CM Praetorian 730 & Musketeer 3

The insides

The internals of the 730 are pretty standard fare for CoolerMaster, not much new or innovative. Whilst it is a solid and standard design, it doesn’t bring many new flavours to the party. On one hand, it’s one of the few remaining models that still offer a fully removable motherboard tray – one of my favorite features in a case. On the other, they failed to implement any the successful drive mounting systems we have seen in some of the even more economical models from CoolerMaster. Like the 731, the 730 relies on traditional screw fastening action to install your drives. Yes, this method is tried and true but seems like a step back from the amazingly easy and secure sliding plastic lock systems they feature in other cases.

Cooling

Like its 731 brother, the 730 features twin 80mm fans that are integrated onto the motherboard tray that serve as the cases exhaust. One major difference, however, is that this model features a 120mm intake fan in the front. If you’ve been paying attention, 120mm fans are heavily favored in both silence and cooling performance. It’s a shame that Cooler Master couldn’t manage a way to fit a 120mm fan on the motherboard try for cooling parity between intake and exhaust but it’s fairly obvious that it was easier for them to find a way to fit the larger fan in front compared to redesigning the motherboard tray which would ultimately change the overall width dimensions of the Praetorian. The 731 would have been a truly great case, however, with a 120mm in the back.

Overall, the build quality is of the highest degree. Fit and finish is excellent and all the edges and corners are safe.

The Tray

Closer inspection of the tray shows it to be nice and sturdy. Minus my 120mm fan desires, there’s not much more you could want. The build quality is incredibly robust and the tray should withstand numerous removals and replacements without becoming weak or stressed. One major gripe I have with it is not necessarily about the actual tray but the fans included. They are certainly fine enough quality fans but the power leads are way to short. Unlike the Gigabyte 3DAurora case which wired the fans together into one header for the motherboard, these are independently powered and the leads will not reach across the span of a standard ATX motherboard. So if your motherboard doesn’t have fan headers conveniently located near the rear of the case, you will have to improvise. Luckily, I had a pair of 3pin to 4pin molex adaptors that not only provide me power connectivity options, but extra length to route the fan wiring behind the motherboard tray for a clean looking setup. If Cooler Master is going to insist on using these fans, they should’ve at least included some fan adaptors. Of course, you could replace the fans altogether with models of your choice, but you should reasonably be able to use the ones provide with the case.