A few months back, I had the pleasure of thoroughly dissecting Cooler Master’s Storm Series: Scout Gaming Case. To give you a quick summary, it’s arguably my favorite LAN party case. It has a useful handle, ample silent cooling and it looks pretty darn sweet once it’s all built up with its slick lighting and black interior. My only gripe was that my GTX295 video cards just barely fit even with special maneuvering.
Cooler Master is back with a new enclosure from their gamer oriented Storm Series. This one is specially designed to improve upon the features that make today’s enclosures functional in so many ways as well as stirring up gamer emotions with some fancy design work. Let’s see if this new CM Sniper Black Edition Gaming Case has learned from previous engagements and can accomplish the mission with ZERO casualties.
Features and Specifications
First, you should know that the Sniper comes in two variants: Sniper Black Edition and regular Sniper. The regular Sniper has been seen in a few places at about the $100 level (depending on the sale) while the Black Edition (BE) costs about $149.99 currently at Newegg. Earlier in the year there were some rebates dropping the price to $110, but most have since expired. Keep your eyes peeled, because those can come back at any time.
While some of the concepts and features are similar to the Scout, such as Storm Guard which helps tie up your USB periperhals so they don’t ‘walk off’ at your favorite LANs, the Black Edition improves upon this with things such as even better and expandable cooling options.
The “BE” will arrive boasting three 200mm x 30mm monster fans located at the Front, Right Side Panel, Top, and one 120 x 25mm up Top of the enclosure. If that’s not enough, you can add an additional 120 or 140mm bottom fan for even more air flow. Most of these are connected to the built in Control Center where the turn of a knob sets the very low 23dB rated cooling fans.
What’s in the Box?
Some of the boxed goodies are very similar to other bundles. Included in the brown box there are zip ties, SSD adapter brackets, lots of screws and stand offs for mounting all your components. Though not included, Cooler Master also shipped along one of their Tactics gaming pads which may show up in bundles if you’re looking for a great pad to go with a case.
Retailing for only $12.99, the pad is well built and reminds you of the “Do’s and Don’ts” with a couple phrases you’ve probably already seen used in game, unless you game like us. The material is of pretty decent quality while the bottom of the mouse pad is made from rubber. Can’t pwn if your mouse pad is slipping all over the place. Cooler Master is definitely taking the Storm branding seriously and we’re sure it will show in our evaluation of the Sniper Black Edition as well.
Inspecting the Caliber of the Sniper
In military weaponry speak, if the Scout case is a .308 rifle, the Sniper is indeed a .33 caliber Magnum. In other words, it’s a grade more serious in terms of impression and design.
Because of the obvious larger cooling features, the Sniper is a bit wider and longer than the Scout. There’s more ventilation all over the chassis as well. The front chassis fan is so large that it takes up almost half of the bezel. The rest is devoted to five 5.25 vented face plates which easily pop out, I might add.
The top of the chassis is also raised in such a way that the top 200mm fan doesn’t crowd the motherboard. This creates sort of an open channel of sorts that double as a set of handles. This also creates some extra space for the chassis control features such as USB, Audio, External SATA, Fan LED power, and Fan speeds. The sides of the chassis are designed so that the side panel fan doesn’t encroach on the internal hardware and so that there’s extra room for better, easier wire management behind the motherboard tray. Winner!
If you look at the back of the chassis, you’ll see the makings of the jet black chassis. The slightly wider frame provides more space for the 120mm fan, PCI slots, PSU, and of course, grommet enclosed water cooling holes. These holes are strategically located in case you decide to swap the top 200mm fan for a dual 120mm radiator of your choice. Score another point!
Inside The Sniper
With the removal of four thumb screws, you can see the Sniper’s internal design. The motherboard tray has been extended which allows much easier use of any extremely large video cards like the NVidia GTX295 or ATI HD 5970 X2 which measures around 13 inches long. The motherboard tray is actually wide enough to hold an Extended ATX platform like the Skull Trail, though I wouldn’t recommend it.
You can see that there’s a CPU cut out for installing new CPU coolers without having to remove the motherboard. There’s also an oval cut out at the bottom for fishing any PSU wires up the back, or perhaps for tucking away the extras. That’s what we would do.
Plenty of Drive Bays for Hard Drive Ammo
If you look closely at both sets of drive bays, they’re all tool-less which seems to be a standard feature these days. Once a ROM drive is slid in to place, a quick press of the button locks it in preventing movement. You also have the option of installing screws if you wish to lock it down.
The lower hard drive bay offers 5 removable, tooless flexible drive trays. Once the tray is pulled out, simply slide one drive in the pegs on one side while sliding it down over the other. It creates a sturdy little hot swap type configuration with its ease of use. For those that want to lock these down, you can’t as there are no hole for screws.
Cable Managements Passes Muster
Flipping around the case to the and looking at the left side of the case, you can see there’s going to be ample room for many a wire. Even the connectors should have no problem allowing the side panel to go back on once you have them all tied off. A lot of consideration was put into wire management. This is a feature that should also be a standard but we can only insist on so much.
Installation Notes
You will find that larger PSUs may prevent installing the optional 120mm fan depending on how its installed. The wiring may get in the way. If this is the case, you may be able to flip the PSU so the wiring is up top which opens up the fan slot. Keep in mind, the optional fan really isn’t needed unless you suffer from obsessive compulsive fan disorder.
Also, I did find one faulty 4-pin style Molex connector to the front fan. Since we’re pretty resourceful around here, a little careful maintenance fixed the pin. This is a minor quality control issue that is easily preventable with a little double checking.
Installing your hard drive in the removable tray might require a little practice to get quick at it. Once you’ve completed one, the rest are easy. It’s getting the drive back out you’ll need just a little patience as you basically peel it out of the cradle by squeezing the sides or using your finger nails to start at one corner and work your way around. But again, do it once and it’ s committed to memory.
As you can see, the objective was accomplished quickly and decisively. There were no cuts or injuries sustained during the “live fire” exercise. The motherboard fit perfectly as well as did the monstrous GTX 295 video card. All the wire management worked well and created a very tidy case.
Now that we’ve tested the installation process with some off the shelf components, we’re going to now subject the Sniper to some somewhat unconventional case testing techniques which should yield both noise and temperature performance numbers.
Noise Levels and Temperature
In order to test our case, we decided to do things a little more unconventionally. Instead of installing a system into our case which would obviously be easy to cool, we used a heat gun set to low to give us an idea of just how well the case would stand up to increasing temps. Even the heat gun, which simulates a worst case hot system scenario, could not produce enough hot air to warm the inside of the chassis more than 15 C degrees above the room’s 20C ambient temp.
I’d also like to point out that the fans just barely break the 28dB noise level which was recorded in a perfectly quiet room. And, they do an expert job of keeping the interior cool by expelling warm air through the top and back very quickly. The side panel monster fan is especially the MVP when it comes to keeping the case cool.
Final Thoughts
The Cooler Master Storm Series Sniper Black Edition Gaming Case definitely scores at the top of the class for features that gamers love like the mesh lit side panel, tool-less assembly, extra interior chassis space, aggressive design, expert cooling, and fan control. The enclosure takes a lot of what makes a good case back to basics while improving on things that make life easy. Things like the motherboard tray cut out for easy CPU cooler assembly should be, in our opinion, an industry standard.
Though the chassis is completely tuned for gamers you can’t see your internal system very easily through the mesh side panel. Gamers like to show off their brand new “Nitros Injected” motherboards and video cards. I would’ve really enjoyed seeing a clear or tinted acrylic window used instead. This is specifically why Cooler Master does make a version that uses a clear plexi window as well called the Black Edition Window Version. It shows that Cooler Master definitely has their ears on when it comes what gamers are looking for.
But if you are looking for a bit more privacy, this case still requires a sizable CCFL light to light up the inside enough to see what’s inside making it pretty obvious when people are trying to snoop around your case at a LAN Party.
While the regular Sniper saves you a few bucks (when in stock), it seems like a shame to deny yourself this elite, deadly silent beauty. At $149.99, it’s currently only $10 cheaper than its comparable nemesis, the Antec Twelve Hundred which is pretty much a legend on the battlefield. With the major holiday rush over, it seems probable that more year end rebates or price drops would make the enclosure even more appealing.
Congratulations soldier! You’re being highly recommended for the system builders and elite gamers “Bronze Star”. Sniper Class of 2009, dismissed!
Pros
- Plenty of interior space for builds
- Tool-less features work well
- Removable hard drive trays
- Excellent fan control system for customized cooling
- Black interior chassis is both tasteful and cool at the same time
- Excellent cable management
Cons
- Can’t easily see the elite interior without heavy lighting (buy the plexi version instead)
- Lots of competition at similar price points
Overall Rating: 8.75/10.0
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Cooler Master Storm Series Sniper Black Edition Gaming Case Photo Gallery
