Review System

Assembly

Adding a motherboard is done by using traditional screws and spacers. As you can see, the ATX board looks minuscule inside, and even E-ATX variants will have their own dedicated cable routing. Having a mechanism to hold expansion slots in place without any screws is always met with skepticism. However, Cooler Master embedded metal pins into the frame on which each expansion slot cover sits, and the spring-loaded lock pushes down on the covers with so much force that it results in a rock-solid hold of the GPU, for example. Due to the sheer size of the HAF 700 EVO, you have all the room you could ever need for the GPU.


We went ahead and installed the two 200 mm SickleFlow fans we were provided in the ceiling. Next, a 360 mm AIO was installed in the side position, which may also easily fit a 420 mm variant. You can clearly see that such a unit would not get in the way of the GPU even if the highest-end variant.


The mounting plates come with a set of holes for SSDs and multiple sets for a 3.5" drive, so choose which way the connectors face once mounted on the plate. Adding an SSD is rather easy as you attach Cooler Master's unique pins to the drive and simply push it onto the plate.


Once done, put the plate on any of the three air or radiator mounting plates. We tried this out by popping it into the front and then the floor of the HAF 700 EVO.


The other variant of storage mounting is the 3.5" tray. It also comes with holes for a 2.5" unit instead. No tools are needed if you use spinning rust as you may just snap the tray onto the drive with embedded metal pins. Once in place, slide it right back into the cage until it clicks into place securely.


Adding a power supply requires no tools, either. While some brands attempt to go tool-less by using a tension-locking mechanism, Cooler Master simply offers a pair of pre-installed, captive thumb screws. Some may argue that two screws are not enough, but you will not move your build of nearly 46 kg around much anyway, so that is certainly not an issue.


Thanks to the large number of hooks, the final build, which took quite a bit of time to finish, looks immaculate on the interior—not a single cable looks out of place. The mirror clearly gives you that unique view of the GPU fans, which users with embedded ARGB elements should benefit from. The only downside is that the bottom fan is no longer useful in this setup. On the backside, things also look immaculate. There are almost no visible leads once you put the central plate back into place. If it weren't for the required vents, Cooler Master could have gone with glass on this side, too. The finished build would look beautifully clean regardless.


Last but not least, thanks to the included vertical mounting kit, you may set your system up so that the GPU is completely visible instead. Doing so will naturally block every other motherboard expansion slot, but with lots of space underneath of it all, one could actively cool the GPU through the floor rather easily.

Finished Looks

With the system turned on for the first time, you are greeted by a very cool booting animation on the central screen and gentle, yet nicely visible, clean lighting throughout the glass elements in the front of the HAF 700 EVO. Naturally, the ARGB fans in the interior further add to this, and a white LED around the power button lets you know your system is up and running.


Looking at the Cooler Master HA 700 EVO from the front, the thick glass elements are lit from the top and bottom of the case, and the material allows for a beautifully clean fade towards the center, with plenty of brightness to make the most of that effect. In the rear, everything is where you would expect of a very tall sandwich chassis.


The main glass side panel allows you to see the interior of the system even with sunshine reflecting on the glass from behind the photo-shooting area, while the other side of the HAF 700 EVO is functional but understated with none of the ARGB glow visible.


When going with a vertical GPU, we didn't use the mirror and had the bottom fan do its job of pulling cool air from the bottom of the chassis. In the rear, you can clearly see the unique layout around the expansion slots with the vertical GPU taking up that space.