Cooler Master CM Media 281 Mid-Tower/Desktop/HTPC Case - Articles / Reviews

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Cooler Master CM Media 281 Mid-Tower/Desktop/HTPC Case

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Max Slowik
Kurtis
Cooler Master
Apr. 22, 2007

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Inside the Case

Overview

The case uses a very simple reverse-ATX design, with the power supply at the top of the case.

Everything about the inside of the case should be familiar to anyone who has opened a computer at any point in the last 15 years. The construction is all SECC steel with the standard battleship finish. The parts of the chassis are riveted together, and aside form the hard drive cage the case has no rubber grommets or any other kind of vibration-dampening.

Drive Bays

The CM Media does have lots of room in it, with five hard drive bays, three 5.25" bays, and one external 3.5" bay.

The top 5.25" drive bay is intended to house an optical drive, and there is a drive mask (stealth feature) built into the front bezel just for it. Because the mask is built into the bezel it can't be re-located. The remaining two bays can hold optical drives or very short bay devices since they're also behind a drop-down access panel. Unfortunately, because there is an interior bezel that holds the drives in place and a metal bar dividing the bays, they cannot contain a double bay device.

The 5.25" bays use simple tool-free latching mechanisms. The bay itself can't be removed, so you can only install tool-free hardware in the drive bays. The opposite side of the drive bays uses friction to secure the hardware. These bays are riveted to the chassis and use friction mounts to hold the drives opposite the tool-free latches.

The external 3.5" bay slides into tabs on the hard drive cage and is held by a thumbscrew. The bay slides out toward the motherboard tray. Installing a device means removing the bay, screwing in the devices, and re-securing the bay. Some motherboards may obstruct the removal of the bay or otherwise complicate access.

The hard drive cage is the one truly simple and very well-made drive bay. The whole cage is held by four screws, and is easy to remove. Each hard drive is held by four long screws that pass through rubber grommets.

Motherboard Tray

The tray is fixed, and uses stand-offs to isolate the motherboard from the chassis. There isn't too much room between the motherboard and the hard drive cage, but because the hard drive cage is removable it shouldn't get in the way. Aside from being reverse-ATX, there's nothing special about it.

Power Supply

Unlike most reverse-ATX cases, the PSU is at the top of the case (in mid-tower mode). This puts it far away from the hard drives and CPU AUX power connector, and can mean stretching cables over the motherboard in order to reach. The power supply can be installed normally or upside-down, and there is a vent to feed it air from outside the case.

Cooling

The CPU and motherboard cooling is great. With two extra fan mounts adjacent to and above/below, getting fresh air to the main hot spot in the case is easy. Even completely passive heatsinks should have no problem cooling the CPU. The power supply, with its own vent, is pretty well off, too.

The rest of the components aren't so lucky. Though there is a dedicated 120mm fan mount for the hard drives, it doesn't actually have an opening for air to get to it.

And while VGA cooling is more important than ever, there are no vents for the expansion cards, not even vents at the back of the case.

While there is a vent for the PSU to intake outside air, if the case is set up as a tower it should definitely be used to exhaust heated air from the case, because without the power supply helping out, the hot air will just get stuck at the top of the case.

The vents are very wide hex-punched holes in the door and sides/top and bottom of the case. They don't leave much to the imagination, and provide little protection from dust.

The case runs much cooler as a desktop than as a mid-tower, by about 2 degrees Celsius on the motherboard, and well over 4 degrees on the video card. In both configurations, the CPU was cooled equally.

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Impressions
Page 3: Inside the Case
Page 4: Quality Check
Page 5: Conclusion

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