Gadgetory

hey guys this is Dimitri and welcome back to another Hard Knocks review the cosmos series from colormaster is one very distinct and popular lineup because of the design functions and those aluminum case feet and handles that make transporting the case very convenient the cosmos s II is the smallest chassis in the series while still considered a food power I say it's more of an large mid tower than the full Tower as the internals are quite compact and it's the exterior shell and the handles that add to the size the cosmos S II is released at $170 which in this market is quite competitive but in reality like with all the enclosures if you really dig the style of the cosmos price may not be the breaking factor in your decision the chassis is made of combination of plastic steel and aluminum and the SE feels robust and sturdy and the front panel is mostly meshed with three optical drive slots the dust filter is easily removable which lets you access to included 120mm fans but also the to draft caddies at the bottom the drive caddies are very sturdy and instead of flexing they widen to mount the mechanical drive plus an additional SSD support at the bottom which is an excellent spot for extra dry storage and both our two lists unfortunately the drive cage is not hot swappable which in this case would have fit perfectly for easy swap especially with such convenient front access another thing I don't particularly like is the design of the front intake now for one the bottom optical cover blocks almost half of the top fan and the cover is not filtered so you're definitely losing airflow and second there's just so much resistance on the internal drive gauge that the front intake will not appropriately penetrate through to get to the rest of the internals all the connections are located at the top with four USB ports audio jacks power and reset button and an LED switch for the front fans now we've got the windowed version here which looks really sleek and fits in with your well design the chassis and the right side panel also has a similarly shaped out and that will provide extra clearance for all the firing at the back usual scenery here with an exhaust fan seven PCI slots and a power supply bracket there are two dust filters included at the bottom one for your power supply and the other the front which is quite pointless given there are no bottom pain mounts also important to mention the rubber pads on the aluminum case feed to prevent sliding and scratching the floor the top panel is easily removable we just want thumb screw which also has a built-in dust filter here you can see the handles are securely mounted onto the frame so really no worries of carrying a loaded build here you can also mount fans above the frame which would be perfect for pushing pool 240 or 280 millimeter ad ators with strips instead of just holes for flexible mounting so let's get inside the cosmos se and take a look at what type of functionality it offers for a full Tower first thing to notice is the built in drive gauge frame that has a few tricks help it sleeve like the flexible orientation on the drives and taking off the front panel completely and removing all the drive caddies so plus a few screws the drive cage walls are removable I would say this is not the best system as you can see they're quite thick and regardless of the cutouts they will still be heavily restrictive for the front airflow removing all the cage walls and you get clearance for front radiator and cool master includes brackets that allow installation of two forty to eighty and three sixty millimeter radiators for the case the brackets coincide with mounting holes on the frame but unfortunately mounting a 240 mm rod at the very top position doesn't let you fully secure the brackets because there are no proprietary key to the middle which has appropriate mounting holes however removing the bottom cage lets you securely mount it 240 or 280 million rad but this means sacrificing all the drive storage as cage walls don't fit with radiator installed the bottom drive cage can be mounted slightly further back to allow the radiator to fit plus some fans but this means getting rid of the access to your drives as there's no way to remove the drive caddies without first removing the radiator so indeed very end you need the walls however our modular so you can install one pair facing inside and the other facing the back while being able to mount drives without issues you can also mount two optional fans on the cage walls for improved intake but this means having a clearance of 10 inches for a graphics card which is very limiting for a full tower and turn it in case around it's good to see you Toulouse ation of space for extra 2 SSDs with very simple mount and not too much to say about the rear but the cosmos s II is equipped with plenty of cable tie mounts and rubber grommets and cutouts underneath motherboard that will sure be useful there's just under an inch of room to work with and you can easily tuck your cables so really no issues with cable management and starting with the assembly mounting the power supply from the rear is very convenient but it was a slight tight fit and we've got only two minor parts standoffs pre-installed hello lazier from Kula master I think but we do get the insert for fast installation of those standoffs and putting our standard ATX motherboard in and the case already feels quite full it certainly doesn't feel like working with a full power we do get about 6 centimetres until we hit the memory from the top and while not bad it is going to be a very compact system if you decide to water cool and starting with cable management the build cleans up very well to no surprise and to fit our GTX 590 I had to remove one the cage walls which brings back my point that the whole drive system is inefficient and still very restrictive even if no drives are installed the rubber grommets around the motherboard were halfway blocked which made passing the giant 24 pin cable a little difficult but not impossible which again shows this fits more of a mid tower range rather than full Tower the cutouts underneath the motherboard overcame it very useful to route front panel audio and USB and mounting the bottom drive you kind of get an idea of how much space there is until our power supply unit and the hot swappable system here would have fit that much better flipping in case around all the cables are well secured and really nothing negative to say as the assembly went completely smooth and to conclude with our pros and cons list I think the cosmos line certainly one of the best-looking cases with aluminum handles that allow portability easily removable dust filters innovative drive caddies and okay water cooling capabilities that don't necessarily come without compromise so you do lose out on all of the front drive storage if you wish to mount a 360 millimeter right at the front plus an incredibly restrictive front airflow with all the cage walls and that one optical cover at the top that covers pretty much half the fan and all for one hundred seventy dollars is still a little too much even for hours like switch 810 or the Phantom 530 offer a lot more flexibility for water cooling without that many compromises honestly the cosmos S II does not impress as it really doesn't bring any new functionality or features aside from the clever drive caddies but other than that it's just a mini full tower that relies more than its looks other than user friendly functions to get recognized and if you really been craving that cosmos look and wanting something more compact it fits in very well the problem I see here with Coolermaster is they're not ambitious to release something completely new and even if it would have been released a year ago the cosmos S II wouldn't really have stood out but let me know what you guys think of this new addition to the cosmos series in the comments below we'd love to hear what you think and as always thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next review