Cooler Master ATCS 840

Interior Cont.

The ATCS 840 also features the usual array of excellent Cooler Master drive mountings, with six hard drives trays and six push button 5.25” drive bays. The toolless hard drive trays are still a doddle to fit, and are generously spaced inside the hard drive cage so as to not impede airflow into the case from the front intake. This was a flaw which saw the SilverStone FT01 we looked at last week suffer in our graphics stress test.

As well as the dust filter equipped front mounted 230mm intake, the ATCS 840mm also comes pre-fitted with two 230mm exhaust fans fitted in the case roof and a rear mounted 120mm exhaust fan, creating negative pressure inside the chassis and passively drawing air in.

This is a very similar setup to that used in the HAF 932, which is certainly encouraging from a performance standpoint, although the movement of the second 230mm from the side panel to the roof of the case might see temperatures rise by a few degrees. There’s also the aforementioned 120mm fan mount in the base of the case, as well as two 120mm fan mounts on the internal side of the hard drive cage for those wishing to generate a push/pull cooling effect over the hard drives and further improve ventilation.


However, at first glance the ATCS 840 seems to ignore a set of users which Cooler Master has previous generously catered to – water coolers. Thankfully first looks can be deceiving and Cooler Master has included a handful of clever fan mount brackets to allow you to replace the dual 230mm exhaust fans in the roof of the case with a mount for a single triple 120mm radiator.

This is just another example of how well thought out the whole case is and shows just how well Cooler Master understands its customers. There are plenty of other similar inclusions, like the excellent provisioning for cable routing behind the motherboard, the foam padding for the PSU mount in the base to help lessen vibration and the ability to mount the PSU into the roof of the case at the expense of one of the 230mm cooling fans (and the inclusion of a PSU support bar for just this purpose) that show great attention to detail.


Frankly, both the interior and exterior of the ATCS 840 are fantastic and clearly show that a great deal of thought has gone into the design of this case. Little touches like the small dust filter at the base of the fascia and the ball bearing fittings on the motherboard tray rails show that Cooler Master has really gone out of its way to produce a quality product here - the whole case benefits from the feeling that nothing has been left out or overlooked. It looks fantastic, is a delight to fit a system into and the build quality throughout is excellent - there really is almost nothing to fault the ATCS 840 on, either internally or externally.