Coolermaster ATC-210

We'll take a little look at putting some of the bit's inside the case, namely the PSU (tut tut) and my SB Live (tut tut). I've left out a couple of pieces too which, frankly aren't rocket science plus I don't want to tread on Mooses new article! :D

Installing the PSU is a pretty straightforward job, just remove the rear plate and slide in the.. whoops what's this?

Enermax and Coolermaster strike back. As you may remember from our ATC-101 Review these guys haven't got on very well in the past. PSU's with fans, or more specifically grilles, in the bottom are going to have a problem. I refused to bend the chassis and did it the long winded way.

Quick removal of the grille (taking care not to let the fan fall back inside the PSU) and it fits in rather snugly. CM have had the sense to make a much bigger hole this time so that there's no airflow restrictions.

Quick pan over to the rear again, with the locking plate in place. Or should I say the 'retention module'.. hehe, found out what it was.

Grille back on, no problems here. Ironically, this is one case where I decided the gold grilles didn't look particularly good, so I've taken the opportunity to replace them with silver ones.

Final peek inside the case so you can see clearances etc. Again, I'm not going to go too much into it as it's essentially like an ATC-201 which we may, or may not be reviewing soon. :D

Ok, you got me, I like these little mobo standoffs and I just got an excellent Macro pic of one so I thought I'd show you them.

Right, onto the LiveDrive. Who's to blame here.. Creative for having big knobs (ho ho) or CM for having their door too close?
Frankly, it doesn't really matter as I don't think you can account for every situation when you come to design something. Should Creative have used smaller knobs to account for people with doors..? Possibly as there's a lot of people with cases which have doors.. but then should CM have thought about the many LiveDrive users and put an extra couple of mil on the standoffs? Believe me, it really is only about 1mm-1.5mm too deep.. this does mean of course you can recess the Live Drive ever so slightly and have it fit, although it may look a little out of place as it wouldn't be lined up with the case walls.

Your call, but I'm just bringing it up.

Obviously there's going to be tons of problems for some people with a door. The LiveDrive, once in, means you can't connect anything to it permanently (like Headphones) with the door shut. Opening drives is a problem.. these are all valid arguments but then you have to decide if the looks can outweigh the practicality for each individual case. It doesn't bother me, it might bother you.

A few people have asked me about temps. I've not taken true temp recordings because they're impractical. We're comparing a Globalwin 802, with 3 Exhausts and 1 Intake and a CoolerMaster ATC-210 with 2 Exhausts and no Intakes. Is it cooler, yes.. sort of.

My temps on the old 802 used to be approximately 25 Ambient, 29 Case, 40 CPU and 45 CPU-100%, now I get 22 Ambient, 26 Case and the same on the CPU. The aluminium is certainly shifting the heat more quickly, but not really doing anything for the CPU.. I've noticed after several hours that CPU temp gradually warms up the interior and brings the levels back to about the same. Big change in cooling hardware though, is it a good test.. I don't think so and wouldn't like to rely on the case alone to give you better cooling levels.

Right, that's a few of my little niggles over with and a closer look into the 210. I'll be detailing my mods over the next month so stay tuned to watch me mercilessly hack into this beautiful case.