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Cooler Master COSMOS S |
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Written by Ivan Vujic
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Tuesday, 04 March 2008 |
Can a successor be worse than its predecessor? Usually not, since the engineers who make projects of the new model listen carefully to what community has to say and iron out all flaws. Why such an introduction? Is Cosmos-S better or worse than its predecessors?
When we opened the packaging, the first thing we noticed was the big linen cloth in which the case is contained, and in such a way that it is “grabbable” and easily pulled out from the box, which might be a small thing, but it sure makes life easier. Since the case is built of aluminium, it is much lighter than the steel Cosmos 1000, which is generally good, but also caused problems which we will mention later on in the review. Just like Cosmos, this case also has bars on the upper and lower sides which serves both as handles when moving it and an elegant way to keep it off the floor. The lower side of the case also has a dust filter which stops the dust from getting inside the PSU.
The upper side I/O panel is also coverable, so dust cannot penetrate there either. There are also a couple of filters on the front as well, so, as far as dust is concerned, you are completely protected. What is also very noticeable is the Power button, which is not a regular one, but a touch-sensitive surface. This solution is nice and very attractive, but still, we are unsure whether it will sustain heavy use and remain usable after several years of exploitation. Enthusiasts who switch cases often will not be bothered by this. The side panel can interestingly be set to a V-position, which is however quite unstable and thus not recommended.
Of course, this isn't really necessary either, since the side panel has a pre-installed 20 cm fan, which, in combo with three other fans scattered around the case (one on the front to cool HDDs, one on the back as an exhaust fan and one intake fan on top with two more spots to install additional ones), really makes you forget about the temperature inside the case. The flaw of the side panel is that the massive 20 cm fan is bound directly to the plastic, which is in return tied to the panel itself, which can finally result in unpleasant vibrations. The possible amendment to this is that all of the fans have a 3-pin connector, so that the RPM can be controlled and vibrations decreased.
Of all the fans, only the front one has LEDs inside, and red ones exclusively, which might not be the best solution (red is often tied to a warning subconsciously), but tastes are not something to dispute over. The rest of the fans don't have this, so you won't be having a Xmas tree during the night. Cabling is perfect – the case was designed in such a way to enable the user to hide all visible cables very neatly. This version of Cosmos doesn't have a separate GPU cooling canal, which is not a bad thing at all, to be honest. The solution was only hampering any graphics card manipulation while providing negligible cooling benefit, and the case is lighter like this anyway.
As we stated in the very beginning, the material that the case is made of, as well as some design/technical solutions, lead to the case having a few serious flaws. First of all, whenever the user wants to install some of the 5.25” devices, he/she has to unlock two side mechanisms who cover the slot in order to place the device itself inside. The problems is that the mechanism has a high pressure tolerance, i.e. the user has to push it really hard to get it unlocked, which can ultimately lead to it getting stuck.
Those who change these devices often will certainly frown at this “feature”. What can also happen is that the tin panel which holds the entire mounting system together simply disables pushing the device to the end! This is a consequence of the very thin aluminium these parts are made of, which is prone to deforming. The HDD cage has a couple of rubber bands to separate it from the rest of the case and stop any vibration transfer. This is a good idea per se, but the problem is that the cage is screwed down from both sides and is really difficult to extract. Naturally, regular HDD removal or changing will make this a problem. The disks themselves are also connected to the cage with screws, which makes HDD installation a slow and painful process overall.
What else can we say except that we are disappointed that the successor of the great Cosmos is worse than its predecessor. CoolerMaster engineers were struggling hard to cut down on overall enclosure mass, but created so many other problems during the process that the ultimate benefit is negated, to say at least. |
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