Look inside

The side panels can be easily removed by removing 2 thumb screws at each side; we found them to be a very very secure fit, requiring quite a bit of effort to remove them.

A small cardboard box is inside which holds the following goodies:


3.5” cover for 5.25” bay, motherboard mounting stand offs, and extra cable guider

With the left side panel removed you get a good look at most the features of the CM 690, at the right side you see the tool less installation of the 5.25” devices, below those you see the plastic drive rails for 3.5” hard drives, the aluminum series of “knobs” running down the length of the 5.25” bay area are actually all the screws needed for securing the motherboard and other components.

The motherboard panel is none removable, but you can see there is plenty of room to work here, the cables from the I/O panel are visible here, they are held inside plastic cable guiders which can be screwed into none-used mounting holes in the motherboard panel.

At the left side in the photo you can see the 1x120mm exhaust fan and below that a series of blue plastic clips which hold the PCI brackets in place, as well as provide a tool less installation for expansion cards:



The right side panel holds less surprises, but it’s still worthy of a photo, you can see the 80mm fan mount at the right in the CPU area of the motherboard panel. At the left there is again a series of screws to be used for securing 5.25” devices in their bay. You have access here to the connector side of the hard drives you install, since you’ll be routing the SATA/IDE cables and power cables from this end to reduce cable clutter.



Something not visible in the photos above but interesting nonetheless are these two holes pre-cut for guiding water cooling tubing inside:



Cooling

As mentioned on the previous pages, the CM 690 is equipped to support a maximum of 8 fans of different sizes; the left side panel can hold two on its own:




The front panel has room for 1x120mm fan, Coolermaster installed a blue LED unit here, no sign of fan filter in front of this one, but the plastic grill and metal grill which sit in front do a good job of keeping out most larger dust particles and (cat)hair.



In the bottom you can install another fan, up to 140mm in size, in the photo below you can see a 120mm version, this one is optional and not installed by default:



The fan in the rear we mentioned before, room for 120mm there, one comes preinstalled. Then there is the top panel which can fit 2 fans up to 140mm in size; you can access this area by removing the top cover:



Finally there is the rear 80mm fan which can be installed right behind the CPU area on the motherboard panel; we did not have a 15mm low profile unit for testing, in the photo below a normal 25mm thick unit was installed:



With the thicker fan it was not possible to install the right side panel, so we removed it for testing.

The three preinstalled fans all come with 3-pin and 3to4-pin power connectors, giving you to choice on how to hook them up:



Onto the installation ->