Installation

Even though the Cosmos has no removable motherboard tray, there is plenty of room inside to maneuver around. The motherboard back plate is clearly marked with details on where to install the stand offs.



Installation the hard drives is almost tool less, while the small bay is held in place with a thumb screw, the HDD needs to be fixed in place with a special screw which let’s the HDD rest on the rubber mounts (again vibration noise) while still providing a secure fit.



5.25” devices are installed with ridiculous ease, you slide them in from the front, press the large button on the side and you’re done! There are spots to screw them in tight if needed, which will come in handy if you have any half length 5.25” equipment.



Intermezzo ~ Real Power

To reduce cable clutter we opted to install a modular PSU inside the case, incidentally Coolermaster just introduced a new Real Power model, the M520 is a modular 520W power supply, more than powerful enough for our Core 2 Duo / 8800 GTX system.



It’s a multi rail design with clearly marked connection cables and silent 120mm fan; during our testing we couldn’t hear the fan, and the system remained stable during many stress tests. Without the proper load test equipment however we can’t really judge how efficient this PSU unit really is, at least as efficient as the Antec Trio! 650W, we tested with both PSU and overall system usage remained the same.



On with the show

The holes at the top/bottom of the motherboard back plate looked promising for some nice cable hiding, so we routed the 8-pin EATX like this:



But just a few moments later we realized that the cable would prevent the side panel from closing; a small slit/gab at the backside here would really make cable routing possible this way, but unfortunately as it now is, you’ll have to find alternative means, using the include cable guiders and ties to create a clean look.

We ran into another snag when installing the I/O connectors, the connector the power led was 2-pin affair, depending on the motherboard this will/will not fit, the Intel 975x requires 3-pin packaging for the power led, so we had to improvise:



Time for the stress tests ->