Cooler Master 830 Custom and 832

How does it look?

Looks-wise the Stacker 832 is both very good looking and also very similar to the original 830. It is strikingly alike to the 830 in fact, with only a few minor differences – most noticeably on the door. Whereas the Stacker 830 had wire mesh on the centre of its door, the 832 instead sports two small grilles desiged to improve front airflow. There is one at the top and one at the bottom of the front door with the Cooler Master logo in between them.

I'm not a massive fan of company logos on cases, and I know a fair few forum members aren't either, but thankfully the logos on the 832 aren't massive enough to really grind my gears. There's a small emblem on each side of the case, plus the logo on the front, but the easily irked could remove or cover them easily.

The 832 does keep many of the same design features of the 830 though, like the multiple mesh windows dotted all over the case. The 832 has a mesh window on each side, a smaller mesh on the top – with room for a fan to be mounted there – and a meshed floor to the unit. Just like the 830 it also has stands around the bottom of the unit that lift it about 1" off the floor so that air flow is possible from beneath.

One thing we noticed it unfortunately kept in common with the 830 was the low hanging door. It isn't a problem when the PC is on a smooth desktop, but if the unit is stood on thick carpet or a cluttered worktop then the bottom of the door can easily catch on things. It's one of the few things we would have changed on the 830, so it's a little baffling that it hasn't been fixed in this re-design.

We did like the powerful magnets used to latch the door closed, grasping the door quickly and holding it shut from any accidental opening.

Beneath the door are nine drive bays, the bottom three of which hide a 4-in-3 HDD cage with a front fan lit by blue LEDs. When the machine is running this cool blue light leaks out through the bottom of the door and looks pretty nifty.

One of my favourite things about the 832 though is the buttons. It's such a simple thing, but a rattling power button can be a dead giveaway of a poor build quality. It's a good sign then that not only do the power and reset buttons not rattle at all, but that they give a satisfying clack when they are pressed, without depressing too far into the case.

Plus, the power button still looks like everyone's favourite Transformer.

The Stacker 832 is made from the same high quality aluminium that most Cooler Master cases are, resulting in a lightweight and sleek looking chassis. It's still a big tower case though so lightweight is a relative term and when a full system is installed the case can still be a strain to lift. It doesn't bear thinking about how much the equivalent steel chassis would weigh!