Cooler Master Cosmos II 25th Anniversary Edition Review

Performance Analysis

With five fans as standard including a 200mm front fan and a 140mm and 120mm fan pointed at the CPU cooler at close range and helping to draw air out of the case, it wasn't too much of a surprise to see the Cosmos II 25th Anniversary Edition do very well in the CPU cooling department at its maximum fan speed. The noise did tail off as we reduced it to medium and then low speed, although with just 5°C separating maximum and minimum fan speed here but with a reasonable amount more noise at maximum speed, it's a no-brainer to use the low speed setting if the case is in close proximity or if you have sensitive ears.


The GPU delta T wasn't quite chart-topping but was still very close at just 1°C off the best result we've seen. This is likely thanks to the 200mm front fan and the sheer volume of air inside the case. The difference here between minimum and maximum fan speed, though, was even less at just 3°C, and the warmer result was still enough to better the Cooler Master MasterBox 5t and Corsair Crystal Series 570X in terms of GPU cooling.

Conclusion

The Cooler Master Cosmos II 25th Anniversary Edition looks fantastic, and the addition of panels that are not only made of tempered glass but also bent does make it stand out from the numerous new and refreshed models from the likes Phanteks, NZXT, and Corsair where the glass panels are arguably just a tick-box feature. However, that doesn't mean we weren't a little disappointed with this revised Cosmos II. Perhaps we were guilty of hoping for a little more from a 25th Anniversary Edition case, but apart from the new colour scheme and (admittedly high quality) materials, there's not a whole heap here that's new.


Thankfully, these additions don't see a massive price hike. Cooler Master has been careful not to go crazy here, and in fact the MSRP we've been quoted is actually less than the Cosmos II retails for at a lot of places right now. This means that we can't really complain about the fact that this is just a Cosmos II with a few tweaks. Cooling is excellent, there's ample albeit not stellar amounts of room for water-cooling systems, and if you have the space, it's a real head- turner. There are a number of alternatives, though, such as Corsair's Crystal Series 570X RGB that's much cheaper, and for a similar amount of cash there are even more unique cases from Parvum Systems and Hex Gear to think about that are more water-cooling friendly out of the box. However, if you love the design and prefer the tempered glass over the standard model's aluminium panels, the Cooler Master Cosmos II 25th Anniversary Edition can't fail to look fantastic on your desk whether it's air-cooled or water-cooled, just as long as you have enough cash to make sure the rest of your system is equally as premium, of course.