Introduction:
Cooler Master was founded roughly ten years ago, with a self stated mission to provide customers with the industry’s best thermal solutions. This is a very laudable goal and for the most part Cooler Master has been able to provide some good performing products, even if their appearance has been a little boring. But things seem to have changed in the Cooler Master Design room. Now they have hit the market with a new product that not only promises performance and silence but with a very stylish look. This product is the Cosmos; tagged with the line “where performance meets silence” the Cosmos offers excellent cooling without the noise associated with using tons of fans. But can the Cosmos truly bring everything Cooler Master is claiming? Or will we end up lost in space? (Sorry couldn’t resist that one)
Product: Cooler Master Cosmos
Author: Sean Kalinich
Category: Enthusiast
Reviewed on: August 2007
Product cost: $199.99
Manufacturer: Cooler Master
Spelling and Grammatical Editors: Paul Mercer and Jason Hambly
{mospagebreak title=Packaging}
Packaging: Packaging is an important part of a product these days, both from a marketing perspective and from the consumer’s point of view. For the marketing people, the packaging is another opportunity to grab a potential purchaser’s eye. Many companies have relied on garish “cartoon” figures catering only to the ultra geeks out there while others have gone towards stark and uninformative boxes that give you nothing on the product within. So, how do you strike a balance? Give the best combination of images and information to grab not only the enthusiast’s eye but also the Mom/ Dad, friend, girl-friend etc. of the enthusiast. Well you do what Cooler Master has done, you offer packaging that has very artful images of the actual product (in this case the Cosmos 1000) and provide enough detail to highlight the feature without over loading the non-geek. As a box for a case I have not seen very many that strike this balance as well as the box for the Cosmos 1000. Now that I have waxed enthusiastic about the outside, how does the box fair inside?
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The Cosmos 1000 is safely snuggled in a thick plastic bag; this is covered top and bottom by nice thick pieces of Styrofoam.
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Inside this cocoon of protection, the Cosmos 1000 is safe from most damage that could be caused in shipping. When I opened the box I looked for the accessories (Screws, mounts, wire ties, etc) but I did not see anything loose in the box. It turns out that all of this was inside the case itself; although this is becoming more common, what is not all that common is the nice case that the majority of these “supplies” fit into. Cooler Master put all of this into a double ended case. On one side were the screws and mounts, and the other side was packed full of small wire ties. There was also a small key ring with two special keys, one a Phillips-head screw driver and the other a flat-head.
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{mospagebreak title=Aesthetics}
Aesthetics: I have gone on ad-nauseum before about how important the appearance of an enclosure is to me, and that the thought put in to the appearance is as important as cooling and internal layout. So far very few manufacturers have been able to meet my high standards for form and function but it seems that, with the Cosmos 1000, Cooler Master has made the list.
Let’s take a quick tour of the outer appearance of the Cosmos. One of the first things that leap out at you about the Cosmos 1000 are the four rails that run from front to back on top, bottom and sides. The next eye grabber might be the lack of sharp corners or edges, Cooler Master has chosen to give everything nice curved edges. Even the side panels have rounded corners and smooth angles.
From the front the Cosmos presents an attractive combination of lacquered black and brushed aluminum. The front door panel has a large black plastic center piece that runs the length of the one piece aluminum door with rounded brushed aluminum edges visible, it is very solid and reversible (you can set it to open to either the left or right). The weight helps prevent vibrations and also gives it s a sturdy feel. To reverse the opening direction all you need is a phillips-head screw driver (or you can use the provided key) the posts that act as the pivot point are removable without tools, but the two screws that act as magnetic “latches” have to be removed the old fashioned way. Making the switch takes about 5 minutes if you are going slowly. Behind the door is a full length mess with four standard 5-1/4” openings and one 3-1/2”/5-1/4” opening for drives. These openings are very easy to work with as removal is as simple as un-clipping them from the front of the case and although there are no true filters the front has a dual mesh screen system that will keep the majority of dust and other particles out of your system.
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At the bottom of the front is a pull out filter for one the HDD cooling fan. The top of the front slopes away gently (remember there are no sharp edges) with the word Cosmos embossed on the curved leading edge. Following this curve onto the top of the case we find the front panel controls in a small panel in a shape reminiscent of the view screen on the Enterprise. This small panel appears to be of black brushed aluminum and has just about everything you could want on a front panel; Firewire, USB 2.0 (4 ports), e-SATA, headphone and microphone jacks, power and reset buttons, and power and HDD lights (in Blue LED). All of these controls and ports are available at your finger tips. Behind this is an area of non-slip material shaped like an elongated trapezoid. At the back of the top (that sounds confusing) is a vented fan opening that forces hot air being exhausted out of the top of the case towards the rear of the case instead of just straight up. Now while all of this might be great and very helpful what really catches your eye are two of the rails that I talked about earlier. These rails work well on the tops as handles that you can use to maneuver the Cosmos around with and add to the already unique looks.
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Moving to the side (either side as they are both the same) we see that the designers did not stop with the front and top. Instead of the usual side panels that attach at the front of back and are boring (even the ones with digital watches…uh I mean side windows), Cooler Master went for panels that attach into the actual side frame and are octagonal with the appearance of brushed aluminum. To remove the side panels Cooler Master put latches on the back, one for each side, all you have to do is push the latch for the side you want to remove toward the top and the case side pops off.
Flipping the case over and looking at the bottom we see another set of rails, but these two act as feet to support the case and allow for good air flow under the case.
Moving around to the back of the case we find the usual items we would expect to see.
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A large 120mm fan, 7 expansion ports, a spot for your I/O shield and in keeping with the current trend the PSU is at the bottom. Cooler Master has also added in openings for an external water cooling kit towards the top of the case. To either side of the water cooling ports you can see the levers that release the case sides.
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Since aesthetics is an entirely subjective category, what I may think looks good, someone else may find hideous, I like to get multiple peoples opinions. With the Cosmos 1000 I asked 4 people these three questions:
1 On a scale of one to five how would you rate the appearance of this case? One being unattractive and five being very attractive.
2 On a scale of one to five what would you say the Cosmos 1000’s “cool factor” is?
One being would not very cool at all and five being very cool.
3 Give me one word to describe your first impression of this case, good or bad.
The first two questions each yielded a result between 4 and 20 these were then divided by the number of persons asked. This would give me two scores between 1 and 5 these were added together and divided by two to give me the final score.
With these three questions I felt I would get a good idea of how aesthetically pleasing the Cosmos really is. For looks I broke this down by gender so that you would have an idea whether your wife/girlfriend would let you put it in a “pubic” part of the house.
Here are the scores and comments broken down by gender:
“On a scale of one to five how would you rate the appearance of this case?
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Score |
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Men |
4.5 |
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4.8 |
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Women |
5 |
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4 |
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Total |
18.3 |
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Score |
4.575 |
“On a scale of one to five, what would you say the Cosmos 1000’s “cool factor” is?”
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Score |
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Men
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4 |
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3 |
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| Women |
4.2 |
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4.9 |
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Total |
16.1 |
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Score |
4.025 |
These two questions yielded us a total of: 8.6 this number divided by 2 gives us our aesthetics score of: 4.3 out of a possible 5 not too shabby
Some of the words used to describe the Cosmos were:
Futuristic
Tough
Clean
Sharp
For me I feel the Cosmos has a very attractive blend of classic elegance and futuristic audacity. It is striking but far from gaudy, and has become something of a conversation piece for anyone entering my office. Especially as it shares the “spotlight” with one of my favorite cases, the SilverStone TJ-09, these two cases are polar opposites in design concept but are equals in being aesthetic pleasing.
{mospagebreak title=Installation/Build}
Installation/Build:
Just as important to me as the aesthetics is the ease of build, I chose to use the Cosmos as the enclosure for my Virtual Server project. This is a system that will be home to four virtual servers running 24/7 for testing all powered by an Intel QX6700. I needed a case that could hold everything, keep it cool and not drive me batty with fan noises.
To being the build I assembled my parts
Intel QX6700 Core 2 Quad (2.66GHz)
Asus P5W DH
6 GB DDR2 800 RAM (2x2GB Kingston HyperX 2x1GB Kingston HyperX)
1x Western Digital 74GB 10,000 RPM Raptor HDD.
1x Seagate 7200.9 Cheetah 500GB HDD
1 Generic PCI-e 64MB Video card
1x Netgear Gigabit network card
SilverStone Zeus 750 750Watt PSU
1 Sony DVD-RW
Now with parts in hand I set about assembling my new server.
After installing the CPU and memory on the mainboard I opened the side of the Cosmos and prepared to mount the mainboard. The first thing that jumped out at me was the paper overlay that spelled out exactly where to put the brass stand-off for each type of mainboard. This is a helpful little touch and can save time in lining up the board to make sure you have everything in the right place. After that I noticed that the back of the side panel was covered in a sound dampening foam; my first thought was that this was a great idea, this was followed by many thoughts about what effect this would have on cooling.
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Now I know you are wondering how I could miss the plastic “bar” that ran the entire inside of the case, but I really did not consider that until later (when I forgot to put it back in) however, this bar is actually an air flow channel. This channel is supposed to help cool the video card or cards you choose to put into the Cosmos. After I was finished with my initial observations and had mounted the stand offs I took a more detailed look at the inside of the Cosmos, starting at the bottom of the case. Cooler Master has provided a nice raised platform (for lack of a better word) to rest your PSU on, this platform has a rubber coating on the top to help reduce vibrations and also has a depression below it with an air intake grill complete with cleanable dust filter. Just a short distance in front of all of this is an intake fan that pulls cool air from under the case and pushes it towards the top but as you can see from the picture the air is not vented straight up but towards the front and side. This direction also forces air into the air flow channel I spoke about earlier. This fan has a heavy and thick plastic grill protecting the blades (and your cabling) and which allows for the directional air flow.
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Now all of this goodness does not get in the way of the mainboard installation and still leave a fair amount of room for cabling to be tucked away in the bottom of the case.
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After I mounted the mainboard I took a look in the top of the Cosmos to see how the exhaust fan was mounted. To my surprise there were two 120mm fans hidden away in the top of the case. This will make keeping this case quiet even a bigger proposition. The next item on my build was to mount the HDDs and the DVD-RW. Installing the HDDs was pretty straight forward except for how to run the cables (Power and Data). The drives themselves mount using the bottom screws and fit in any one of the six “drawers” located in the lower front of the Cosmos.
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The interesting part is that the power and Data cables are plugged in on the far side of the case and out through a convenient opening just behind the drive bays. This gets all of the HDD cables safely out of the way.
Optical drives were also a breeze to install. A simple button press and you slide the drive in.
Now that all of my basic hardware was mounted I wanted to add on my extra cards and the Freezone CoolIT. With all of the extra room, even adding in the bulky CoolIT was not a problem as you can see from the images below.
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Cabling was simple as Cooler Master provided front panel cables that were long enough not only to reach the proper headers but to be tucked out of the way.
Now something you can see in the picture below is the port-like shape of the side openings. This allows the Cosmos to have a stiffer frame than most and to reduce the dreaded vibration that are found in most cases. There is also visible a rubber gasket that prevents vibrations between the side panel and the case, this also acts to keep air from escaping the case and helps with the overall air flow design.
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(A quick note before you ask, the fan controller you see above the fan in the bottom of the case is part of the CoolIT. The Cosmos did not come with a fan controller)
Another short note, when I first wrote this section I completely forgot about something that I saw with the Cosmos that I have not seen on any other case. Normally, during a mainboard installation, you have to turn the case on the side. Well unless you put a towel under the case you can run the risk of scratching the sides. I found that the rails Cooler Master put in at the top and the bottom actually kept the case from lying flat on the ground. This saved the sides from potential scuffs and scratches. I am not sure if this was by design but my hat is off to Cooler Master for their thinking if it is.
Cooling vs Quiet:
How did the Cosmos do on noise? Well I can tell you that with all of the fans running and the CoolIT in place I could barely hear it running. The loudest fan in the system is the one that is on the back of the CoolIT. Even with this fan going full I could barely hear the Cosmos. This was in stark contrast to the Antec Titan 550 I was using before.
Now I know you are wondering about heat, will the foam inside hold in heat? Will all of the sound dampening prevent efficient cooling? The good news is that there was not a significant increase in temperatures inside the Cosmos with all of the sound dampening. Another benefit of the sound insulation is that the Cosmos does not act like a little space heater like many other cases. How many times have you been sitting by your high-end system and felt the hot winds of the Sahara blowing from the vents, while in colder climates and during the winter this might be ok, try to deal with that in 90 degree heat in Central Florida or even more southerly than that. It seems that Cooler Master got it right. The fans pull the air in and exhaust it out efficiently.
A word on the fans, especially for you pet owners, I have had issues in the past with filters on cases still allowing pet hair and dander in to clog up the working in my systems. With the Cooler Master I can say the filters on the bottom vents are very efficient. When I went to clean them I found a large amount of hair and dander on the filter but after opening the case I did not find any inside.
{mospagebreak title=Price/Warranty}
Price/Warranty:
Price:
The Cosmos 1000 carries a price tag of roughly $200. Although this is not cheap there are more expensive and lower quality cases out on the market. The nice thing about the Cosmos, unlike some other “high-end” cases, this is one time where you get what you are paying for.
Warranty:
The Cosmos comes with a two year warranty, this is nice improvement over the normal one year offers from most case manufacturers and further proof that Cooler Master designed the Cosmos to last.
{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion:
I have not always been a fan of Cooler Master, in fact after buying the early AquaGate I was rather put off by them. I can say that they have redeemed themselves and more with the Cosmos. It not only lives up to the claim on the box but I feel it also lives up to Cooler Master’s proclaimed goal of providing customers with the industry’s best thermal solutions. From the stylish design that grows on you the more you look at it, to the ease of build, to the low noise and excellent cooling the Cosmos 1000 exists in a galaxy of its own. (ok I had to throw one more in)
Pros:
TONS of room
Good cooling
Low noise
Easy build
Great Looks
Side bars
Good filters
Two-year warranty
Cons:
Price
Acknowledgments:
I would like to thank Lucas Wang at Cooler Master for providing the Cosmos 1000 for this review.