Cooler Master doesn’t stop surprising us with new or upgraded products, mostly intended for gamers and for all those who want their hardware to perform at top capability. As a company that’s used as a synonym for gaming and as a company that, directly or indirectly, supports this industry and is a significant part of it, not only with excellent products, we’ve grown accustomed to it setting standards and being an example for other companies. That’s precisely the case with the Storm series that’s become a synonym for quality and performance, and this time the heir of CM Storm Trooper is Stryker, with which it shares many similarities.

Cooler Master was arguably the first company to launch a chassis specifically designed to eliminate noise created by the hardware inside it. This feature was very refreshing at the time, and the fact that other manufacturers got interested in the niche says enough about the potential of the product. One such “follower” is Fractal Design and their latest chassis called Define R4, which packs not only minimalistic design and quality workmanship, but also noise insulation materials.

Just when you think that there’s nothing new and innovative that can be presented to the PC chassis market and that everything’s already been said and done, Cooler Master manages to surprise us with a good new idea and interesting concept. The product we’re reviewing today is definitely not a revolutionary or never-before-seen product, but it’s certainly worthy of attention for its design and innovativeness. We believe that most of you are already fed up with reading the same reviews all over again, with larger or smaller vertically-oriented boxes that only distinguish themselves by the number of extension slots and colour. Of course, there are pearls in this group, but these are rare and usually reserved for the high class, where price tags are usually as breathtaking as the quality of the product itself. 

 Whenever someone mentions a gaming configuration, what comes to mind is a big-tower chassis, such as one of Cooler Master's HAF models, which has a lot of room and numerous fans for the cooling of all those blazing overclocking components. However, oversized chassis don’t have to be a prerequisite for gaming, especially with the general trend of miniaturisation in the IT industry, which has spilt over to motherboards too, with a large number of micro-ATX and mini-ATX models sporting the latest versions of Intel and AMD chipsets. Not only are these motherboards replete with the latest technologies, but also more than capable of making a good CPU and strong graphics card give excellent performance in the latest games.

 Cooler Master has been using a tried-and-true formula for extending their more-than-successful HAF (High Air Flow) line of advanced PC enclosures. And while this concept hardly packs any “wow” effect anymore, in all honesty, there’s no reason to step down from it just yet, which brings us to the latest member of the family, namely HAF XM. The new HAF is practically a derivative of the larger HAF X model, as indicated by its name, while the M stands for “medium”, i.e. a mid-tower enclosure. However, regardless of the actual dimensions, everything that you’re used to with the older brother is still there, making this model perfect for all those who wish full-tower specs in a more compact packaging.

The huge performance jump, in CPU and GPU power alike, in which we’ve indulged in the past few years, couldn’t have gone “unpunished”. The negative side of all these improvements is the increased energy consumption and heating, which in turn causes the numerous fans inside our enclosures to make their presence heard. The times when we only had two fans inside the enclosure, one on the CPU and the other one on the PSU, seem incredibly long ago. Of course, there’s always the option of sacrificing performance for silence, but when conditions are such that you absolutely require or desire both, you turn to specially tailored enclosures. Cooler Master’s take on the latter is represented by their Silencio series, which contains modern enclosures with a particular penchant from keeping the noise inside.

When talking about the history of PC enclosures, it would be very difficult to talk about outstanding or revolutionary models in this segment without mentioning one incredibly avant-garde creation by Cooler Master, namely Cosmos 1000. It’s unlikely that even the folks at Cooler Master had expected this enclosure to constantly be named one of the best-designed enclosures ever as much as five years after its appearance, and not only that, but it remains a sought-after item for building new systems to this day. Time has taken its toll, definitely, and discounting the mildly redesigned models Cosmos S and Cosmos Pure, the Cosmos series has slowly started to fade away, with the company orienting towards their latest HAF enclosure series.

Is it even necessary to mention the packaging of yet another Cooler Master product, especially from the Storm family? Inside the box, we meet a well-packed enclosure, and inside it all the necessary rails, screws, ties, knots and similar things more important than may seem at first. The enclosure’s design continues where the external box left off - the dominant colour is black, on the outside as well as on the inside, while the red colour is represented by a large frontal 20 cm fan, which is very, very quiet, lest we say completely silent. The front is also adorned by the door covering four 5.25” slots, while one can see openings below, covered by nets, serving as filters for the air intake of the aforementioned fan. This entire section is made of high-quality plastic, and the impression is somewhat ruined by the door that really could have been a bit thicker.

Consumers, users, buyers, or whichever term you want to use, are getting ever pickier about their PC components (those of us that still prefer hardware retailers to supermarkets, at least). They’re much better informed than they used to be, and that means that they often reach for the impossible, trying to switch to a higher price range all the time, which consequently gives them a feel of a lacking PC. Among other things, enclosures evolved over time, trying to benefit from this phenomenon, so that the enclosures of today are far from just a piece of tin used to house the components. More and more users are looking for silence and soundproof designs, and if you offer them some bonuses to top that off, you can count on major interest in your product.