CM Storm Sniper

Conclusion

The desire to produce a ‘gamer friendly’ case by manufacturers has certainly pushed some interesting cases our way in the last couple of months. The Akasa Infiniti Zor is of particular note, as it aimed to cater to gamers on a budget, but seemed to cut too many corners. The Sniper then delivers on two very important factors when buying a case: build quality and cooling performance.

Since the Sniper is made up largely of grills and fan blowholes, the appearance isn’t anything particularly outstanding, but CM Storm have done a reasonable job on this. The I/O panel is particularly good on this model, and we hope CM Storm continue this with all their new cases. The built-in fan controller saves you a good £20 on buying one separate to the case, and it also controls the LED’s in the fans, which is a nice touch.

Priced at £133.96 from Scan.co.uk, it is reasonably priced, but not outstanding. For example, Ebuyer have just listed the Antec 902 for just under £100, which has similar cooling power and comes with anodised black internals. This doesn’t mean the Sniper is a bad buy, far from it, but there are plenty of other choices out there, so the case really needed to be an outstanding value, rather than just ‘ok’.

The Good:
+ Fantastic cooling
+ Easy installation
+ Impressive fan controller and I/O bay

The Mediocre:
* The price

The Bad:
– Poor options for cable routing

Overclock3D would like to thank Cooler Master for supplying today’s review sample. Discuss in our Forums.