Page 3 - Physical Look - Inside
Sliding the first panel out reveals the internals of the Storm Enforcer. Cooler Master tied their accessories box within the Storm Enforcer, as you can tell by the box in the middle. Here, we can see Cooler Master has organized the layout in a very standard fashion, with the motherboard tray in the left area, and the power supply bay below that with all around cable management slots. The drive bays are organized on the right, cooled by a 200mm red LED fan situated just in front of it. Measuring to 229mm in width, 484.5mm in height, and 523.5mm in depth, it seems to me that it is slightly larger than most mid-tower chassis that I have seen, although some of you may disagree, depending on what you are accustomed to. Tipping the scale at 19.5lbs, I find the Storm Enforcer quite light in comparison to most chassis I have previously owned and seen. I have grown to appreciate this, because once you have all your components installed, you will find your computer's weight will increase dramatically.
As mentioned on the preceding page, we can see an opening at the top side of the Storm Enforcer, along with pre-drilled holes for you to mount an optional fan. As aforementioned, I am not a big fan of such design, since it lets in too much dust into my system. Being one of those few picky people, this means I will have to clean it out more frequently. At a perpendicular angle, there is one 120mm fan that draws exhaust air out through the back of the chassis. A 3-pin fan is included, but as you can tell, the downside to it is the cable is not sleeved. This is not that big of a deal to be honest, but I would have preferred all sleeved cables instead for better looks. Meanwhile, a large square opening can be seen on the motherboard tray for easy access aftermarket heatsink backplate installation, without having to go through all that hassle in removing your motherboard. This is large enough to accommodate most modern motherboards with shifted CPU sockets, and I am sure many consumers would appreciate that Cooler Master has taken this into consideration.
Four hard drive slots are available for you to install in the main rack. The quad drive rack is rotatable by a full 90 degrees if you ever decide to change the orientation of your hard drives. Simply unscrew it from the back, unclip it using the clippers found on the top and bottom of the rack, slide it into its new orientation, and it should clip itself into place. There are two 2.5" drive bays directly under the removable rack for your additional hardware. We can also see the 5.25" bays from the photo above. There is no 5.25" to 3.5" converter for the 3.5" bay, so you will have to find one yourself, or you are out of luck. Fortunately for me, I got a box full of "junk" left in the corner of my room, so I simply picked one up from the pile. Optical drives and such devices can be easily installed and locked into this bay using the tool-free clips. Flipping it to the right will free your device, and once the holes are aligned, you can simply lock it in place without further hassle. We can also see a set of I/O connectors here. While most of the cables are bundled up with a nice finish, the connectors for the power button, hard drive LED, and the such are presented to you as if it came straight from an electronics lab. For users like myself, I would much prefer these cables to be bundled up as well for cleaner and easier cabling job, but this is definitely not standard for products of this price range.
Taking a look at the power supply bay, there are four rubber feet used to support your power supply from the bottom of the chassis. This gives some room for air to flow between your power supply and bottom case panel before actually entering through the bottom. This lowers airflow impedance, especially since a dust filter is installed right under the mesh of the ventilation area. We can also see that Cooler Master has implemented a bump on the side of the power supply bay, along with an extra clip on top to hold your PSU down. This also provides convenient access for your internal cables corresponding to the front panel USB ports and audio jacks. Right next to this area is a simple bay, in which you could install 2.5" drives such as solid state disks. This can be done with the help of an additional tray provided out of the box. Since I don't have an SSD myself, I simply used it for managing loose cables, as you will see on the next page.
Here is a shot at the back side, where most users don't usually pay too much attention to when reading reviews. This side is actually quite fundamental in terms of quality cable management in my opinion, and Cooler Master expects you to run your cables here, provided that they have cable management openings everywhere. Preferably, I believe that Cooler Master could have provided more space between the motherboard tray and right side panel, since the sheer number and thickness of cables can easily consume all this space. This especially true for 24-pin motherboard cables running from your power supply. Other than that, there is more than sufficient openings here for you to freely run the rest of your cables through the back side.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Outside
3. Physical Look - Inside
4. Installation and Conclusion
