Cooler Master Prototype HAF XC & HAF Stacker Accessories - CES 2014
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,289 words · ~6 min read
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Linus Tech tips coverage of CES 2014 is brought to you by nc.com your source for
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great technology selection and service along with Corsair memory and Western
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Digital we're here in The Cooler Master Suite with a couple of case Concepts
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that Cooler Master would really like to get your feedback on in a couple of
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different ways so first up behind me we've got the half stacker this is that
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modular case idea where they've got the 925 and then they've got the 9915 and
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then you can put another 915 on the bottom or but 2 915s or even 3 915s
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together and you slide them all together but they want to go beyond that in terms
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of customizability and start offering upgrade kits whether it's things like oh
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I don't know you know USB 3.1 comes out in the future and you need like a new
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you know module here or whether okay here's a mockup for a Slimline optical
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drive maybe you want to add that to one of the 915s so you don't care about
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front USB but you want one of these okay cool go ahead have one of those they've
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also got a mockup here for a windowed side panel for the 95 maybe you want to
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just build a dedicated system just inside that case you want to upgrade
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that piece maybe you want like you know I don't know hard drive cage addons okay
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these are these are pretty standard these are pretty straightforward those are available for lots of cases but the
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point of all of this is guys they want to hear your feedback in terms of what
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kind of upgrades you can think of that you'd like to see for the half stacker
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Series so that they can continue to develop their products around the needs
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of the people who are interested in this very unique and very flexible chassis
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and here's an interesting one this is very much pre-production engineering
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sample whatever you want to call it and the key here guys is Cooler Master wants
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to hear from you what you like and what you dislike about their prototype of the
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half XC so the first thing that's going
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to stand out to you guys is of course this wraparound windowed side panel this
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is pretty much a finished idea but of course it doesn't hurt to let them know
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what you think about it the idea is that most of the hardware is on this side so
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you've got your motherboard CPU memory graphics card and then all of the cable
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management is actually wrapped around the back now it's not like we haven't
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seen this before but who came up with the internal layout first is one of
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those things where if you dig around enough you'll be able to settle the
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debate on your own anyway we're not going to get into that here but the overall features are it does support a
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360 mm Radiator in the front in fact the
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one that's installed in there right now is an upcoming Glacier Series so that is
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The swifttech Cooler Master collaborative product with a
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360 mm radiator as well as of course the
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integrated highquality CPU block and pump and all that good stuff that we
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found on the 240 mm Glacier series cooler now a bit of a tour of the rest
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of this case the top has kind of a 3D mesh as does the front it kind of
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reminds me of the jam box by Jawbone except that it's not nearly as bad
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sounding although they do have some kind of loud fans in there right now your
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front IO is taken care of right here here with two USB 2 2 USB 3 and front
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panel audio the switch is kind of a a large switch that you can press of
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course it's a switch anyway okay you've got two 5 and a/4 inch Bay and this is
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kind of a neat thing it's intended to be stood up right like this or you can
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actually turn the little uh the little Cooler Master badge and you can use it
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as a desktop case as well once we open up the other side panel we'll find the
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power supply all the loose cables that were plugged into all the stuff on the
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other side as well as room for four 2 and 1/2 in ssds at the top of the back
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and then closer to the front I actually kind of forget so I'm going to have to I
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was hoping to cheat and do b-roll for all this but I'm going to have to open up the case and have a look yes right we
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have two 5 and 1/4 inch cages to go along with the 5 and a/ qu inch base and
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then under each of those is another two 3 and 1/2 in Drive cages all right the
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last products that Cooler Master needs feedback on are the silent flow series
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fan so this is a 1200 RPM fan that is optimized for a low RPM operation it
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only comes in a three pin configuration because DC control can be better for
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very very low RPM operation when you're under volting compared to pwm which can
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have some weird electrical noises that go along with it and they are claiming
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that they've had this running as low as 8 DB in a lab so I'm extremely excited
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to check that out especially if they can get it running optimally on something
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like a radiator next up we've got the hybrid flow fan this one again is very
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experimental one more time and this uses axial fan technology much like you would
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find on your graphics card cooler and it exhausts there in a couple different
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ways so the intake is on the side that you guys are looking at right now and
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then normally you'd go okay so the exhaust is here and that much is true
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there's what looks like about a 70 mm or 80 millim fan worth of fan blades that's
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going to exhaust in that direction but wait what's this one of the sides is
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actually open for sideways exhaust so
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say for example you had an intake on the side of your case actually the 800 D
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case from Corsair is one that's kind of like this where you have a side intake
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and then it's like it's blowing air in One Direction and it's mostly blocked
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well this will allow you to maybe get some hard dry air flow for your cages
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and then some additional air flow to your gpus at the same time so I'd like to hear from you guys where you could
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imagine installing a fan that intakes from the one side exhausts out the other
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side and then like also exhausts out one of the edges so guys thank you for
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checking out this experimental ideas video from The Cooler Master Suite here
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at CES 2014 huge thanks to nc.com for
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allowing us to be here they are our gold sponsor and they are your source for
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great technology selection and service and of course we want to thank our other
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sponsors as well Corsair memory and Western Digital for allowing us to be
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here without them we just couldn't do it