Size Matters....AND IT'S HUGE!!!

Last night, on my way home from buying this, I called my friend Kym to tell him about this crazy thing I had done. He, like most people had never seen a Cooler Master Cosmos II before, promised to "Google It" and see what I'd have to explain to my wife. Some time later, I received a text from him which started with "Bawwwhahahaha" or something to that effect and ended with "Good luck with that"!

This story starts in 2007. Cooler Master decided they'd so something over the top, and introduced the Cosmos 1000. At $200, 24" tall and over 40lbs, it was the most extravagant case of it's time. And as you can see, sitting on the floor next the the 2012 Cosmos II, somewhat over-shadows it! Yes, the "II", at 27.7", 48lbs, and $350 is (if there is such a thing), even more "over the top". At launch, it was in excess of $100 more expensive than the next most expensive case on the market, capable of swallowing the EVGA, SR2 (and upcoming SR3) motherboards, and 13 (!) 3.5" drives, along with about that number of 2.5" drives and 3, 5.25" drives. I'm not going to do an exhaustive listing of the features since you can all Google, but I'll hit a few highlights before I attempt to explain myself.

Lever-latch opening, swing-away doors that detach by lifting off of it's hinges to allow entry into the cavernous interior (where you can see some of the drive bays. There are 6 more of them behind that panel (which is also swing-away) with the twin fans in it. 

Top control panel which includes 6 USB ports (2, USB 3.0), eSATA, headphone/mic, along with LED lighting and fan control over multiple areas, power, and reset. Just below are 3, 5.25" tool-less bays for optical drives/etc., and 2 hot-swappable SATA 3.5" drive bays as well. 

Here are more features. By all means, click on this and blow up the image!

Want an idea of scale? Here's an image of a full-grown adult struggling with it.

 

So; why in the world would someone like me buy such a thing? The King of Function, The Sultan of Understated, The Frugal Propellehead? Lots of reasons. Let's start with, I'm downsizing......that's really not a joke! I was using two different computers that lived in two Cooler Master Centurion mid-tower cases. Any way you slice that; 2 desktop computers take up a lot of space. Although, I still fully intend to play with the idea of turning one box into a server, I'm going to do that at school now in association with the "computer club". This frees up lots of space under there. However, if I'm going to go with one computer, it needs to be able to hold a lot of stuff (read many drives). Two 10" wide computers takes up more space than one 14" comptuer! If I'm going to cut down to one computer, I'm going to make it a good one. I don't mean my parts aren't good. 

I created an issue from my last upgrade when I went from the Cooler Master TX2 to the Hyper 212 Evo. This heatsink/fan combo is big enough to require a full bolt-on backplate which uses bolt and nuts. This creates lots of metal sticking out of the back of the motherboard. So much so that it touched the MB tray of my Centurion 590. .......And many of you now know what happened. It shorted out of course and gave me issues till I put some electrical tape behind it. This worked, but is clearly not a permanent solution! Over the course of the last few weeks, I've been looking at nicer cases/up-to-date cases that have a cut-out behind the CPU area. I looked and looked, but just couldn't find one that had all the features I wanted/needed all in one case. Factal, Corsair, Antec, NZXT, XYZ, ABCD; it didn't matter. Of course, I looked at the "big boys", like the Corsiar Obsidian 900D and the Cooler Master Cosmos II, but these $300+ behemoths were way out of my price range. That is until last week when I went up to Micro Center to pick up a $3 keyboard and saw their "display model" on clearance for $214.95. That's $135 off of retail and getting within my price range, but it was pretty beat up and would have been close to $250 after taxes. Then I remembered seeing an ad a few weeks ago on Craigslist about a Cosmos listed for $200. Local, no taxes! You know the story-line already. Of course I offered him $175, he countered $180, and I'm now the proud owner of the most extravagant case ever made.

I've explained how, but haven't really gotten into why. Well; there are lots of reasons. As you can see, it's one of the best performing cases ever. When compared to others of it's type and cost (roughly), it's a, if not, the top performer. As I've already said: it will take lots of drives. In fact it will take LOTS of anything. It's doubtful that I would or could outgrow it any time in the foreseeable future. And, "where the rubber really meets the road", I had about $180, a need for a bigger case and a desire for a top-notch one. A watchful eye on Craigslist was able to land me, arguably the top one on the market. Can't complain about that! Now.......to explain it to the wife......