Cooler Master Cosmos II Extreme Gaming Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
3,945 words · ~19 min read
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Cosmos 2 from Cooler Master is here it
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was very very difficult for me to get up onto the table because this XL ATX
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monstrosity weighs almost 50 lb so it's
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very large it's actually probably the biggest case I've yet encountered in
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terms of the size of the box so make sure if you're going to take take one of these home you don't happen to have any
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other stuff in your car that could interfere with it taking up probably
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most of if not the entire trunk of your
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vehicle very very big um you know what
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why don't we have a brief rundown of the specifications and features on the
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outside of the box before we open it up and I'll take a break off camera to get
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it out of the box and then we'll have a look at the inside so we've got rich IO
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support we'll cover that once it's open supports 200 mm fan * 1 140 mil * 2 and
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120 mil * 3 and that is in the top so it's either triple 120s two 140s or a
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single 200 removable up upper fan filter actually has removable fan filters in a
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couple places 11 tooless hard drive and SSD Baye supports four-way SL Crossfire
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yeah with 10 plus one expansion slots it better individual airflow chamber so it
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is a compartmentalized style case um
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here we go there that's the summary brushed aluminum and steel for strength and elegance stylish and streamline race
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car inspired design okay air flow optimized design we'll see about that once we open it up it supports dual
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water cooling loops and I'll show you guys that later Advanced system panel
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with fan speed and fan LED control and a rich aisle panel with two USB 3 super
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speed ports here we've got the general specifications and what I'm going to do
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is I'm just going to get my camera to kind of look at this and then you guys
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can pause the video If you really want to read it I'm just going to talk about the case I've extracted it from the box
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now and you can see that even in the thinnest part s the foam which is not an
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a closed cell foam it's a brittle foam so it's not as ideal as as a softer foam
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would be but you can see that my case did arrive in one piece which is always
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a good sign and at its thinnest points it's about an inch and a half and at the
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corners which is where most of the impact is going to happen that's going
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to be at least 3 in from the corner to
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the corner of the case right there giving it adequate protection in the
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event of a fall
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oh there's a cat in the
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Box he seems to be okay little bit traumatized but otherwise fine
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so case is covered in plastic to prevent scratches and then you can see there's a
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fair bit of other little miscellaneous bits here so I'm going to remove these
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off camera and then we're going to have a closer look at the Cosmos 2 it comes
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with a user manual which is in a variety of languages and let's have a look at
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the exterior of the Cosmos 2 to start
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with so you're going to see right here up at the top we've got these stylish
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carrying bars and you will need them you will have to hold on to these when you
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are moving this around especially once youve fully loaded the case with all of
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your system components we've also
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got a sliding cover for the controls at
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the front so this is controlling your front top hard drive GPU
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and led for your fans so it's controlling your fans as well as the
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LEDs you've got a reset switch a power switch a hard drive and a power
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indicator LED so that's all covered up here's your front IO which is actually a
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little easier to reach when you move that back as well has a very
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satisfying Funk to it when you move it back and forth I like that so we've got
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a microphone and headphone jack here eSATA two USB 3 super speed and four USB
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2 in the front we find
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three 5 and 1/4 in bays and two locking 3 and 1/2 in hot swap Bays as well very
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cool actually and then here we've got a
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cleanable fan filter although I'm not 100% sure how to get it off this is my
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first go at this with this case you know what why don't we finish off the
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exterior appearance first here so on the side we find a gorgeous brushed aluminum
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finish very very uniform very even and
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then we have what looks kind of of I mean I guess they're saying racing
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inspired but to me it looks more like the claw marks of a beast or something
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and that is the side panel ventilation so you can see there is a filter
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installed in there uh some kind of mesh so you'd be able to clean it off it's
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not just going to take dust directly into your case and once we open it up
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we're going to find out what is inside there in terms of cooling potential the
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bars on the bottom the bars on the bottom have
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rubber feet installed so while you uh can put it down without risking damaging
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the surface below it I would still not really drag the cosmos to around because
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you could potentially damage the surface that it is sitting on with those bars
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it's so heavy my table just uh detached
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on the bottom here so hopefully it doesn't collapse while I'm filming on
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the back here we've got a 140 or 120 mil fan some water cooling grommets we've
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got 10 PCI expansion slots plus one so
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you can throw like a a cathode in inverter switch there or something along
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those lines we have an adapter piece that comes out with thumb screws and
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then a power supply Mount that actually sticks out a little bit from the back
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and then finally on the other side we find a slightly different approach to
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the animal claw Mark thing that was going on on the other side panel and
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these ones have y the same uh filtered ventilation holes and I think we are
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ready to open this baby up to open up the side panel all you do is click this
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latch right here and it pops off it is on a hinge which is really nice for
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working on cases like this one where they're very very heavy so you don't
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have to worry about what to do with your side panel the sturdy construction here
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is not going to have any problem with the weight of this panel which is very
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very heavy and very very thick so okay
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this looks like um once I remove these screws I can take this off and that'll
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take off these filters there so that's pretty straightforward um what why is this so
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thick though I guess because of the layered design we've got a plastic layer
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we've got what appears to be some kind of a that looks like some kind of metal
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or plastic construction and then we've got the aluminum piece on the outside
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which should be great for noise isolation as well you guys so I've
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actually opened it up backwards so we're going to start on this side so you can
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see we've got a huge CPU cutaway we've got huge holes for uh for Mount uh for
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mounting for managing cables so up here you can easily fit two 8 Pin EPS
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connectors and if you're buying a case like this there's a chance you might be buying a motherboard that has 2 eight
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pins no problem they thought of that if it happens to be positioned somewhere
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else we've got another cable management hole up here and then we've got all of
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the usual ones using I might add a very high quality grommet you can see it
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bounces right back into place as soon as I move away even if you take it and
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really heave on it it goes right back into place so that's really good to see
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as well and we have two full banks of these which will help accommodate a
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couple different widths of motherboards depending on where you need to run your
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cables we can also see that there is ample space behind the motherboard tray
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behind the uh Drive cages for running
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any kinds of cables that you could pretty much possibly see fit I mean here
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to give you guys some idea here's where your power supply is going to sit on a
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nice little foam piece here for noise isolation and you've got a good I mean
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that's well over an inch of space next to it to run cables over here to the
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drives as well as to uh run cables up
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here to the motherboard and the rest of the components I'm just going to tilt
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this a little bit there we go to give you guys a better angle and we've got 1
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2 3 4 5 six that's okay you can stay back it's okay I'm just counting 1 2 3 4
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5 six hard drive cages down here five more here and then we've got those two
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hot swapable ones up in the top there's a 200 mil cooling fan comes installed
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with a 120 mil but you can put another 200 mil up there and I think oh yeah
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here we go here's another filtered fan intake under the power supply where it's
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going to be exhausting out the back of the case from there so why don't we turn
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it around and have a look at the the business side of the inside of this case
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so I was investigating the top and found out how easy it is to remove the top
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panel you can see here that it has uh a
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fan filter that is built in and the whole thing is held on by only one thumb
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screw so what that means I'm holding the thumb screw here yeah so what that means
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is that you can gain gain easy access here I'm just going to tip this forward
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so the light's better for you anyway so you can gain oh as much as I can there
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we go so you can gain easy access to the single 240 mil dual 140 mil or 200 mil
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200 mil sorry dual 140 mil or triple 120
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mil which is fully water cooling ready and you can see the spacing allows for
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some forgivingness on either side which means it should be very compatible with
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a variety of different radiators from different manufacturers because of that
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leeway that they've left in for you up there which is great there's also very
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little restriction on the fans themselves because this is very open and
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then other than that there's absolutely nothing in the way uh Cooler Master was
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actually a Pioneer in the whole built-in support for water cooling thing until
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Cooler Master really started taking it seriously with cases like the cosmos and
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the half uh 932 uh water cooling support was usually
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some rubber grommets in the back of the case which to me does not mean water
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cooling support because maybe one out of every 20 water cooled builds you see
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online uses an external radiator and the rest people are trying to do them
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internally so Cooler Master really I believe started that Trend in a big way
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compared to the other major case guys now speaking of a big way this is a
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big lot of internal cables holy cow look
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at this okay so here's our front panel cables where we've got our internal USB
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3 header good to see that that style being used we have our internal HD audio
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USB 2 * 2 so that's total of four ports
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and our EA then we've also got aha two
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data connections and two power connections for our hot swap Bay which I
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showed you from the front these are quite solidly constructed actually right
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that was one of the other things I wanted to show you guys about this I wanted to show you how these carrying
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handles are connected to the case so you can see actually you will have to come
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over up top on this one you can see they're bolted in and they've got some
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serious reinforcement going on here even with your system fully loaded up I would
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not expect there to be any give in these and you'll be uh very able to move your
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system around as long as you have the uh the physical strength for it because it
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is quite heavy all right so here we have
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uh I'll have to find out what these are looks like some kind of dual 120 mm
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thing though yeah we'll figure that out in a bit
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H okay we've also got some other included actually oh let's finish with
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the cables okay here we go the instructions for this case are actually
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surprisingly detailed with really good pictures in spite of how many uh
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languages that it's in it's very efficient so I figured out what these
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are it actually comes by default with
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the ability to remove all these bottom cages and these are the 240 mm radiator
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brackets that you will need in order to install a dual 120 rad in the bottom so
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here these are for fan LEDs so this is for the LED controller if you have fans
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that use these particular cables then you'll need them and if you don't then
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you won't be able to have LED control you'll have to take this whole thing and
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kind of tuck it away somewhere which is what I would do because none of the fans
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that I particularly like use that uh use that system this is something that's
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really smart though check this out so we've got our top fan
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controller we've got our hard drive fan one we've got our GPU fan one and we've
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got our front fan one they've actually
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broken it out into how many of that particular fan you might need to control
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so rather than locking you down to the configuration the case comes with for
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the fan controller which I've seen in the past which is just mindboggling
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they've gone and they've included however many you will need to plug it
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into each individual fan so that's a really smart thing that Cooler Master
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has done on this case to give users the best possible flexib ility for their
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configuration here's our hard drive LED power switch and reset switch so looks
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like no um hm no power LED
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fascinating guess it's got it figured out some other way so that's it for the
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front cable so that brings us to some of the other internal features so one of
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them is the tooless 5 and 1/4 in Bay here so we've got three of them then we
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have those hot swaps we've also got ah these so these are really easy to use
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cooler Master's design is actually excellent you can see there's a lot of flex to it but as soon as you put a
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drive in there it just gets totally
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rigid and works incredibly well for keeping your hard drive installed you
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don't even need tools because you got these little uh these little Nubs right
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here so you just bend it out put the drive in clip it
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in slide it in and then lock it into
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place so that's how you install a drive in this particular case and then the way
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to get access to those bottom ones is you just go ahead and let's see there we
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go no this piece yep so there's your two
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120 mil fans and there's your six additional 3 and 1/2 in or 2.5 in
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remember these are all compatible with 2 and 1/2 in ssds should you see fit to
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load the case up with a whole ton of ssds so modifications you can make you
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can actually just by removing these two screws and removing all these cages you
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can remove this entire hard drive cage here if there's something you want to
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install there if you want to make some kind of modifications to the case you
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can completely remove uh this whole bottom cage M here as well in order to
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install this radiator brackets in order to put a 240 mil radiator down in the
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bottom which would allow you to do two separate Loops you'd have all the room
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in the world for a couple reservoirs and pumps 360 rout in the top 240 rad in the
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bottom speaking of which that is another smart thing cooler Master's done with
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this case is they've actually built in Cable Management grommets between the
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bottom chamber and the bottom chamber and the top chamber so you can keep your
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segmented separated airflow thing going
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but you can actually run things from the bottom up to the top which is something
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that I've run into with a couple cases in the past that have used this
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compartmentalized design and not given adequate space to run things like water
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cooling tubing from one place to another just allows you to be a little bit
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tidier with something like that so I mentioned before XL ATX it's also
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compatible with eatx so that's why we have cable grommet or cable management
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grommets out here as well as ones over here uh Cooler Master mentions that it's
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four-way SLI and four-way Crossfire compatible and it better be cuz if you
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take two usually xlx motherboard start here so you got 2 4 6 8 yes it is fully
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capable of doing that I mean I think we're at the Practical limits of how
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many video cards people would want to install in a system so cooler Masters
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pretty much got the bases covered there um I couldn't figure out immediately how
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to get the door off the side of the case but it turns out it's really easy you
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just take it and lift it off and it's just got
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these four little metal pieces right here that slip into place and are held
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up by the hinge design right here sorry
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I'm just going to put that on for the sake of demonstrating to you guys how
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easy it is to put back on
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oops huh that was faster the first time this is only my second time putting it
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back on though so there we go yeah back
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in place and not going anywhere anymore
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which is very cool uh let me just see if there's anything that I've missed inside
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here so basically in a nutshell you can
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install as much Hardware as you want three 5 and 1/4 in devices along with 13
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3 and 1/2 or 2 and 1/2 in devices you can install up to a triple Radiator in
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the top and a dual in the bottom and then I oh man I'd imagine if you get a
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little bit more creative you could probably do a couple du in the bottom
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you could do a larger radiator like a 140 here in the front you could do
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another 120 or 140 here in the back and
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uh yeah you could have all the water cooling this that you could possibly fit
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um although it might not be very portable at that point by the time you
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put all those radiators inside you can install pretty much whatever motherboard
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you want uh as many video cards as you want and as long a power supply as you
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want ultimately this is an ultimate
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style case it is not for the faint of heart it is not for installing your your
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sort of daily driver machine this is for a gaming system and I think that pretty
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much covers everything I'll show you some of the accessories here we've got our speaker we've got our mounting
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screws and grommets and standoffs and all that good stuff couple included
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Cable Management pieces these are so handy thank you Cooler Master for
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including these check this out so you just do that pull them tight and you can
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use these to mount cables wherever you want they've just got double-sided foamy
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tape on the back so we got four of those five of those they also include a whole
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bunch of black cable ties so you pretty much won't need anything with this case
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other than what's included Cooler Master already knows that you might not be able
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to reach with your eight pin connector so they've included one that is going to
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be long enough to get
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you darn near halfway from the top of the case down to your power supply so
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pretty much no matter what kind of power supply you have you'll be able to get
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your system going right away although personally I'd replace this with
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something sleeved because if you're going to have a case that looks really
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nice like this on the inside you're probably going to want it to stay looking nice and not be covered in this
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speaking of which there is no windowed side panel on this case for now but
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there could potentially be a windowed side panel available for purchase in the
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future as an add-on to to this case and
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ah yes fan fan placement so I mentioned
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the triple 120s in the top the 140 in the back you got your power supply fan
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you've got your dual 120s here which are totally removable you can just take them
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off very easily here you can also mount an additional 120 mm fan here for to
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pull more air through these hard drives to help out the 200 mil that's here in
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the front you can do two 120s here on
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the side and I think that pretty much
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covers it so don't forget to subscribe to L tech for more unboxings reviews and
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other computer videos and thank you for tuning in on this
19:29
special Showcase of The Cooler Master
19:32
Cosmos 2 Ultimate Heavy