Cooler Master Cosmos II review

A week or two ago I noticed UPS walking to the front door with something rather huge and heavy, when opening the door I got that mean look from the courier, I think the poor man hurt his back carrying the all new Cosmos II around -- it's 22kg (!)

Yes it has finally arrived, it was at Computex in June last year where I got a sneak preview on the all new Cosmos and admittedly back then I was already a little surprised and impressed.

Most of you all know the reputable Cosmos series chassis and it was time for Cooler Master to improve that series, and not by a little. You all know mini, midi and full case towers; well, meet the new standard... an Ultra tower... this chassis is 70cm in height (almost 28"). It has space for even the big XL-ATX motherboards, it comes with brushed aluminum side panels, unlock and swing them open like doors instead of panels. Yep, that Ultra vibe is already kicking in.

While looking directly at the chassis the keywords that come to mind are are: dark looks, room for extreme cooling, water-cooling, superb cable management, space, features, fan controller and high airflow.

So yeah, hidden behind the front slide cover lies a twofold of hot-swappable drive bays. An all black interior houses enough space for an oversized XL-ATX motherboard even equipped with four double width graphics accelerators.

A second slide cover on top hides the Advanced Control Panel to manage up to 10 fans and their respective LED lights. Need space for water-cooling? Not a problem, you can even fit a triple radiator in the top of the chassis or remove HDD cages in the lower compartment and create room for say your reservoir.

Need space to house some HDDs? How does thirteen 3.5" drive bays sound? Two of them are completely hot swappable at the frontside, through what CM calls an X-Dock -- you just slide an HDD in and seat it.

Anyway, we'll talk you though the entire product with a massive photo-shoot, have a peek at the beast first after which we'll startup the review guided by photos, photos and yeah... more photos.

But first have a peek at the race-car styled chassis, it's big and black...