

I was in Taiwan yesterday for a brief stopover, and with Enermax being close to the airport I took the opportunity to have a visit their HQ in Taoyuan. The best place to find new products is the R&D department. I actually found the engineers testing a new series Enermax will be releasing very soon - it's not for all markets, but the U.S. might see it. It’s called the Eco 80+ series, and for example it won't be available in Germany since the managers for the German market decided the Modu82+ and Pro82+ are still selling too well.

This series has a new kind of fan installed that Enermax also sells separately in retail channels. As you can see in the pictures, the fan is red and is named Magma. The fans are supposed to be very quiet due to their specially designed blades. The series will start at 350W, which is a good step in the right direction. The next higher wattage is the Pro82+ at 385W. There will be also 400W, 500W, and 620W models, which are the typical wattages that cover most of the entry to midrange field. As far as we could see, all of the capacitors are made by Nippon Chemi-Con, a high-end Japanese manufacturer. We couldn’t get any word on retail prices and availability yet, but Enermax will be introducing this series pretty soon.

I recently visited Corsair's HQ in Fremont, California. Corsair is mostly famous for its memory, but since the company entered the power supply market, it has grown strong there as well. Since I am the power supply guy at AnandTech, I was mostly interested in that area, which is why I met up with George Makris and Robert Pearce. George is in charge of power supplies at Corsair together with the very talented Padma who has designed power supplies for over 20 years now. We visited the facility with its R&D department for power supplies and memory and their huge testing area where all of the memory gets sorted. There is also still a small production line in Fremont where we could see the production of some memory modules.

Corsair has some thermal chambers in a testing room that are used for systems and power supplies alike. There is a Chroma 8000 in that room too, which enables Corsair to rate their power supplies at 50°C as stated on most of their labels. There is a large R&D department as well. Here we found shiploads of the latest hardware, like i7 systems with endless amounts of the latest graphics cards. There are other new products as well that Corsair will be bringing to market very soon, but they've asked us not to show those right now.

Corsair will be using these new heatspreaders for some of their upcoming memory modules.

Most of the production for computer components is done in Asia nowadays, and Corsair is no different. However, one difference is that according to Corsair, they are testing 100% of the first batches of power supplies rather than a smaller percentage. We also had a look at the old memory production facility, where today only one line survives to produce a very small amount of ram. To attach the heatspreaders to the memory, companies like Corsair make use of frames that can hold up to five memory modules. In this way they know all of the heatspreaders will always have the same position on the memory since the heatspreader is the only part that still needs manual work. The aluminum plate receives two lines of special glue that will melt under heat later once attached to the memory modules. Once the heatspreader is attached to the module it just receives a final sticker and it's done!

Silverstone has just released a new video about the positive air pressure they are using in the previously tested Fortress FT01 case. Silverstone's engineers used smoke to show the air circulation within the chassis which looks very impressive. We have tested this feature before with turning the large upper fan around that it exhausts the air. The temperatures were worse which shows that possitive air pressure indeed helps this case with good cooling.

Cooler Master gave us some more insides on their upcoming Black Edition of the Cosmos chassis. As it seems the changes to the case are rather minor, besides the black paint. There will not be any change to the hard drive bays as we have hoped for. It's a matter of fact that the case seems not changed at all. Even the large flat front door will come as it was. If you are interested in the further outcome and more information about this bundle be sure to hit Cooler Master's special website for the Black Edition.

Cooler Master announced the pending arrival of a luxury edition of... yes, of what exactly? Cooler Master couldn't tell us exactly what the full package will entail, but the manufacturer at least revealed a picture of a modified Cosmos chassis and some specs and information for a "luxurious limited edition bundle". Within the package users will get a modified Cosmos chassis decked out in black on the outside and inside. The bundle is to provide "the best products Cooler Master has to offer", so we expect it will also include a power supply, and possibly a water-cooling system or air-coolers for the CPU and GPU. There might be a few other items as well.

Cooler Master also indicates the chassis will have some upgrades in the form of two 140mm fans and a new hard drive bay that includes a 120mm fan. The only picture available right now is the above image, but we do know the chassis is "a special version of the popular Cosmos", so it should be similar to the Cosmos 1000 that has been in the market for a while. Let's look at the Cosmos 1000 a bit more to get an idea of what to expect.

Looking at the inside we see two top-mounted 120mm fans, which are now being changed to two 140mm fans. Since the existing Cosmos 1000 cases already have 140mm mounting holes, this change won't present any problems.

The drive bays will needs some changes to accommodate the new "HDD cooling module with 120mm fan". The number and arrangement of 3.5" bays in the module is not yet known; it could remain six like in the existing Cosmos with a fan in front, or the fan could take up two of the existing HDD spots.

We have seen some black painted interiors in the past, for example from Antec, and these were popular among a certain segment of users. Of course, it costs extra to paint the chassis interior and exterior, especially if you use high-quality paint, and you need to account for additional defect rates. Not long ago, Cooler Master offered CSX brand custom paintjobs, so the idea of a case with high-gloss black paint inside and out might have started there. It's unlikely that the CSX artists have anything to do with the painting of the limited Black Edition, however. Here are some additional pictures of the Cosmos 1000 for reference.

Besides the products, Cooler Master also offers all customers buying the Black Edition bundle exclusive membership in Cooler Master's VIP Club. Details of what this entails are scarce, but this membership provides benefits such as "exclusive articles, downloads, forum access, VIP invites, and much more". Cooler Master is keeping the remaining details secret until December 11, at which time we should also hear about pricing (though we'd hazard "not cheap" is a safe bet).

Until then, we're left with more questions than answers, but Cooler Master expects these bundled cases to fly off the shelves, so if this sounds like something interesting you might want to reserve the date. There will only be 500 of these custom cases/bundles available worldwide, each individually numbered, with no plans for further production. Hopefully the additional components will be as special as the case, or users might need to think twice about whether or not the bundle is worth the price of admission.

At Computex earlier this year, Antec showed us a prototype of the Skeleton. We recently received a sample of the final product. The whole chassis looks different now, which is good. Let's first start with a quick discussion of the case functionality. Who would need or want something like this? Frankly, I don't. I like small and sleek cases, preferably stored under my desk where I don't see or hear the PC. However, this case may be great for people that frequently change motherboard jumpers, and add or reconfigure other items. Some might even like the appearance of the case, which is a highly subjective area; many of us think it looks rather ugly, but as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

If you're mostly interested in the functionality, the outward appearance is rather irrelevant. Form follows function and that is an important part of this chassis. It looks somewhat like a lunar station with its half-moon structure and the large 250mm fan in the top. The front has the usual buttons and jacks: power, IEEE1394 FireWire, two USB ports, an eSATA port, and headset and microphone jacks. On the left side we find the reset button as well as a small status LED embedded in the plastic frame.

All of the cables hang out the back of the case, since there is nowhere to hide them. In the center of the chassis is a mounting plate for a large ATX motherboard, and as we will below you can slide the tray out of the chassis. The back has a thin clear acrylic frame installed that helps provide support for expansion cards (i.e. graphics cards). Below the motherboard in the back is the tray for the power supply. The sides feature a metal plate perforated with hexagonal shapes, and like the motherboard tray the PSU tray is removable. The fan in the top can be turned on and off with a small switch at the back, and a second switch allows you to control the LED lights.

Installing the components is fairly easy. You can slide the whole inside of the frame out the back by removing two screws on each side in the back. The power supply mounts in a small cage that can also slide out off the main frame. You can use a variety of power supplies, with an 80mm fan or 120mm fan, though a model with an 80mm fan would make more sense in this case since there are fewer obstructions to block airflow. After installing the main components, the motherboard easily slides into the frame and you can tighten the screws.

Houston? We have a problem.

Unfortunately, we couldn't install our three NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultras since we could not slide the motherboard tray back into the chassis. As you can see above, the first and last graphics cards collide with the upper part of the chassis. However, if your graphics card does not have a bulge like the 8800 Ultra you will not have this problem. In addition, we were able to slide the motherboard tray into the chasses without the cards and maneuver them into the slots inside of the chassis (though this required more effort than usual). The installation of all the other components went without problem.

Antec delivers a very sturdy case with the Skeleton and it's already available in the U.S. Europe still doesn't have any in stock, and the one shop that lists the Skeleton is asking €340 ($465) for it. The U.S prices are a little more moderate, starting at $140. Whether you find that price acceptable or not is for you to decide. However, there is another issue to consider. An open case like this does not have any EMI protection, which means in the worst case you will have problems with radio and/or TV reception when the system is on, particularly if it's near your stereo/television. Despite that, the case is something new in a market full of normal, dull cases. The exclusivity alone will attract some customers; there are certainly users who frequently swap components or simply like the unique design who will be interested in getting their claws on the Skeleton.

When it comes to aluminum chassis in the enthusiast field, one name inevitably comes up: Lian Li. The company has been around longer than most other retail brands and was a fierce competitor in the budding enthusiast market to Cooler Master eight years ago. Cooler Master shifted focus and enlarged their portfolio, but Lian Li stuck to their business of producing aluminum chassis - though recently they have extended slightly by offering some power supplies for the retail market.

I visited Lian Li's headquarters located a little outside of Taipei, Taiwan several times in the past - while a certain director of FSP Group was still working there. At that time (2002), Lian Li only had one building and the product lines were in the attic of the building. Lian Li was the first company to introduce a commercially built side panel with water inside; this was a pretty cool feature that doesn't appear to exist anymore (for obvious reasons). Lian Li struggled for a few years with diminishing sales, as consumers and the market were moving in a different direction. However, it looks like they are enjoying increased sales during the last few years, helped by their new case designs and the fact that people are spending more money on fancy computer equipment.

I recently received a nice new chassis from Lian Li and used it for several months. The PC-V1010 is a mid tower with a decent amount of space inside, capable of mounting up to five 5.25" devices. The top of the case has a cover that hides various ports: eSATA, IEEE1394 Firewire, four USB, and headset/mic jacks. The exterior design is very sleek and foregoes flashy lights or any other bling in favor of quiet elegance. There's also no door to get in your way - which could be good or bad depending on user preference. Ventilation is provided by a large perforated area at the lower front, with a 140mm fan on the interior. In addition, all of the 5.25" bay covers are perforated; this can be good for airflow but it also makes keeping the interior dust-free painful.

Lian Li has a very cool system that holds the side panel in place. All you see is a blank plate of aluminum; Lian Li secures the panel with metal latches that are not visible from the outside. To remove the panel, there's only one screw at the top-back corner. Looking inside we see two separate thermal areas, similar to quite a few other high-end cases. The only opening between those two areas is in the middle of the separating plate, where you will route cables for any drives, GPUs, and the motherboard. The edges of the opening are folded aluminum, so you don't need to worry about cutting any cables on sharp edges. The bottom area has space for the power supply and up to six hard drives. You'll need to remove the other side of the case to install any hard drives, which is again accomplished by removing a single thumbscrew.

A large crossbar provides extra support for long expansion cards or graphics cards, and you can remove it to make the installation of the motherboard and other components easier. The front sports six bays for 5.25" drives, five of which have a detachable cover and external access. Lian Li does not include any sort of tool-less clamping system for the drives, so you will need to secure all components with screws. This is one area where cases like the Cooler Master Cosmos S have an advantage, although it's only a concern if you frequently swap components. The large 140mm fan and the 5.25" cover have a fine filter that helps prevent dust from entering the chassis. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of space for the power supply, so you won't be able to fit long power supplies in the case unless you purchase an optional PSU mounting bracket (which extends the PSU out the back of the case about 2"). Another nice feature is the small fan control unit above the rear 120mm fan, which you can connect your case fans and switch between low, medium, and high speeds.

The large interior makes it easy to install all of your components. If you like, you can also remove the motherboard tray to make installation even easier. However, it is not possible to install graphics or expansion cards before the motherboard tray is inside the chassis. The case supports standard motherboard sizes as well as E-ATX boards. There's also a chipset cooling fan, which may or may not work properly depending on your component choices. This is an extra 120mm fan (included) that installs on the expansion card support bar, and it can be adjusted to provide additional cooling for your chipset.

Hard drives are easy to install as well. There are small screws with rubber dampers that attach to the hard drives. With the screws in place, you simply slide the drives into the bottom of the case. The rubber grommets isolate the drives from the rest of the chassis, helping to eliminate noise caused by vibration. If you want to install more than six drives, Lian Li sell an optional HDD cage (EX-33N) that mounts at the front of the chassis and supports three additional HDDs; it also includes a 120mm fan. Another option is the new EX-H33, which provides three HDD mounts and supports hot-swapping of drives through the front of the case (with support from an appropriate SATA controller).

Our three graphics cards fit nicely, with room to route all the necessary cables. However, as you can see in the above gallery, the final install with all of our components doesn't leave a lot of room between our short power supply and the hard drives. Users with detachable cables will have a small advantage here.

The PC-V1010 is available in black and silver, and prices start at around $250 in the U.S and €185 in Europe. Prices for aluminum towers like this are always high since it costs more to use aluminum for the entire chassis instead of cheap plastic. Extras like an additional HDD cage and the extended PSU mounting bracket will also add to the cost - $35 and $20 respectively. For the added cost, however, Lian Li provides excellent quality. The included fans and noise dampening features help make this a very quiet chassis as well. I have used around 20 Lian Li cases during the past several years, and I can that the quality of every one was exceptional. Simply put, it's hard to go wrong with a Lian Li case - the only possible complaints will come from your pocketbook.

You don't always need an expensive chassis for high-end components. Some people might think high-end hardware requires a nice, huge, aluminum chassis, but that's not always the case. Large cases often end up providing inferior airflow since the interior is just too roomy. Instead of good airflow, you get eddies and "whirlpools" where the cooling is less than ideal. That's one of the reasons (EMI being another) that running PCs without a case doesn't actually guarantee better cooling and/or overclocking. Smaller cases have the advantage that hardware can guide the air through the case easier, which in most cases produces better airflow resulting in lower system temperatures.

We've seen nice cases from Antec before, like the P182 and P160. Now we have the Twelve Hundred, Nine Hundred (a little older), and the Three Hundred - in order of decreasing size. The Three Hundred is the modern replacement for old favorites like the SLK3000 series. I wanted to provide a quick look at the Three Hundred since I've been using it for several months now. It's only after a lengthier period of daily use that one begins to truly notice the pros and cons of any particular case.

The chassis is made of steel and comes with a plastic front bezel, like most inexpensive (and even some expensive) offerings. The Antec Three Hundred comes with two mounting frames for 120mm fans that can be installed directly in the front panel. Above the fans are three 5.25" drive bays for optical drives. At the top of the front are the main switch, reset button, two USB ports, and headset/mic jacks. The left side shows a perforated area where another 120mm fan can be installed. On the top in the back area is a preinstalled 140mm fan that exhausts air. The backside carries an additional preinstalled 120mm exhaust fan that sits behind the CPU cooler. Like the other Antec Hundred Series case, the power supply mounts in the bottom area under the motherboard.

To open the case you only need to remove the two thumbscrews in the back and swing the side panel open. The inside is a plain steel chassis that can store six hard drives in the front right behind the two optional 120mm fans. There are three optical drive bays at the top as mentioned. Since Antec doesn't ship the case with the two front fans, you'll need to purchase them separately; installation starts with detaching the front panel. The whole front is perforated to let the air into the case. Antec has a simple filter installed to block some of the dust that inevitably gets sucked into PCs. Unfortunately the fan in the side panel has no such filter. Once the front panel is out of the way, installation of the fans is fairly easy.

Installing something like our test system in such a small case is not easy but neither is it impossible. The space is much smaller so you should install the motherboard first - preferably with the HSF and CPU preinstalled as well. After that you need to consider how many hard drives you want to install, since we had problems with six hard drives and the large NVIDIA 8800 Ultra graphics cards. It is impossible to use all of the upper HDD bays if you want to install more than one large graphics card. In fact, with our setup we could only install two hard drives in the bottom, in front of the power supply. Once everything is in place, the case looks very cool and seems more than just overloaded.

During the time on my stone floor, the case kept out most dust due to the installed filters. There was still dust of course, as is always the case, but at least the filters blocked larger dust particles (which we could see hanging on the front panel, proving the filters are helping). The buttons and USB ports in the top area make sense and are a great help if the case stays on the floor under a desk/table like in my place. The preinstalled fans are adjustable speed, so they can be very quiet at the lowest setting, which would be great for entry-level to midrange systems. Prices start as low as $50 shipped in the US, with many companies selling the case for under $70; prices in Europe start at €40. Overall, there's a lot to like with the Three Hundred, making this case a real bargain and worth buying for anything from entry-level to high-end setups. Just make sure your graphics cards will fit.

It has been around four years since Cooler Master first introduced their gigantic Stacker case. This was by no means the first full-tower case on the market, since companies like Chieftec (and plenty of others) have been selling them for ages, but it did spark the beginning of enthusiast hype for such cases. I lived in Taiwan at the time and provided a review of the case; from the professional perspective, there were some features and problems that needed additional tuning. A week later, I met with reps from Cooler Master at their Taipei headquarters to discuss the matter. One thing that became abundantly clear is that it takes more than just a bunch of engineers to build a high-quality, high-performance computer chassis. You can do all the calculations you want on paper, but it's not until your project is in the hands of enthusiasts pushing the limits that you can truly call it a finished product. Later, Cooler Master provided what we would almost call a "secret" update that tweaked the design.

Flash forward to today, and it seems like forever since Cooler Master introduced the Cosmos S chassis. We wanted to provide a few pictures showing the details of this design and discuss the ever-evolving cooling systems manufacturers come up with. As you might expect with a modern chassis, the Cosmos S has the ability to mount numerous 120mm fans -- up to six 120mm fans. The majority of these fans blow air out of the chassis; only one front fan and the bottom fan serve as intake fans; however, there is also a 200mm fan on the side blowing air into the case. The one large 200mm fan should provide roughly the same amount of airflow as the two 120mm exhaust fans, so the interior of the case should maintain good airflow and avoid the creation of a low pressure or high pressure interior. As you might expect with the number of fans, there is the potential for a tremendous amount of airflow and the result is that dust accumulates quite quickly. The case comes equipped with three 120mm fans (including the 120mm fan on the hard drive cage), plus the 200mm side fan. The whole front of the case is perforated to provide for airflow, and after just one week there was already a significant amount of dust. Cooler Master uses air filters on the openings to catch the dust, and these are typically easy to clean, but you will definitely want to do so on a regular basis.

Cooler Master is promoting the Cosmos S as their flagship product in their case portfolio, which is immediately apparent when you begin unpacking your case. Of course we have a large box, but when you remove the case from the box you find a large brown bag with a Cooler Master logo. There's no real purpose to the bag other than protecting it from the usual dust and Styrofoam bits during shipping, but it does help to convey the feeling that you purchased a high-end product. The majority of the internal chassis structure is composed of aluminum, with a predominantly plastic exterior. The case has a futuristic vibe, and it sort of looks like a Cylon from the Battlestar Galactica TV series when viewed from the front.

Opening the case does not require the removal of screws or even thumbscrews; just pull up the lever at the back and the side door swings open, at which point it can be removed. The hinge and locking mechanism on the side door are very well constructed, so despite the ease of internal access there's no additional vibration when the system is running. At the front of the case are seven 5.25" optical drive bays, assuming you use the hard drive cage as Cooler Master suggests. The drive cage can hold four hard drives and has a single 120mm fan at the front that blows air across the hard drives. Most users should find four hard drives sufficient, but if you prefer you can add additional hard drive cages. Each cage uses three 5.25" bays to provide four 3.5" mounts, so if you go with a single optical drive and three hard drive cages you could mount up to 12 hard drives -- and you would also be adding two more intake fans. This modular approach is good in some ways, but it would have been better if Cooler Master had shipped at least two hard drive cages. We can't imagine many people will need four let alone seven 5.25" bays, whereas additional hard drives seem a more likely use. Another complaint with the drive cages is that they are made of aluminum, and the drive bays are also composed of aluminum, so the two parts don't slide against each other very easily. It can be quite difficult to remove the drive cages from the chassis, and a minor tweak using plastic slides would have improved the situation.

Following the recent trend in full-tower cases, the power supply mounts at the bottom of the chassis. A nice feature is that there's an opening directly below the power supply equipped with a dust filter, which will work perfectly with power supplies that have a 120mm fan on the bottom -- although PSUs that have a fan at the rear won't benefit. The positioning of the opening is also designed for "normal" ATX power supplies, so larger power supplies may not align properly with the opening. Should you choose, you can also mount power supplies with the fan facing upward, so that it would serve as an additional exhaust point for the interior of the chassis. Considering the chassis already has plenty of airflow, however, this shouldn't be necessary, whereas giving the PSU direct access to cooler air from below can be beneficial. In short, we would recommend purchasing a power supply that matches well with the positioning of the bottom air intake.

The case comes equipped with one 120mm fan on the top, and you can add up to two additional fans by removing the top cover, which is done by loosening one screw on the upper-rear of the chassis. The three 120mm fan mounts at the top of the chassis are all adjacent to each other, providing an ideal location for water-cooling radiators; two or three fan models should work. There's enough space between the motherboard and the top of the chassis to fit such a radiator, and at the back of the case Cooler Master even includes two ports that can be used for tubing for external water reservoirs. This case definitely appears to target water-cooling, and Cooler Master explicitly mentions on their website that CPU coolers taller than 4.7" will not fit into the chassis. It's possible to install larger coolers, but first you would need to remove the large 200mm fan on the side, and why would you want to purchase this case if you're just going to remove one of the major features?

Installing optical drives is easy; you simply slide them in through the front of the chassis and they lock into place by pressing the corresponding blue button. This is simplicity at its best. There's also room behind the motherboard tray where you can route cables, allowing you to keep a clean interior. There are openings all around the motherboard area to facilitate this, so cable management is very good. With the entire case assembled, the system turns on with a touch of your finger, rather than the normal tactile mechanical switch. Unfortunately, the case doesn't include a reset button, which most enthusiasts continue to use.

Clearly, this case is designed with the enthusiast in mind, specifically the high-end enthusiast that will need plenty of cooling. The case ships with three 120mm fans and a large 200mm fan on the side, which should provide ample cooling for all but the most extreme systems. Water-cooling would definitely be the way to go for such extreme setups, of course, and the chassis accommodates such configurations with aplomb. The power supply also gets ample cooling, since it gets direct access to outside air through the bottom of the case. Hard drives are also cooled via direct air from the outside, which then flows towards the graphics card area. Perhaps more importantly, the large 200mm fan blows directly at the expansion card area, which modern dual-slot GPUs can then expel out the rear of the system through their mounting brackets. Despite the number of case fans, they did not get very noisy during actual use -- fans from graphics cards, motherboards, and the CPU are often louder. If you don't plan to run a top-end configuration, you could even disable many of the fans as we didn't measure significantly higher temperatures without the extra cooling. The hard drives showed the greatest difference, with temperatures increasing by 6°C when we disabled the front fan.

Overall, the build quality is very good and it's clear that Cooler Master has spent a lot of time and effort in the design of the Cosmos S. It's quite easy to make a really large chassis and call it quits, but the result is often poor airflow caused by turbulence. In fact, sometimes you get worse cooling and airflow in a large chassis because of the amount of empty space, since a smaller case allows the manufacturer to better direct airflow. This is definitely not a case that will cater to every user, but enthusiasts and particularly those that are interested in water-cooling will find a lot to like with the Cosmos S (RC-1100-KKN1-GP). Pricing is currently €190 including 19% tax, or around $210 in the US. That's a lot of money for a computer case, but the overall design quality is extremely competitive with other offerings in this price range.

We just reviewed the CyberPower Gamer Xtreme XI system with a 4.0GHz QX9770 and SLI GTX 280s that comes in an NZXT Khaos case. We thought it would be good to provide a separate look at the case since it has some cool features and looks quite nice. The Khaos case has been available for several weeks now. It is a full-tower offering a lot of space, with five 5.25" drive bays and eight 3.5" drive bays for hard drives. The front has two large 120mm fans preinstalled. In the top-back are two additional 120mm fans that will provide additional airflow to the CPU area, one venting upwards and the other blowing out the back.

Two of the 5.25" drive bays have faceplates that cover your installed optical drives. Looking at the rear, we see two small openings where the tubes of an external water-cooling device can enter/exit. At the bottom are two mounting areas for power supplies. As we noted in the CyberPower review, users can install two power supplies. NZXT also delivers a Y-cable so user can run both power supplies off of one wall socket. There are two wheels at the front of the chassis while the back has two rubber stoppers that keep the case in place. To move the case you lift up the handle at the back and wheel it around. (Mind your fingers, though.)

Internals

The inside looks like a standard ATX full-tower, but there are a few extras. The motherboard fits in the upper-left section and the power supplies as mentioned are at the bottom. Hard drives, optical drives, and anything else that uses the 3.5"/5.25" bays is at the front of the case, as usual. Between the drive bays and the motherboard is a small bracket where users can choose to mount three additional 120mm fans. There are two hard drive cages, each capable of holding up to four hard drives. Each of the drive cages has a 120mm fan preinstalled, so completely filling a cage and making a hard drive sandwich shouldn't cause any temperature concerns. If you want to remove the drive cages, you will need to take off the front bezel first. Motherboard installation on the other hand is made easier by the inclusion of a motherboard tray that can swing out with the removal of a few screws.

Installation

It's very easy to install all the components into this case. The motherboard tray helps users with the installation of the motherboard, graphics card(s), and additional expansion cards. However, it's worth nothing that certain larger CPU coolers may make it difficult or impossible to open the motherboard tray, in which case you would have to install component the old-fashioned way. Our Xigmatek HDT-S1283 that's around 6 inches tall couldn't fit through the opening when we tried to move the tray back into position. We were lucky since we could just remove a little plate to pass the cooler through, but wider/taller coolers will have problems - anything taller than around 6 inches will need to be installed after the motherboard is locked into its final position. There not much space between the bracket for the three additional 120mm fans, so we recommend removing it if you aren't planning to install these fans. Above the power supply is a square opening that was large enough even for all that cables for our triple-SLI setup. This helps keep the cables clean and out of the way. However, after we closed both sides of the case, we noticed that the mass of cables pushed against the right side and created a little gap between the case and side panel. A modular PSU (or PSUs) could help here, as you wouldn't have as many extra cables tucked into a small area.

Quick Thoughts

NZXT gets this case from the same factory where Hiper produces their Anubis and Osiris cases. The factory is located in Dongguan, China, and in fact I just visited this factory six months ago when we were invited to look at this and SevenTeam's power supplies factory. The build quality is very good and there is little negative to discuss. The only problem we encountered with our case is that the wheels at the front were a little damaged - we couldn't roll the case because the left wheel got jammed against the plate above it. NZXT should strengthen the base of the wheels a little more to prevent this problem from occurring. There are also ridges like you would find on a heatsink on the top and bottom of the case, but they are simply for appearance and don't really help improve cooling performance. Finally, the fans on the front, top, and back panels are clearly audible, and if you run multiple GPUs you will end up with a noisy system. The Khaos case has a lot of good elements, but the price starts at $399 and around €399 in Europe, which is quite high. A case like this is a long-term investment and some will be willing to pay the price of entry, though we can only hope prices will come down to a more affordable range.

We've seen some surprises from Enermax in the past. They have always been good at manufacturing, but when it comes to new products or new things in the industry the reps at Enermax tend to be quiet. For example, the head of global marketing is Joerg Theissen, whom I have known for years now -- and not just because we are both born in Hamburg, Germany. Joerg has worked for Enermax for a while now and together with his engineers brought Enermax where the company is today. One could say Enermax has built up a dream team where clear western strategic minds meet clever Asian inventors.

Enermax started a very long time ago with one of its first branch offices in Hamburg, Germany under the name Maxpoint. To some this name will ring a bell since today Maxpoint is a totally different company and is responsible for power supplies with the names Tagan, Silverpower and in Europe Seasonic as well. Joerg made his way from Hamburg to Taiwan a while ago and became a key element in their success today.

Remembering the start of the Modu82+ and Pro82+ we can say Enermax makes power supplies for the masses. The power supplies perform well and have a great price tag as well. However, somehow Enermax isn't usually seen as a high-end brand that enthusiasts would choose for a high-end system. Why? One reason is that the highest power model of the new Modu82+/Pro82+ series is only 625W; that is in the range where the greatest number of power supplies are sold, but it's not going to be suitable for something like GTX 280 SLI and quad-core. For higher power requirements, Enermax still has the Infiniti and Galaxy series in their portfolio that have many good features, but they need to improve performance and top that with more innovations and features if they are to keep pace with other top-end competitor offerings.

Coming soon to the market, and announcing today at AnandTech, Enermax is introducing their new Revolution 85+ series. We already have our hands on a 1050W pre-production model, and we were surprised with the direction Enermax has taken. Looking at the specs, we see six 12V rails with each… nothing unusual, except here each is rated at up to 30A. The 3.3V and 5V rails will come from VRMs as we have seen recently with some other power supplies, which is a very good development in the market. Why pull all of the lower rails out of one transformer when you can just generate the lower voltage rails later via VRMs?

The Revolution 85+ will be available in 850W, 950W, 1050W, and 1250W, though the last is slated to only be available in Europe with support for 230VAC. Efficiency wise we have seen the highest results to date at AnandTech. With a 230VAC input, the power supply reaches up to 90% efficiency, and this might even be topped by the 850W or 950W models. Regardless, the efficiency stayed above 86% throughout operation. The cable management has jacks for up to ten extra cable harnesses, with four 12-pin jacks for the four 6/8-pin PEG connectors. Enermax has included 12-pin jacks since the Modu/Pro82+ to provide for compatibility with future requirements.

Of course a full review will follow soon and we hope to have price and availability information by then.

Enermax will have two new power supplies coming to market this quarter. Both are based on the Infiniti design, which proved its reliability in earlier testing. Enermax had a 625W power supply at the booth that was actually powering up 16 HDDs, an octal-core setup, and a high-end graphics card. The Modu82+ will have detachable cables as seen in the picture. The Pro82+ will basically be the same power supply but with a fixed cable harnesses.

The 82+ in both names is indication the minimum efficiency of these power supplies. From 20% to 100% load the power supply will have more than 82% efficiency. That’s better than what we’ve seen in the majority of our tested power supplies so far. The higher models of the Modu82+ will have two 12-pin jacks that can each connect to two PEG connectors. A single 12-pin connector makes sense, as not only do you reduce cable clutter but Enermax will also be able to have different connectors on the end. If connectors for new standards come out in the future, the user can easily change the adapter (i.e. 6-pin or 8-pin PEG).

The power supplies will be available very soon and the prices are supposed to be cheaper than the Infiniti prices.