First review of Coolermaster STACKER

[Cerb]

I disagree, as you can get USB cards with headers just like mobos. Personally, I think having all but two on the back is the way to go.

 

[0roo0roo]

5" bays are good for hd's with silent drive enclosures or cooling setups.

 

[Odeen]

Well, I met the Stacker in person today at SVC. I was highly impressed but ultimately walked away from it for a few reasons.

1) Only 1 3.5" bay adapter. This means no cardreader + floppy setup, and if you have SCSI, SATA or a PCI PATA controller, you NEED a floppy to feed XP drivers during the first phase of installation.
2) No antivibration fan mounts I have no clue just how loud that case would be when loaded up with my gear, and I wasn't going to take a 20% restocking fee hit just to find out.
3) No additional 3.5" bay adapters or hard drive mounting cages available. This means I have to sandwich my raptor and two Hitachi 250-giggers into 4 bays, one hitachi right on top of the other
4) The USB header situation is just as I suspected - there are THREE mobo headers. This basically makes the cardreader comment irrelevant - no mobo will have FOUR USB headers (1 for cardreader, 3 for USB ports)
5) I cut my finger on the inside edge of the side panel. It still hurts.

Lastly, the sides of the case are NOT black, they're brushed aluminum. Large-minute production change by Coolermaster.

With the new LiLi having some fatal flaws, and the Coolermaster ultimately a flawed beast, it looks like the only high-performance option left is the Antec P160...

 

[Davegod]

As one of Cooler Master's premium models, it is unfortunately, not a full aluminum alloy casing as one would have hoped for

Not exactly sure what's meant to be wrong with that, its not exactly a LAN party case is it?

Shame the filter faceplates couldnt just be pulled out from the front and all drives on rails & some easy-hot swap thing, Also shame they went for 80mm top exhaust instead of 92mm, though it seems to be positioned so all it's doing is drawing out fresh air thats just been drawn in. Bit surprised at the obvious weak design of some of the fan holders like the side panel and PSU plate things, sure to vibrate horribly and seems a surprisingly bad oversight for Coolermaster. shouldnt be having what I consider "silly" and annpying oversights like that in an expensive case aimed between power enthusiasts, workstation & file server.

Some really nice stuff though, like should be great for watercooling, I like the hard drive things (nice touch again with rubber grommets), but again a little strange for coolermaster to then have the front of the cage really airflow restricted with pooly punched holes (pic explains).

Would have been sweet if they'd built in some nice wiring for the fans, which might then plug into the "control module" thing, with a knob on the front to vary fan speeds.

Very interesting case, but a revised version could be really very good.

 

[ragifiri]

I own this case. I have a amd64 3400 with a msi k8n (stock cooler), ati 9800, 1g corsair and it runs cool. I dont care what the review that was translated says, it runs cooler than my lian li pc75.

My temps never go above 52c at load with the case shoved in a computer desk and the door closed. door open never above 50 at load. It is big, the drive rail system sucks. The slot covers suck to remove but you can wash the whole slot cover instead of removing the foam, easier i think. Its a pain in the butt if you switch parts everyday but where else can you run 2 psu's at the same time (even includes the cable to turn the 2nd one on).

I have the MB on the other side with the chip low, psu at the bottom. Graphic card is above the cpu. works well. If you want pics let me know and I will post some. Questions? ask away

rag