reviews Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized
80 MAXIMUMPC october 2007
C
onsider this month’s batch of case
reviews to be a second chance of
sorts, as both companies highlighted
below have previously built total clunkers.
Cooler Master threw down the iTower 930 in
February, which was the functional equivalent
of bringing a wiffle bat to a gunfight. And
NZXT troubled us with the Adamas—which
sported a relatively mediocre design when
stacked up against its competitors.
—DAVID MURPHYCooleR M AsteR CosMos
We tipped our reviewing hand when we
chose this case to house last month’s
Dream Machine. But that’s just how sweet
the Cosmos is. This case looks as good as
it functions, and there’s nary a blemish in
either area. More important, the case retains
enough of a unique look and feel to distance
itself from the bevy of generic models we
frequently see.
You don’t need to grab a screwdriver
to make major changes to any parts in the
Cosmos case (aside from the motherboard).The five front 5.25-inch
bays use an awesome
push-button locking
mechanism that, to date,
is the best we’ve come
across. Tiny thumbscrews
hold the six hard-drive
trays in place—an elegant
improvement over stan-
dard drive bays.
The Cosmos caters to
the water-cooling crowd
with its ready-for-a-radiator
ceiling grills, but lovers of
the air won’t be left out. A
detachable 12cm fan bunker pulls in air from
the bottom of the case, and a plastic bar run-
ning horizontally across the case draws cool
air right into the videocard area. Strangely,
there’s no airflow across the hard drives in
this case, one of the very few oversights we
were able to find with the Cosmos.
A lack of functioning drive-activity lights
on the case’s front panel is another stinger,
but it’s not enough to destroy the taste of this
sweet, sweet chassis.NZXt leXA BlACklIN e
Oh, NZXT, you had some truly great ideas
on the ol’ chassis drawing board. Alas, we
can’t give a 10 Kick Ass award for dreams.
The Blackline case is a personal ad in
case form—it certainly looks wonderful on
NZXT’s website, but seeing it in person is
an entirely different experience.
The Lexa Blackline looks like a standard
black case with some oversized hunks of
plastic shoved onto it. They make for a
good first impression, but you’ll quickly
discover just how awkward these accoutre-ments are when you start filling the case
with parts. Rather than using the locking
mechanism to pop off the side panel, you
have to first unscrew the entire plastic
panel attached to the back end of the case.
NZXT succeeds in giving the Lexa
Blackline some color with red LED fans,
but this motif is utterly destroyed on the
case’s front panel. The slit in the front of
the case is supposed to glow red; it hardly
does. And the LCD panel above that area
glows with such a faint red backlight, we
could hardly make out the temperature
numbers on the display.
These details are the sole ways NZXT
has attempted to differentiate this case
from your standard box, and even they
suffer from functionality-breaking flaws. If
using this case were like going on a bad
blind date, we’d already be crawling out
the window in the restroom.I Choo, Choo, Choose
You, Chassis!
These two enclosures are anything but normal
the lexa Blackline tries to be innova-
tive—too bad all you’re really getting for
your money are a few ho-hum leD fans.the Cosmos’s smooth, foam-backed
side panel is awesome, but we wish
Cooler Master had included a side
window as well.
$100, http://www.nzxt.comnzxt lexa blacklineBeAUtY
Relatively screwless
design.Boo-tY^4
Cramped interior makes
installing water cooling difficult;
front-panel lighting is a disaster.$200, http://www.coolermaster.comcooler master cosmosgAlACtUs
Perfect for both air cooling
and water cooling; almost
all parts are easy to access.
ABRAXAs
Where’s the connection for a
front-panel hard-drive activity
light?9
MAXIMUMP
CKICKASS