Cooler Master Centurion 590

 

 

Now personally I’ve never been a huge fan of smaller cases. For the simple reason that there’s not enough room inside to house monstrous components and still keep the shop tidy. However, after opening the side of the Centurion 590 for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised. Inside the main chassis is a huge void which is uninterrupted by sidebars to hold the PSU or silly looking hard drive mounts.

 

 

 

Starting with the Stacker-esque drive bays, we can see the tool-less method for holding in the componets that would reside in the mounts behind. I couldn’t help but feel these looked a bit naff, but even if the side had a window they wouldn’t be seen once assembled so it wasn’t a big deal. To use them: simply flick over the purple locking switch and lift. Doing this released  two pins that hold in the device.

 

 

Hidden away inside the bay’s is the hard drive cage. It clips in using the system shown above and can be mounted pretty much anywhere up and down the front of the case. Attached to the front is a blue LED fan to keep the drives cool and, presumably, act as the intake fan for the case. Above that was the external 3.5″ mount wich sat behind the special bezel we saw on the last page. Like the drive cage you’re free to move it to whichever position you so desire.

 

 

Moving to the motherboard area you can see a vent on the motherboard tray. This directly relates to the vent on the rear side panel, presumably to give a little extra airflow to motherboards with components mounted on the reverse side. The exhaust fan was a standard, 3-pin Cooler Master branded fan and below it are the PCI slots with their form of tool-less operation. Here the little purple clip pushed in, then arced out the back to allow the card to slot in. Locking the card in is achieved by simply pulling the purple clipback into place. Unlike the 5.25″ bay locks these were a bit fiddly. I think that while innovative, the normal screwed aproach here could have been benifical.

 

 

The bottom of the case houses the PSU bay and a hole in the motherboard tray from which the front panel connectors protrude. I was pleased to see that the tidying of such lengthy cables had basicly been done for me. All that was needed was for the excess cable to be fed back through the hole. The PSU bay itself was an area for slight concern. Sucking up air from under the case is good as long as there is enough clearance. However, the feet on the Centurion 590 were not particualy tall and if placing/using the case on carpet you run the risk of a PSU filled with dust.

 

Overall the interior of the case is pretty impressive. Cooler Master have clearly put a lot of thought into the layout and design of the inside. Although it’s let down a little by the fact that the tool-less componets are sketchy. The only other gripe that I could mention would be that the chassis is constructed of steel. But then again if Aluminium were used it would drive the price of the chassis up.