Cooler Master HAF X Nvidia Edition cont.

Considering its name – "High Air Flow" – it's no surprise that the HAF X comes with some serious cooling power, including a 200mm side door fan, 200mm top fan, 230mm green LED front fan, 140mm rear fan and a 120mm VGA duct fan.

Inside, Cooler Master's patented finger-press buttons are still used for the 5.25" drive bays, providing an ultra-quick and reliable way to install and remove devices. While many other tool-less designs are clumsy and impractical, the finger-press buttons actually work very well.

The removable 3.5" hard drive racks (which are now green) also work smoothly. The first 3.5" drive rack features a removable adapter for 2.5" drives to accommodate either standard. In total, the HAF X can house seven 3.5" drives, four 5.25" devices and nine expansion cards.

To help keep your cables neat, the HAF X features power supply cable partition, something we've never seen in another case. The case's "VGA fan dock" is also unique, having been developed in conjunction with Nvidia allowing a 120mm fan push cool air over the graphics cards (this is found on all versions of the HAF X, not only the Nvidia edition).

The HAF X supports EATX (Extended ATX), so motherboards as tall as 13" will fit comfortably. As you'd expect, the motherboard tray features a CPU cutout that makes it easier to add and remove heatsinks, and it's also surrounded by various holes that allow you to safely tuck away excess cable slack.

The hot-swappable drive bays are one of our favorite features as they make it incredibly easy to install disk drives. Once the bays are connected to your motherboard, you'll never have to touch another SATA data or power cable again. Our only gripe is that just two of the bays have this extra functionality.

To use the front I/O panel's USB 3.0 connectors, you have to run the blue USB 3.0 cables through one of the water-cooling holes or an expansion slot. While on the subject of front panel connectors, we were happy that Cooler Master used black cables for the USB 2.0 ports as well as the front panel audio as this helps them blend in with the black paint throughout the HAF X's design.