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Cooler Master Storm Sniper Case Review
Author: William West
Published: Friday, March 20, 2009
Conclusion
The CM Storm Sniper is geared towards a certain type of gamer and it is the LAN Party guy. Still it has enough awesome features that it can make any person looking for a cool looking mid-tower happy. Everything about the CM Storm Sniper is of great quality with having a slight minimal feel to it. The CM Storm Sniper is not super heavy like it looks by using some plastic parts to keep the weight down while not compromising quality or strength. The overall look is a rugged toughness that Cooler Master pulls off nicely and fits perfect with the LAN Party scene.
Case cooling is handled by a variety of fans and the blue LEDs give just the right touch for showing off your system at your LAN Party and yet still remaining somewhat conservative. The speed control dial allows you to tune your case fans to run fast when needed and become muted when additional cooling is no longer needed. Overall system cooling on the CM Storm Sniper is superb and does a great job at moving lots of cool fresh air while keeping noise to a minimum. Cleaver casemodders will find creative ways to install watercooling into his case and the overall size provides you with endless heatsink and fan combination possibilities.
We did identify an area that might cause you some trouble and its with the fan mount on the bottom of the case and how it tends to interfere with the PSU. This area could easily been fine without any kind of fan mounting system so we might suggest removing the mount before you begin your installation. Besides we’ve found that bottom mounted fans tend to get clogged with dirt on a fairly regular basis which requires more effort on your part.
It is clear that this case is targeted at the gaming crowd that regularly attends LAN events. There is really no reason for you to modify this case but given how much room you have to work with just about anything is possible, and for those of you without the modding gene just throw your hardware in and start gaming.
Case cooling is handled by a variety of fans and the blue LEDs give just the right touch for showing off your system at your LAN Party and yet still remaining somewhat conservative. The speed control dial allows you to tune your case fans to run fast when needed and become muted when additional cooling is no longer needed. Overall system cooling on the CM Storm Sniper is superb and does a great job at moving lots of cool fresh air while keeping noise to a minimum. Cleaver casemodders will find creative ways to install watercooling into his case and the overall size provides you with endless heatsink and fan combination possibilities.
We did identify an area that might cause you some trouble and its with the fan mount on the bottom of the case and how it tends to interfere with the PSU. This area could easily been fine without any kind of fan mounting system so we might suggest removing the mount before you begin your installation. Besides we’ve found that bottom mounted fans tend to get clogged with dirt on a fairly regular basis which requires more effort on your part.
It is clear that this case is targeted at the gaming crowd that regularly attends LAN events. There is really no reason for you to modify this case but given how much room you have to work with just about anything is possible, and for those of you without the modding gene just throw your hardware in and start gaming.
Good Things
Lots of great cooling abilities
Very roomy on the inside for about any kind of hardware
Cable management system at it's best
Handles on the top that are worth while
The ability to tune your cooling system with knob on top
Great potential for watercooling
Very roomy on the inside for about any kind of hardware
Cable management system at it's best
Handles on the top that are worth while
The ability to tune your cooling system with knob on top
Great potential for watercooling
Bad Things
Hard to really work out a good mod game plan with so much already done
Fan mount on the bottom is a real pain to deal with
Removing the top and bottom panel is not an easy task with risk of breaking tabs
Fan mount on the bottom is a real pain to deal with
Removing the top and bottom panel is not an easy task with risk of breaking tabs
We would like to thank Cooler Master for helping to make this review possible