CoolerMaster Stacker 830 review - Bits and pieces
Author: Luka Rakamaric
Date: 17 Dec 2006

When we open the door, we see a familiar nine 5.25? slots, which have dust protecting covers like the old one. On the front side, there is not much difference from the old model. The only thing you can notice is only two USB ports, but if you were scared that that was all of them, you were wrong. If we look at the top of the chassis we will see a power and reset buttons, and an additional two USB ports. Placing them in different locations was a great idea from CoolerMaster, since not all devices are good for a front panel. The top of the case also reveals an 12 cm exhaust vent placement, which is supposed to draw warm air from the chassis. There are also two handles so you can transport the case easily.
Both sides of the case are identical, as it is needed for BTX support. There is a giant mesh that lets the, pay attention now, four 12cm vents intake the air into the case. The vents themselves are not fixed on the side panel, but have a special retainer that resembles a door. It is large enough that no part of the motherboard will be left out of their direct airflow. To the front of the case are retention mechanisms, like those on the first model, that fix the drives in place without any screws. The back side reveals one drawback of this model when compared to the previous one. There is no space for the second power supply. This is not as big a minus as it would have been a few years ago, since today you can get 1.2 kW power supplies, and they only take one slot. On both sides of the PSU there are locks for the side panels. In fact, the only place you will find screws on this chassis is the card retention mechanism, which has thumbscrews. We have seen ideas how this can be done with a click on bracket, so we don?t know why CoolerMaster used screws just in this one place.
The whole motherboard piece slides out through the back, so you can mount you motherboard and cards separately and then just slide it in to connect the cables to the other devices. When you install hard drives, you just insert them into the 4 in 3 module, which serves both as an adapter from 5.25? to 3.5?, but also has one 12 cm fan in front of the drives. Even if you put 4 drives on top of each other, they will not even become warm, let alone hot. Of course, if you need support for more than 4 drives, you can always buy more HDD modules, as they are also sold separately.