A Closer Look - Inside

To open up the chassis, simply push the two afore mentioned plastic levers in the back down. As the doors are hinged, they swing open once released - that alone looks pretty menacing. You may remove the doors easily, which we have done to show you the interior. The interior is divided into two compartments, with the bottom holding the PSU and two hard drive cages. Turning the Cosmos II around there is a huge opening in the motherboard tray, so that you should easily be able to access the backplate of the CPU cooler without removing the entire board. There are plenty of openings to route cables through and due to the size there should be enough space for even the biggest graphics cards and CPU coolers.


The hinges of each panel are made of metal, so that you will never have to worry about breaking anything. Each of these roughly one Centimeter thick panels has a built in dust filter, which you may remove easily for cleaning. There is roughly around 30 mm of space between the mainboard tray and side panel - plenty of space to hide all the cables in this area.


Cooler Master has placed two 120 mm fans on the side of the bottom hard drive cages. Both of these may be removed separately if you wish to do so. One may install a 120 mm fan in the front of the chassis to push air unto the drives as well.


Above that are six other hard drive bays, bringing the total of internal ones up to eleven - plenty of space for every need. Cooler Master has also placed two hot swap cages made of plastic, which may be accessed from the front of the chassis, along with three 5.25 inch ones. These have large screw-less systems, with simple buttons to lock drives in place.


In the rear, things are a bit simpler. The PSU bay is lined with foam to reduce vibrations from this area. Above that are the 10+1 slots, with each cover held in space by a thumb screw. In the very top is a 140 mm fan with a Cooler Master label and 3-pin connector. An attached Molex adapter gives you the most in terms of flexibility.


Another fan can be found in the top of the chassis. This one is of the 120 mm variety and only has a 3-pin connector. Interestingly enough, there are no Molex connectors on any other fans besides the one in the rear.


You will find a crap load of cables within the Cosmos II. While most of them are intended for the usual functionality, like I/O and case, there is a whole set of them for the fan controller and fan LEDs. You will get enough such cables to fill the entire case with LED equipped fans, even though Cooler Master only equips the front 200 mm unit with blue lighting.