Cooler Master CM690 PC case

By Horendus
03:46 Jan 16, 2009

- Excellent Air flow design
- Water cooling friendly
- Modern mesh finish
- Effective cable managment
- Good Hard Disk bracket system

- Bottom fan position is not recommenced for any use
- On / Off bottom can be a little flaky at times

These days it’s not so hard to see why PC users invest so much time into finding the perfect case to house their tremendously powerful and expensive rig components. The amount of power used and heat generated by these monstrosities has grown exponentially over the years, leading PC enthusiasts to realise that that a well designed case is now essential to their builds performance and stability. Gone are my days of spending $45 on a cheap Homebrand case, complete with D grade power supply, razor sharp edges and a manual written in ching-glish. These days it’s all about elegant design, thermo-practical air flow (yes I made that term up) and screwless installation methods, and no serious PC enthusiast would settle for anything less.

At first glance the CM690 leaves one guessing what kind of interior could possibly be worthy of such stylish exterior. Like coming across your favourite street car at the local auto show, you ponder what marvels must lay beneath the shell of black mesh and smooth edges. And just like discovering your girlfriend of 2 months is not pregnant, you shalt be disappointed.

The top and front of the case is covered in a black mesh, which runs all the way down the front of the case, meaning power and reset button placement has be placed on the left side, midway up the tower. Headphone out, Mic In, 2x USB Ports, 1x Firewire port and eSATA port are positioned on the top front of the case, suiting users who’d prefer to have their tower placed on the ground besides them rather than on their desk.
The case sits on 4 heavy duty rubber feet, keeping your precious pine finished desk scratch free. Power supply placement is following current trends and is placed at the bottom of the case. Cable management is also taken care of with some rather flimsy plastic cord clamps running up the case parallel with the motherboard. 5 ½ inch bays are all screwless in design, allowing you to slide in your shiny new Blue-Ray player and securing it with nothing more than a slide of a switch, as are PCI slots, allowing your beastly new GTX295 to be installed without the use of any screws.

Once you finally get over the beauty of this case, and open her up, one will notice the hard disk placement has been orientated 90 degrees counter clockwise to the to allow drive to slide into 5 a position rack, complete with removable screwless brackets for each hard disk, making installation an absolute breeze...well at first impressions anyways. When it actually comes down to installing a hard drive you will need to remove both sides of the case to gain access to the hard disk cabling side. Further pondering will then lead you to realise that this will also effectively hide your cables away from view, essential to those looking to parade their new build on various tech savey forum and at LAN’s.

Good case airflow is essential to a well designed case and this is where the CM690 really shines. The case comes stock with a back exhaust orientated 120mm 19Dbe fan, and a front intake, complete with a bright blue LED glow which emanates throughout the lower front of the cases black mesh. While this blue light shining so bright will lead the casual 14 year old try hard PC enthusiast to believe his PC is in fact running at arctic low temperatures, the more seasoned players will soon realise the enormous potential for cooling you system with this case lies in the placement of the 2 top ventilation fan positions, and 2 side intakes. A ground fan position is also present for anyone looking to suck up dust straight from their carpet into their case, or wishing to go against the known laws of physics and suck out heated air which has apparently managed to sink to the bottom of the case.

Upon testing a Q6600 GO running at 3.6Ghz with the cases stock cooling positions (1x intake at front and 1x exhaust) using a Zelman CNPS9300 I was able to achieve load temperature on par with most cases with similar airflow setups.

However, once flipping the back exhaust around to transform it into an intake, installing 2x side intakes, 2x top exhaust fans to remove air heated by the CPU cooler and re orientating the Zalman cooler to push its hot air upwards toward the top exhaust fans you will notice a dramatic drop in CPU temperatures. Tested revealed a drop of around 8 degrees while idol and 10 degrees under load was achieved.

But as most of us know by now, air cooling is for the weak. And with water cooling all but considered mainstream, depending on which seedy un clean LAN venues you attend, your eyes will light up when you realise the potential of the 2x top exhaust fan positions as potential placement position for a completely case enclosed 120x2 radiator.

With a bit of basic modding you should be able to get a radiator mounted on the inside of the exhaust grill, completely hidden away from view. The exhaust fans should then be rotated to the top the case, still hidden away under the black mesh housing. This setup was achieved using a Danger Den Black Ice Stealth GTS 120x2.

With this setup, cold air is drawn inside from the 2 side and rear intakes and then channelled up through the radiator and out the top of the case using a pull configuration, leaving one extremely stealthy and efficient water setup, with all heated air leaving the case. 2 rubber finished piping holes are also present at the back of the case for those keen to run an external radiator setup.

And so finally we move onto the real deciding factor of your next PC case. The price.
With the elegant design and ingenious airflow setup of the case, one cannot be blamed for expecting a price close to $200.

The truth is this case can be had for as little as $110, and expect to pay an extra $20 for the clear pertex window version.

This case comes Highly Recommended for both the casual system builder and the hardcore modders.

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