Installation Impressions
Having studied the internals of the Cooler Master HAF 922, it was time to actually put some hardware in it to see if there were any issues while trying to install various components.
We felt we were already familiar with this case having worked with the larger HAF 932 before, which is obviously a good thing to say for a more compact model.
The easily accessible hard drive bays sped the process up, as did the power supply bracket and the tool-less PCI device expansion slots. The Asus M3A78-T motherboard slotted into place easy enough, and with the memory and CPU/cooler already installed on top of it, half the job was already done.
The retaining hole in the motherboard tray that allows rear access to the CPU cooler proved invaluable once again. The Thermolab BARAM heatsink was used to cool the AMD Phenom II X4 955 processor, and like many high-end heatsinks access to the back side of the motherboard is required for installation.
Next was the Thermaltake XT 850w power supply which was locked into position in seconds. Being a modular power supply we only needed to connect the power cables that were going to be used. The thick 24-pin power cable tucked away nicely, as did the other excess power cabling.
Two Western Digital Black 500GB SATA hard drives were installed for RAID0. The drives each screw into their own mounting bracket, which then slide into the bay, locking into place quickly and effortlessly. The SATA data and power cables are connected from the opposite side of the case, meaning that the right side door must be removed for installation. It is unfortunate that this case doesn't include hot-swappable hard drive bays.
The three case fans could be plugged into four pin power connectors using supplied adapters, or directly to the motherboard's 3-pin fan headers. All these excess connectors and cables fit perfectly behind the motherboard tray.
Installing the massive GeForce GTX 295 graphics card was done easily and the tool-less expansion slots supported the dual slot card without any issues. Length-wise there were loads of room to fit this high-end graphics card, with about 2.5 inches still left behind it.
Fitting SLI cards in the HAF 922 is feasible and due to the layout of this case even 3-way SLI should be a possibility.