Internal Design

We held the HAF Ten's internals in loftier regard, but in many ways the CM Storm Trooper takes things to the adjacent level. You'll notice some of the more obvious changes when looking at the motherboard tray which features an improved cable direction setup.

The Cooler Master finger-printing buttons for the expansion drives have been scrapped. In fact, the drive bay area of the Trooper has been completely redesigned. The new configuration accommodates a pair of what Cooler Master calls ninety-caste rotatable 4-in-3 HDD modules. We like this addition for several reasons.

The Trooper substantially has ix 5.25" drive bays. The four-in-3 HDD modules take up the bottom six, converting them into eight iii.five" bays that tin also support eight 2.5" devices. With the modules removed, the bays can still be used to house 5.25" devices, making the case's storage expansion highly customizable.

This surface area can be outfitted with near whatsoever size drive, yous can mount the devices in 2 directions (forepart to dorsum or side to side). This adds to the customizability and it's not something you'll find in many other cases.

Cooler Principal also provides a small ii.five" 4-bay drive muzzle on the bottom of the Trooper, so you don't take to sacrifice your larger trophy to install SSDs or other compact drives.

In all, the Trooper tin back up three 5.25" devices (nine if you remove the 4-in-three HDD modules), eight 3.five" drives and four 2.5" drives (twelve if you use the larger HDD modules).

Moving back over to the motherboard tray, the Trooper preserves the rear CPU pigsty in the motherboard tray that makes information technology easier to install and uninstall heatsinks, which would ordinarily require you to remove the unabridged tray. This hole has been enlarged so it spans almost the entire length of a standard ATX motherboard, thus ensuring better compatibility with your hardware.

The tray is surrounded past various rectangular holes that let you hide your tacky wires. There'south plenty of room behind the tray as nosotros managed to fit several power cables forth with SATA and USB cables.

The case can back up CPU coolers as tall as 7.3" (186mm) which covers virtually everything on the market. Likewise, all GPUs should exist covered with enough clearance for cards measuring up to 12.7" (322mm) long. For reference, the Radeon HD 6990 is the longest gaming graphics menu and measures 12" long (304mm).

The CM Storm Trooper includes a 200mm fan, a 140mm fan and 2 120mm fans. Additionally, you lot can install another four 120mm fans in the bottom and side door of the case.

The top-mounted 200mm fan operates at 1000 RPM, generating 23dBA of noise. The front 120mm fans are attached to the 4-in-3 HDD modules and feature cherry-red LED lights, spin at 1200 RPM and make 17dBA of noise. The rear 140mm fan excludes LED lights, spins at 1200 RPM and produces 19dBA of noise.

As enthusiasts take come up to expect of higher-cease cases, the Trooper has a full interior paint job. Overall, we prefer the internal pattern of Cooler Master's latest example over the acclaimed HAF X.