Cooler Master Centurion 530 Mid-Tower Case

Reviews: Cases

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Kurtis Kronk
Brian
Cooler Master
Jul. 25, 2005

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Inside the Case

Overview

Inside the case you will find (5) 5.25" bays, two of which are stealthed, (1) external 3.5" bay, (4) hidden 3.5" bays, (1) 120mm front intake fan, a small speaker clipped to the front of the case, a bundle of I/O port wires, PSU support brackets, optional rear exhaust (80, 92, or 120mm), (7) toolless PCI slots, an Installation Guide and a small box containing miscellaneous screws and some drive rails.

One small thing I'd like to note is that the wires coming from the I/O port were neatly clipped together on the roof of the case. I thought that was a nice touch, since I'm always bugged by the mess that these wires create.

Drive Bays

Before I get into the particulars of the drive bays, I'd like to point out that the entire front panel is perforated and each bay cover has an air filter. This serves to keep lots of fresh air coming into the case, and it's nice that the dust will get trapped before it reaches your hardware. That said, I would have liked to see Cooler Master include another 120mm fan for the rear exhaust to really take advantage of the case's cooling potential.

All of the 5.25" drive bays rely on screws for device installation. This means that you'll have to remove both side panels before installing or removing a drive. As I mentioned earlier, the top two bays are stealthed. The stealthed 5.25" bays were a good idea, but I did experience a problem. Allow me to explain!

Basically, when you have a CD drive installed, you should be able to push a button, which in turn pushes the drive's eject button. That part works fine. The problem is with the stealth door which is supposed to get pushed downward as the drive tray ejects. When I eject the tray, it gets stuck halfway out. No amount of repositioning the drive will fix the problem. This oversight really is not like Cooler Master at all, and I recently spoke with their marketing rep about this problem. Apparently, they know that there is an issue with some CD drives (though they don't know precisely which ones), and the mass-production units don't suffer from the same problem as my pre-mass-production sample unit. I can't verify that the issue has truly been addressed, all I can say is that I was told it has been. I can verify, however, that this issue is not with ALL drives, because the marketing rep linked me to a video review at 3DGameMan in which the stealth bay is shown fully functional.

Under the 5.25" bays is the external 3.5" cage, but only the top bay is actually external. I figured since the extra 5.25" bay resulted in one less sideways-facing hard drive bay, you would be able to mount a hard drive in the rear-facing 3.5" bay under the external one. However, I was unsuccessful in my attempt to install a hard drive in that bay; it simply wouldn't fit. This leaves me with the question: What are you supposed to do with that bay? Put a 3.5" water cooling reservoir in it? I have no idea.

Continuing down is the removable sideways-facing hard drive cage. To take out the cage there is one screw on the inside and two more on the bottom of the case which must first be removed. The only reason to remove the hard drive cage is if you want to replace the front fan. Installing hard drives couldn't be easier thanks to the drive rails, which you don't even have to screw into the sides of the hard drive.

Motherboard Tray

This is just your run of the mill non-removable ATX motherboard tray. Nothing to see here folks, move along.

PCI Slots

Usually I go on a little rant about how much toolless PCI slots suck here, but I was actually quite happy with the toolless mechanism that Cooler Master employed here. The way it works is you depress the curved part towards the rear of the case, and then swivel the plastic clip out of the way. Once you've installed an expansion card, you just push the clip back in place from the outside of the case until it clicks. I'll take these things over thumbscrews any day. The same toolless PCI slot mechanism was used in Cooler Master's Cavalier 3, This is the same method used in Cooler Master's Cavalier 3, which Brian reviewed late last year.

Cooling

All in all the Centurion 530 has pretty good cooling, though it would be even better if a rear exhaust fan had been included. There are more than enough places for fresh air to enter the case; from the perforated front panel or the CPU duct and GPU intake on the left side panel.

It is nice that Cooler Master put air filters behind the front panel, but they didn't put air filters on the side panel, which sort of negates the benefit of having any air filters at all.

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Looks / Opening the Case
Page 3: Inside the Case
Page 4: Quality Check / Conclusion

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2 User Comments

1 - Posted by Guest on August 18, 2005 - 3:28 am

I Googled this case to see if anyone else had problems with the stealthed 5-1/4 bay doors. This was the 2nd site I visited.

Mine are "post-mass-production" models and I built two comps using this case. Both cases had the problem of the drive door getting stuck halfway open. The first case I used a Sony and the second case I used a Lite-On.

Still looking for a work-around other than moving the drives down to the 3rd bay.... or yanking out the doors completely.

2 - Posted by Guest on September 12, 2005 - 1:49 am

I have this case aswell. And yes my cd drive got stuck too. But i was able to take off the front bezel of the tray and problem solved. Since its hidden i dont care that my cd drive is choppe and sc re w ed. with a 2nd 120mm fan, this a very quiet case with excellent cooling, and i have the Vantec Nexus black multi-fan controller with blue backlight that matches the front case fan's blue glow nicely and looks awesome. (Computer Power User used the same fan controller on the Centurion 5)Those rods dont bother me much either. I only wish that that the drive bay doors worked better. -Matt

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