so a question i find myself asking is do we really need more quiet pc case
options and coolermaster's answer to that was uh yes we have the silencio
652s and we will send it to you please do a review please and all i could
really say to that is uh okay i guess so and while i'm randomly guessing at
things i guess my review of the lgg watch r is going to be coming soon so
stay tuned for that but first this video
cooler master's case mod world series is your opportunity to show off your
modding skills and win great prizes entries close february 7th 2015. click
now to learn more we'll start with a look at the outside i
quite like the aesthetic of this case the front door is hard to even see that
it's a door it blends in with the front of the case really well and cooler
master just overall hasn't attempted to reinvent the already fairly functional
wheel of quiet cases with simple elegant looks but has managed their own unique
spin that makes this more than a me too product the front door is lined with
noise dampening materials and reveals three five and a quarter inch bays
underneath and a removable cover for the two included 120 millimeter selencio
series quiet fans and some rather curious design choices first i noticed
that the bay covers and fan cover have a plastic patterned layer and another
plastic mesh layer that gives them a very pleasing appearance but they both
lack dust filters a bit of a given on mid-range to high-end cases these days
next i noticed that they might not need to be filtered anyway since the front
door includes no gaps to allow air to be drawn in through the front of the case
which means that for any filtration scheme to work it would actually have to
cover the side vents on the front bezel
so the third oddity i noticed then was that these also don't include any
filters so the overall impression of the front is that it looks really good but
leaves the primary air intake for the case completely open to infiltration by
dust a design oversight that is particularly confusing when cooler
master went to the trouble to filter the bottom of the case where only the power
supply takes in air by default let's move on though i o is well laid out with
anything vulnerable to being stepped on by a cat like power and reset buttons on
the front and everything else that is dual usb 2 dual usb 3.0 headphone and
microphone and this is a really nice touch an sd card reader on the top also
on the top is a vent exposure mechanism that feels a lot less like a bolted-on
afterthought than most silent cases looking at you define r5 and from
everywhere but the back appears to be just a stylized top panel very nice
from the back though we can see that there are two sliding pieces that lock
into place well yet are easy to remove if you know what to do the first one is
a solid plastic layer that leaves the top looking stylishly well vented just
like the front when you open the door and there's a second one that reveals
easy mounting for top fan so that's up to two 140 millimeter fans or a dual 120
millimeter radiator with fans the side panels use standard non-captive thumb
screws so be careful with them when you remove them and other than that their
only interesting features are the noise dampening lining on the insides and the
removable panel on the left that you'll need to remove two screws from then pop
off if you want to expose the vent that sits next to your GPU area moving to the
inside we find very solid construction overall but i expect this from cooler
master so they don't get massive bonus points for it or anything sucks to be
good at stuff hey guys so we'll continue the inside tour at the front the five
and a quarter inch cage can accept a two and a half or three and a half inch
drive in the bottom bay and is tool-less which is good but riveted in which means
no front triple rad mounting like the define r5 with that said i suspect most
people won't do that anyway so radiator support for the dual 120 millimeter
front fans would have been enough for me and it has that but the implementation
is really really bizarre kind of like they couldn't decide if and how they
were gonna do it so like i saw that with the front drive cages removed the red
could go on the inside here with the barbed side down only by the way which
means that most aios won't reach the CPU socket or even a graphics card in the
top slot at least that would have worked if cooler master didn't have the front
fan screwed into these threaded stamped mounts that would require custom screws
and very careful installation in order to do that then i noticed that it looked
kind of like there'd be room to put the red inside the front bezel only what no
wait not quite enough room so at this point i finally consulted the manual and
realized they expect you to buy an optional adapter to put a rat in the
front not a good solution but
given that the top and rear dual and single rad mounts are fine and how few
people need three radiators i'd have actually given this a pass still if the
air cooling fan installation method was really good and that's why water cooling
was difficult but it's not these front screws are partially threaded presumably
to prevent over-tightening of the fans but unfortunately due to tolerances in
manufacturing we end up with the opposite problem where my fans actually
had some wiggle in them even when they were fully screwed in a big no-no for a
silent case although in practice once we fired it up it didn't end up causing a
lot of vibration really any that i noticed moving on towards the back we've got the
drive bays that most normal people will leave in that i was initially going to
call over engineered for no apparent reason until i figured out that they're
actually surprisingly clever at the bottom there are three three and
a half inch bays that are screwed in and non-adjustable although you can install
two and a half inch drives in them if you want then the top four can actually
be adjusted by relocating this piece right here which allows the plastic
sleds to then also be resized these little wings to be lowered and ssds to
be screwed in from the sides in such a way that the SATA power connector
doesn't experience any unnecessary strain like most other solutions very
nice cooler master next to the drive cage there's a spot for a filtered 120
millimeter intake fan or another two and a half inch or three and a half inch
drive to be screwed in from the bottom of the case then moving further toward
the rear we've got anti-vibration rubber feet for the power supply an extra
auxiliary pci slot to go with the standard atx-7 three water cooling
grommets which i used to poke fun at but now use every day in one of their other
cases in our whole room water cooling setup and finally the third included
cilencio 120 millimeter fan at the top
we've got an aio dual 120 millimeter liquid cooler that we were able to
install facing either way thanks to the mounting slots rather than holes and
without losing access to any of our three five and a quarter inch bays very
nice the motherboard tray features a cutout for easy CPU cooler installation
yet another two and a half inch drive sliding grommet mount ample cable
management loops unexceptional but functional cable management holes with
equally unexceptional and actually
barely good enough spacing in the back of the tray to run
cables between it and the side panel if it weren't for the noise dampening
material on that panel they'd have been fine but as it was i had to do the push
down and slide in order to get the case closed up
so it's conclusion time the case accepts a ton of drives up to nine three and a
half inch and a two and a half inch or ten two and a half inch or any
combination thereof it looks great and is really well built but it loses some
marks for its open mesh that's masquerading as a filtration system and
poorly thought out front fan mounts so is that a recommendation for this
case not directly but the 652s is also
not a bad choice it just could have been a little bit better one change in
particular that i'd like to see on a v2 of this would be the ability to
completely remove the front door and stealth the hinge mounting points that
combined with the already excellent silence to high airflow transformation
that's possible on the top would turn this into possibly the best implemented
versatile case on the market maybe at
some point cooler master will start letting me look at this stuff before
sending me a finished product and asking me to review it so i can send them helpful suggestions like that but for
now we'll have to settle for just reviews and i hope you guys enjoyed this
one thanks for watching like if you liked dislike if you disliked leave a
comment if your feelings are more complicated than this as always there's a link in the video description to help
us out you can send us a monthly contribution if you want us to keep making videos you can buy a t-shirt like
this one if you want us to keep making videos and you can change your amazon bookmarks one with our affiliate codes
whenever you're buying cases like this or whatever else on amazon it gives us a
small kickback so we can keep making videos thanks again for watching and as
always don't forget to subscribe