Introduction

Well Cooler Master decided to send me one of their new cases, the “Praetorian 731”, but before I get into the review I would like to briefly describe what Cooler Master does and how they came to be. But instead of including the large amount of text inside this one review I decided to link you to the about page for Cooler Master. But I will comment about their products.

Link: Here

Cooler Master, not only brings out Coolers but they bring out specially designed cases for those people who don’t like to use water cooling, these cases are very superior in their cooling with air that they could possible match other water cooling kits. But Cooler Master are also one of the finest Heat sink Fan manufacture, with their superb blowers which they have release for most chips and these blowers are what you think, I have one myself as you will see later, I have got my CPU to run at a astonishing 21ºc, now you may think its impossible but consider I do have a Athlon XP, Thoroughbred, and I was in air conditioning. Now let’s get on with the review.

Packaging

This box has all the required information, on weight and dimensions. The box also give a good appeal to the person buying it, it makes them want to rip the box away as fast as possible, well I know I did, but I needed to hold myself to take the photo.

The case is protected by its usual foam and thin plastic covering that’s pretty much it.

What you get

Well I did take a lot of photos of this but most are of the same thing, but in detail.

Inside there is the box holding the extra fan and the screws, I will later talk about the extra fan. As you can see the mount is very strong looking, and I accidentally got one of my buttons caught on it and up comes the case, down goes the button.

That picture shows the mount which allows you to slide the PSU in and out easy without have to put it out through the case. It has two sets of screw holes, one for the PSU and one to mount to the case.

As you can see it basically fit all PSU’s inside.

After the PSU we have a handy little flap I/O panel, which has Audio In and Out 1 FireWire, and 2 USB ports

The leads to connect the I/O panel to the motherboard are very long, and will pretty much go anywhere on the motherboard.

Now before we go to much inside the case, let’s not forget those neat side panels. The side panels lock in very strongly and would not just come out without a large amount of force. On the side panel which faces the top side of the motherboard, we have a duct and a pretty mesh, but I will show you this can be annoying.

As below you can see the back of the case uses thumbscrews, this helps in the aid of no screw driver required, but if you do have trouble the screws have the ability to be unscrewed by a screw driver.

As we look into the case before taking it fully apart we notice that the PCI/ Expansion Slots all have a metal protector but unlike the other cases, it has them all being removable and insert able very easy, to show how easy it uses thumbscrews.

Now we look at the pretty neat front Panel, and included in this package is the magnificent advertisement of the Cooler Master badge, which I myself want to advertise this case out, the badge even has a bit of protective plastic. Kinda like a new LCD screen on a mobile phone.

Without the side panels on we take a photo of a good case, which most certainly could be usable for any computer.

Now we move on to the spare fan, the spare fan replaces the top I/O Panel (which I like), but to show you the fan, mounted and non-mounted the fan.

Now after removing the removable motherboard plate, I noticed hey what a neat out of case, test bed mount this could be, it sits above the ground, and it also has 2 exhaust fans and a lot of Expansion slots. The mount is very functional and easy to remove, even on the fly. It took me 1 minute to set the computer up outside a case, mainly case of the hard drive.

As the front plate shows you, this is a Praetorian, and with some nice font too.

At the front are some mean circle switches with LED’s, these are your power and reset switches.

The front fans on the case are the same as the back, these 4 or 5 fans are very quiet, and when I run the computer no one asks me to turn it off, unless I have the Blower up.

Opposition

The opposition isn’t really hard to beat, its my old case, it’s a bit crappie, but it did the job until I came in contact with the praetorian

As you can see it’s not much of a fearing case, it has the bare basics. But likely as hell this case does lose a lot, I don’t really want to give it all away.

The Test Computer

This is my very own Athlon XP, it’s a thoroughbred and isn’t the newest but it does the job.

Installation

Well we always start by removing the side panels.

Now we install the PSU.

As you can see it fits most PSU’s.

We remove the Motherboard tray

Mount the Computer and video card.

Then we plug it all up, install the hard drives and attach the fans, I did find 2 problems when finishing off.

1. I didn’t have enough Chassis fan plugs on my motherboard, but all you need to do is buy a fan controller.
2. The Duct wouldn’t fit on the blower. I had to remove the duct, this was hard because the screws holding it had no threads, but after a lot of patients, I got it off, but the mesh was not part of the side panel, I then noticed you can place the mesh on the front side, but this does risk the look.

You now place the side panels back on, and connect all your plugs in.

Boot the computer to see a nice glowing sensation.

As you see it looks very nice, but nice doesn’t mean everything, its like cars, would you prefer your car to look better then it performs? No, you wouldn’t would you.

The test results are here!

As you have noticed I said the Cooler Master Praetorian 731 won, but you never knew how much, so here it is the moment of truth is upon you.

Test A: Cooler Master Praetorian 731
Text B: Multimedia Case

It performed very well, almost out marking the other case, though that was obvious, there was nothing worthy in my whole house of beating this wonderful case.

3D Model you says

The Download
Requires DirectX 8 or higher
Requires WinZip or other unzipping tool
A ok graphics card to render the mesh (9200se does very good here)

Conclusion

As most times I don’t have a real lot to say in conclusion, but after looking at this case I saw a real great case, it caught the common things all cases should have, a removable motherboard plate. The plate could also be used as a test bed centre for ether over clocking or just to fit into a mod? But we all know it looks better in its set position. Some thing were missing in this case, for instance a adapter for the Chassis fans, as most people prefer not to have a fan controller, and they let such functions as Cool ‘n’ Quiet do that sort of work for them. The only other thing wrong that I saw was the requirement of the duct to be installed to make the mesh stay in correct position but this was easily fix by my in genius modding skillz (totally l33t man). But this could be a fix for the next version of the case? Maybe a Clear panel? Lets see if Cooler Master can out do them selves again!

I do believe this case is a bargain at the price sold, as other cases don’t even come close to being such low weight, thick aluminium frame and being so effective to the market of case modding.

I certainly recommend this case to anyone who likes style and shape.

This case easily received the Velocity Reviews, unholy’s Superb Product award. Cooler Masters Case is 110% pure beefiness!

Check out the Specifications at Cooler Masters Site.
Cooler Master Site