Cooler Master's Praetorian 731

Installation

The motherboard tray in the biggest aid to installation found in this case.

Four separate fans all supplied with three pin plugs will stretch most motherboard for headers... it's a real shame Cooler Master didn't choose to wire them all together in a neat fashion and included some speed control for them, a wasted opportunity in our opinion.



Drive installation involves lots of screwing, when you've used cases with good drive clips (as many of the Praetorian's siblings have) you really miss them when they're not provided.

The pair of USB ports on the top of the case are handy but will often be insufficient in the USB dominated world in which we live. The picture above shows the empty front USB mounting hole which Cooler Master employ in some of their other cases, it's a shame there's nothing in it here.

Conclusions

The Praetorian is another Cooler Master classic, a solidly designed aluminium mid tower case with a quality finish. Cooler Master's choice to offer little innovation works for and against it in the Praetorian, this case is so well known I didn't need to tell you its dimensions or how many drive bays it has, we've counted them so many times in the past. The case's flaws are also very well known, the lack of centralisation to its cooling scheme is a missed opportunity, and quick released drive clips are sorely missed - there's no excuse for not including them either, as >Cooler Master are quite capable of making them