Introduction

It seems like it has been quite some time since I had the opportunity to bring you a new chassis from Cooler Master, but today changes all of that. Let me start by clearing up some confusion. All of the Storm series cases we have seen up to this point were spin-off's of the Storm Sniper, which itself was a CM 690 II in new clothes. Gone is the misconception that the Storm series is only for mid-towers, as this chassis is most definitely a full tower, and then some!

With it already in mind that we have left the basic design of the Sniper and 690 II moving to a full tower, my initial guess was that this was some new form of the HAF-X. As you will soon see, the new chassis to hit the scene is a much better thought out concept both inside and out than even what the HAF 932 or HAF-X brought to the table.

What seems to have happened is that Cooler Master has taken hints from other case offerings we have seen from time to time. Two things that come to mind is that this new chassis offers a non-marking rubber coating on the plastic components of the chassis, much like what we see from BitFenix with the SofTouch. The second bit that really stands out is the hard drive cages and the way they are designed. If you remember back to the Antec Lanboy Air, you'd remember they had a hard drive system that will allow you to install the drives in either front to back, or even side to side. With the Cooler Master version of this idea, it is more solid and very well thought out to offer every user the option to make it exactly the way they want it to work. There is plenty more going on both inside and outside of this chassis, these are just points to get your mind wondering what else might be offered in this new release.

Today we are going to be getting up close and personal with every little aspect of the Cooler Master Storm Trooper full tower chassis. I don't want to spill all the beans, but it seems Cooler Master is offering anything and everything in this chassis feature set. Things like push button fan and LED lighting controls, internal USB 3.0, aggressive styling and even a hard drive dock are all included with the Trooper along with many, many other hidden secrets and customizable options. Cooler Master says this is a perfect case for enthusiasts, LAN gamers, or even an encoder or folder with many GPU's, but I think they really cut themselves a little short. In my honest up front opinion, if you have the money to obtain one, this case is for you!