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The CM 690 II Advanced ships in a pretty neat looking black box with the model name clearly displayed. As you can see, the box took quite a hit during shipping and, as a result, the case unfortunately suffered a slight dent on the side panel.
On the back side, Cooler Master shows off their brand new case under a few more angles and also highlighted some of the enclosure's main features. It definitely seems like Cooler Master has cooked up some interesting stuff for us to enjoy.
With the packaging out the way, the steel case comes in at rather heavy 22 pounds, significantly more than most mid towers out there. On the main side panel, Cooler Master made two openings that can accommodate 80, 92, 120 or 140 millimeter fans. The other panel also has room to install an 80mm fan right behind the processor's socket. However, those three intake fans are optional so you will have to buy them separately.
The front's framing consists of good quality plastic pillars separated from the central part by a neat looking chrome lining. The rest of the facade is entirely made out of steel mesh and leaves you with four 5.25" drive bays, a 140mm intake fan and Cooler Master's logo. On the back, you'll find a slightly different layout than other mid towers,but first of all, noticed how there's nothing but steel back there. The power supply is located at the bottom and there's also a vertical PCI brackets on the right which we will look into in the coming pages. Additionally, they also drilled a couple holes at the top for water cooling tubing.
The power and reset buttons are located on top along with power on and drive activity LEDs. There's also an eSATA ports, a couple USB 2.0 ports as well as an audio input and output. Right behind is a really neat feature only found on the Advanced version of the CM 690 II.
Using it is as easy as it seems; simply slide in a SATA drive and you're good to go. However, in order to use it as a hot swap bay, there are a few rules to follow. Your SATA controller must be set in AHCI mode and follow the proper procedure within your operating system before removing it. In Windows, it's the same steps as ejecting a USB drive. If your SATA controller cannot be set to AHCI, you should only install and remove a drive when the computer is turned off.
Finally, at the bottom, Cooler Master installed a mesh filter to keep dust out. It's pretty good, but the holes are fairly large so it's not likely to catch the smaller dust particles like a cloth filter would. Also, the filter is held by tabs so you have to lightly squeeze it to take it on and off. Unfortunately, that means it is not possible to do it blindly so you'll have to turn the case over to clean it which is annoying and actually impossible if you have a water cooling setup.
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how does this fare against the HAF for temperatures? this is about the same as the 922 in price, so im interested in seeing its performance.
I don't have one unfortunately
I don't have the 922 either, but fan configuration is very similar so cooling should be right on par. If you only have 2 HDD's (or 1 HDD and 2 SSD), you can remove the rest of the drive cage to improve airflow in the CM 690 II
To each his own, but personally I much prefer the 690's design than the 922
It's pretty sleek although I'd prefer they streamline the exterior more, but the inside is what all modern cases should aim for. I know everyone loves stock primer to paint with but this is magical to see.
If I didn't have the P193 I'd be dying for one of these.
dont mind the complete lack of cable management - i'd just put my new build in and was waiting on a new case
and cant you thread the cables behind the mobo?
the new case i have now came with water cooling too so i've got a spare heatsink lying around. also behind the motherboard there was a complete lack of room - i found the door wouldnt fit on when i tried threading the cables around the back on my original build so i just taped the unused cables down with duct tape and sat them in the spare optical bays.
I'd also like to point out that I did not see the video card specified, I can see it's a Nvidia card, but I could only guess from looking at it, and I'd probably be wrong.
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