Coolermaster Centurion 530 and 531

OK, let's get down and dirty inside the case.

The side of the case, as we noted, has a built in duct for CPU cooling. The effectiveness of this will rather depend on where the CPU socket is on your motherboard - if it's right under here, then great; if not, it's pointless. Luckily, it's easily removable. The ventilation underneath is welcome, but not especially useful, especially when it's butted up against the side handle in a rather ugly fashion.


The back of the case houses a 120mm fan with a fairly decent fan grille which allows plenty of air through. Looking at the case side on, you can see the general layout. There is no separate area for the PSU, it just screws in above the motherboard. This is a double edged sword - it allows a little bit more room for maneuver, but doesn't allow for quite such a stealthy hiding of PSU wires. You can see the removable 3.5" rack at the bottom.


The rack has a 120mm fan in front. Personally, unless you really have a shedload of 3.5" drives, it's worth removing and gaining the extra airflow. Contrarily, if you have some hot drives in a RAID array, the 120mm fan will be perfect for keeping them cool and ensuring their longevity. The PCI slots are tool-less, and allow for you to clip cards in and out with is - a brilliant solution.


The wires for the front I/O are tidily routed around and clipped at the top of the case. You can also see here the small support for the PSU, so the entire weight isn't just on the screws.


Rather than jacks, the front audio and firewire come as headers for attaching to motherboards. This is great for more modern motherboards, but these front I/O headers only appear on relatively recent motherboards, making the front panel useless (save for the USB) for a great many buyers. You can see here the general bits that come with the case - the 531 includes enough drive rails to mount all the 5.25" bays and 3.5" bays, where as the 530 only has enough for three 3.5" bays.


Perhaps the most annoying thing about both these cases is the attachment method for the case side panels. The hooks on the side slot into the slots on the main case, but these are incredibly small and fiddly - meaning the side can take 30 seconds or more to get on properly, and really upping the aggravation factor.