Cooler Master Cosmos II Case Review

Overview

 

If you plan on building the biggest, coolest Gaming Rig know to man you’re going to require a pretty big case for sure! Maybe Cooler Master has the answer, in fact they may have had the answer for a long time… The Cooler Master Cosmos II (RC-1200-KKN1) may have been around for a while now, but here at pcG we’re going to take a look at this behemoth of case and see if size really does matter…

The steel and aluminium Cosmos II is a big (344 x 704 x 664 mm) and heavy (22 kg) case that can swallow the following motherboards (microATX, ATX, E-ATX, XL-ATX, SSI CEB, SSI EEB). There’s support for up to thirteen HDDs or eleven SSDs or any combination of the two. In addition to this there are five 5.25″ drive bays, two with lockable hot-swap bays. The front panel features two USB 3.0 ports and four USB 2.0 ports as well as an eSATA port and the usual audio ports. The Cosmos II has 10 expansion slots, meaning that quad GPU support is available should your budget stretch that far! The default cooling setup is x1 120mm top fan, x1 140mm rear fan and x1 200mm front fan with blue LED. The case can support GPUs up to 385mm and CPU coolers with a maximum height of 190mm. There’s also support for water cooling in the fact that a 360mm radiator can be installed in the roof as well as a 240mm in the floor.

 

 

The Cosmos II came in the largest box that has ever come through the doors here at pcG. The box is predominately black, with an image of the case on the front. Highlights include, USB 3.0, SSD support, Advanced System Control Panel, XL-ATX support & 4-Way CrossFire and SLI compatibility.

The back of the box goes on to showcase various features of the Cooler Master Cosmos II (see image above right).

 

 

The case was well packaged within hard polystyrene foam and covered in a plastic bag. The top and bottom handles were also covered in a protective wrap.

 

 

In the box and in the case we find a small rectangular brown box with the following contents: 8-pin power extension cable, various cable ties, keys, screws etc, radiator bracket, buzzer, User Manual and Warranty Information.

At the time of review, the Cooler Master Cosmos II is retailing on Amazonfor approximately £255 and comes with 2 year warranty.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of Cooler Master

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

 

Somewhat obviously the first task is to talk about the size. The Cooler Master Cosmos II is the biggest case we have ever seen here at pcG, but once you have marveled at its extreme size (and that will take some time!) it’s time to move on and take a look around this Ultra Tower.

First impressions are good, this is a seriously well made case, in fact it’s no ordinary case to be honest the build quality and engineering is way beyond anything that we have seen before. Everything is so solid and so well made, the case could be used as an anvil… 😉

 

 

Taking a look at the top of the case we can see a large mesh panel (that’s removable) at the back of the case, this can be done by removing one thumb screw at the far back of the case. Nearer the front of the case is the sliding panel (with the Cosmos logo) that provides access to the control panel for the fans and lighting. This panel slides fore and aft and effectively snaps into position. Otherwise the top of the Cosmos II is dominated by its two large handles.

Removing the aforementioned thumb screw allows the back section of the top of the case to be removed. Here you can see the only pre-installed 120mm top fan. You can also see the support for further fans (and radiator beneath). Three 120mm fans are supported or two 140mm, there’s even support for a single 200mm fan.

 

 

The left panel does differ from the right panel, but only in the number of cooling slots, the right side has four, while the left side has eight. This is because the left side panel also supports the possibility of additional cooling. The lower drive cage cooling solution can be removed and disassembled and the two 120mm fans can be attached to the left side panel in an attempt to aide GPU cooling. Looking at the two images above also gives some indication of the level of quality and engineering of the Cosmos II, it truly is impressive…

Both of the side panel (doors) can be hinged open at approximately 90 degrees, or removed completely. This is simply done by lifting the panel vertically from the hinge.

 

 

Looking at the front of the case, there’s not initially much to see. The front is dominated by a large lower grill and an upper panel (that has a party trick!), above this we have the main I/O panel (see below). The front panel’s party trick is not only does it slide down, but it does so under its of steam! Just pull gently at the top and watch the panel drop slowly and gracefully into its lower position (Hours of fun!). 😉

Behind this front panel we find five 5.25″ drive bays, with the lower two featuring lockable, hot-swap drive bays. These lower two bays only support HDDs though.

Looking at the back of the Cosmos II we can see the support for ten expansion slots, meaning that quad GPUs are fully supported. Also at the back we can see the lower mounted PSU opening and the additional expansion slot above and to the right. Centrally mounted on each side we can also see the release levers for the two side panel, just push down to release and the panels will swing open. Nearer the top we find the main motherboard I/O shield opening as well as the 140mm exhaust fan and the three water cooling holes.

 

 

The main I/O consists of the following: x1 eSATA port, audio ports (headphone/microphone), x2 USB 3.0 ports and x4 USB 2.0 ports.

Sliding back the top panel reveals a smart aluminium control panel. This control panel supports power (on/off), reset and LED control, by way of wiring already in the Cosmos II. Fan control is supported for four main areas (Front, Top, HDD & GPU). Each controller supports Low Medium and High fan speeds as indicated by the colour of the LED on the control panel (blue=low, purple=medium & red=high). Again all wiring is already provided to support this feature. In addition to this there’s also a power indicator (blue) and a storage activity indicator (blue).

 

 

Looking at the base of the case, we can see that this is dominated by the two main feet and that the feet feature additional rubber pads.

On the left there’s a removable dust filter for the PSU area, this simply slides in and out.

 

 

Looking inside the left side of Cooler Master Cosmos II for the first time I was a little shocked at the mount of wiring that was dangling around! This is down to all of the fan and illumination support offered by the inbuilt fan controller. As you can see the bottom right of the case is dominated by the twin 120mm fan panel for cooling the lower drive cages. There’s a large CPU cut-out as well as plenty of grommeted cable management holes. The top three 5.25″ drive bays feature a quick release mechanism, that’s easy to use and seems solidly made too. Below this is the upper drive cage supporting a further five drives, with SSD support also. Just in front of this you can just see the front 200mm intake fan and its associated LED wiring. Also take note of those impressive hinges, built to last I feel… ;

Opening the right side allows us to look at the cable management support offered by the Cosmos II. There’s a whole heap of room back here for wiring and in fact there’s already a whole heap of wiring here! You can also see the back of the two lower drive cages and the four release thumb screws.

 

 

The lower fan bracket can be hinged outward and removed, this not only provides access to the drive bays within, but also allows for the fans to be moved to the side panel if you so wish. Removing this panel and of course the cages also allows for a 240mm radiator to be installed into this position instead. This comes courtesy of the two radiator support brackets provided.

Overall the Cosmos II exudes quality and great engineering, the only thing for me is that it seems to focus too much on HDD support, is there anyone who really needs this level of HDDs/SSDs!? Personally I would have liked to have seen more radiator support and or more water cooling options…

 

Hardware Installation

 

Test Rig Setup

Case	Cooler Master Cosmos II	Power Supply	Cooler Master V1200 (Platinum)
Motherboard	MSI Z87 G45 GAMING	CPU	Intel Core i5-4670K
CPU Cooler	Raijintek Themis	RAM	Kingston HyperX Beast 8GB 2400MHz
Graphics Card	MSI R9 290 GAMING OC Edition	SSD	Kingston Fury 120GB SSD

 

As there’s so much room inside the Cosmos II, nothing needed to be removed before installation began. Apart for the side panels as that just made things so much easier…

The first job was to install the latest PSU from Cooler Master, the impressive V1200. This PSU was easily fitted fan side down with the screws provide and while it may be overkill for our test rig, we have bigger plans for this case and PSU combo in the future… 😉

The next job was to install the seven additional standoffs (as only two are fitted), that are required for our test ATX motherboard. This was made easier thanks to the stand-off socket Cooler Master supplied hidden amongst the accessories. All of that wiring also needed to be moved, so that was temporarily threaded back through to the back of the case, where I could ignore it until it was required. With that done the motherboard assembly (MB, CPU, CPU Cooler and RAM) could be installed, but only after fitting that I/O shield (so easy to forget that one!).

 

 

Basic wiring could then be done, PSU main 24-pin and CPU 8-pin was the first port of call. USB came next followed by wiring up the two pre-installed SATA cables that hook up to the two front hot-swap drive bays. As the Cooler Master V1200 PSU supports a hybrid mode, that can be switched on/off, the supplied switch (attached to a expansion slot bracket) was installed in the vertical slot at the back of the case. The wire was then routed directly to the back of the PSU.

 

 

In this build we will install x1 mSATA (on the motherboard), x1 SSD (in one of the many drive bays!) and x1 HDD in one of the the two hot-swap bays at the front of the case. As you can imagine this was simple for the HDD, and the mSATA on the motherboard. Our test HyperX Fury SSD was installed into one of the drive bays at the base of the case and was connected up to the PSU and the motherboard in the usual way (more wires though, and I hate more wires!).

The next task was to install the test GPU the MSI R9 290 Graphics Card. With support for 385mm long GPUs this was of course easy enough. With the wiring for the GPU complete I could focus my attention on the pre-installed wiring for the fans and the illumination (LEDs). First the fan controller needed to be wired up via a molex connector, I would have much preferred a SATA power cable as this is already in use in most cases (and it means no more wires!). Next it was time to find the fan cables and wire them to the correct controller, this was only needed to be done for the top 120mm and the front 200mm fan (that has a blue LED), as I connected the rear exhaust fan directly to a header on the motherboard. The rest of the cables for additional fans and LEDs (and there’s a lot of them) were cable tied together and just bundled into the back of the case. Not the best solution I admit, but at least the Cooler Master Cosmos II swallows it all with ease…

 

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

At pcGameware we use Prime95 and CoreTemp to evaluate CPU temperatures and we use MSI Afterburner to evaluate the GPU temperatures. Of course Prime95 being a CPU stress test also helps to generate heat for us to check the case thermals. We also use UNiGiNE Heaven 4.0 for GPU temperature testing.

CPU performance testing is carried out using Prime95 to stress the CPU. Each run is timed for 15 mins and the maximum temperature is recorded for all cores and then the average core heat is taken. Testing was carried out an Overclocked 4.0GHz.

GPU performance testing is carried out by running UNiGiNE Heaven 4.0 for 15 minutes and then by recording the maximum GPU temperature.

* All case fans (x3 in the case of the Cooler Master Cosmos II) were set to 100%. The CPU Cooler (Raijintek Themis) fan was also run at 100% throughout testing.

 

Hardware Performance

 

CPU RESULTS – Cooler Master Cosmos II with Raijintek Themis and Intel I5-4670K @ 4.0GHz (via UEFI)

Case	Ambient Temperature	Max CPU Temperature (core average)	Delta Temperature
BitFenix Shinobi XL	22.50	65.00	42.50
Cooler Master Cosmos II	25.00	68.50	43.50
Cooler Master Cosmos SE	19.50	63.00	43.50
Phanteks Enthoo Luxe	22.00	65.75	43.75
BitFenix Phenom (Micro-ATX)	21.00	66.50	45.50
BitFenix Shadow	24.00	70.25	46.25
BitFenix Neos	26.00	78.25	52.25
BitFenix Comrade	21.50	74.00	52.50
Cooler Master HAF XB	19.50	68.00	48.50
Aerocool DS Cube	25.50	74.25	48.75
BitFenix Colossus	22.50	81.25	58.75

 

CPU cooling performance for the Cooler Master Cosmos II is extremely good, equaling the Delta temperature of its smaller sibling the Cooler Master Cosmos SE.

 

GPU RESULTS – Cooler Master Cosmos II with MSI R9 290 GAMING – OC MODE (Core: Core: 1007MHz / Mem: 5000MHz)

Case	Ambient Temperature	Max GPU Temperature	Delta Temperature
Cooler Master Cosmos II	24.00	75.00	51.00
Phanteks Enthoo Luxe	23.50	77.00	53.50
Cooler Master HAF XB	27.50	86.00	58.50
BitFenix Shinobi XL	22.50	81.00	58.50
Cooler Master Cosmos SE	21.50	86.00	64.50
BitFenix Colossus	21.00	87.00	66.00
Aerocool DS Cube	25.50	94.00	68.50
BitFenix Shadow	24.50	94.00	69.50
BitFenix Neos	24.50	94.00	69.50
BitFenix Phenom (Micro-ATX)	21.00	94.00	73.00
BitFenix Comrade	20.00	94.00	74.00

 

It seems that GPU cooling in cases just keeps getting better and better, first it was the Phanteks Enthoo Luxe with its 53.50 degree Delta, now we have the Cosmos II with its impressive Delta of just 51 degrees!

 

Acoustic Performance

With all fans (that’s x1 120mm top, x1 140mm back and x1 200mm front) at 100% the noise output from the Cooler Master Cosmos II was approximately 42 decibels. It’s an good result but it’s far from quiet, luckily with the case fans all on low this drops to a far better 35 decibels. The thing is with a case like this (all steel and aluminium) sound often just resonates through the chassis and panels. Some noise dampening material is likely to be the answer…

 

Final Thoughts

 

You cant fail to be impressed by the Cooler Master Cosmos II, there truly is no other case quite like it. If you’re really in the market for such a large case, then you’re not going to be disappointed.

Unpacking the Cosmos II for the fist time is a real treat, not because of the beautiful presentation of the packing, but because of the quality and engineering on offer. I don’t think that there’s really been a case to challenge the Cosmos II since its launch almost 3 years ago! Although to be fair this is the most expensive case that we have ever tested here at pcG. I assume (and hope) that a Cosmos III can’t be that far off…

Once you have marveled at the size of this case (344 x 704 x 664 mm & 22 kg) and admired its hinged doors, inertia falling front panel, fan controller, its support for 13 HDDs (or 11 SSDs) and its water cooling support. It’s time to move on to the build; installation of our Test Rig was a breeze, but I have to say that when I first saw all of the wiring pre-installed in the case I was a little overwhelmed! Luckily thanks to great cable management the Cosmos II swallows all of the (somewhat unnecessary) cabling with ease. Overall the installation was simple and easy, with no gotchas to speak of.

Performance wise the Cooler Master Cosmos II excelled in our tests, achieving the best GPU Delta and the second best CPU Delta that we have seen. This in part is not down to the cooling offered by the three fans, but is down to the sheer size of the case along with its liberal use of (cold) steel and aluminium. It’s going to take some time to warm this bad boy up!

Acoustically the Cooler Master Cosmos II is not a quiet case, with a minimum output of 43dB and maximum of 47dB with all fans on full. This, again is, in part due to the construction of the case (steel & aluminium) with no noise dampening.

So is the Cooler Master the perfect case? Well maybe yes, I would say that if you’re happy to pay £250-£300 for a case and you can do the case justice, by filling with a shed load of tech and or 13 HDDs then yes. But for me years after launch, it would have been nice to see a side window by now to show off your hard work and dumb down that HDD support in favour of better water cooling support or options. I cant’t wait to see the Cosmos III… 😉

 

Verdict

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Many thanks to Cooler Master for providing this sample for review