A Closer Look - Inside

The inside of the CM Strom Scout has been kept quite simple. There are no real innovations in regards to the layout, but what can you expect from a 100 Dollar chassis? The really important features, like the large hole in the mainboard tray and the cleanly routed cables are more than you usually get to see in most similarly priced enclosures.


Moving in on the front of the Scout, the bottom is taken by a simple hard drive bay, which can hold 5 such devices with the use of the included rails. Cooler Master has also included a special pair of rails, with which you can mount a 1.8 or 2.5 inch hard drive into one of the slots. The top area is filled with the five external drive bays, all of which have a plastic sliding lock each. This lock is actually quite sturdy and holds in place perfectly. Let's see if it holds the drives just as well.


The bottom of the rear has an opening to give the power supply access to some fresh air. A crude dust filter has been placed here. You will not be able to remove this one, but cleaning should be possible by placing the chassis on its side. All the mainboard expansion slots have a screwless system in form of plastic clips. As we have seen in previous reviews, these clips do not hold well at all, but luckily Cooler Master has included black screws as well. Considering the fact, that you will carry this chassis around by the handle, it would have been nice to see thumb screws here instead of a feature which only serves as a marketing strategy. The very top holds nothing out of the ordinary, the rear fan does not have a protective grill, so you better watch your fingers.


The top ceiling fan has been placed right above the CPU area to draw hot air out of the case. While there is about an inch of space above the mainboard, this space is taken by the fan. So you will have no free area above the board to connect things like the P4 power cable there by hand, but more about that later.


The I/O connectors are nothing out of the ordinary and should fit any modern mainboard out there. There are also multiple Molex connectors, which have to be hooked up to your power supply. The Scout does not have a fan controller like the Sniper, so there is no need to worry about connecting the fans to a specific Molex plug.