Coolermaster still distances itself with beautifull artwork on the cardboard box. Clearly listing all the important specs and highlights of the included housing. No dull brown box to cut costs. Seems at Coolermaster it's all or nothing...

 

  

 

The CM 690 II Advanced is a mid tower case in a glorious black finish. Note the protective cover on the plastic bay slide for the X-docking station.

 

 

 

Some close ups on the front panel, before we continue on the interior design. Beautifull crafted mesh grills in a glossy finish. E-SATA, 2 USB2.0 ports and the audio in/out jacks. Sadly the CM 690 II Advanced does not have USB3.0 support

 

 

 

 

The X-docking bay in all it's glory. Couldn't be easier then this. For optimal performance best use ACHI mode in the motherboards bios.

 

 

 

Here's the list off all the specs , that we grabbed from Coolermasters website :

 

 

An abundance of air cooling potential here. Great to see Coolermaster includes 3 coolers out of the box for maximim airflow.

On the inside a well executed mat black finish for that little profesional touch. Six quick removable HD bays, no screws involved. Compared to previously tested cases, the plastic trays fit firmly back into position.

 

 

 

One SSD tray is included, which fits both 1.8 and 2.5 inch SSDs. Just 4 screws and your SSD is secured for life. The 3.5 inch Hard Drives are kept securely and fully damped in position too, this time however no screws required.

 

 

 

    

 

Our little 60GB Corsair Sandforce ready to be inserted into the HD bay. The Hard drives are cooled by a 140mm Blue LED fan. Spinning at a mere 1200rpm being practically inaudible at 19dBa.

 

 

 

For the optical drives, 4 max supported. Again superb crafted screwless locking design.

 

 

 

Time to explore some more

 

 

Being equipped with 3 fans out of the box, Madshrimps has high expectations regarding cooling performance. The rear exhaust fan is a 120mm version, 1200rpm at 17 dBa. The top fan is the same version as the front 140mm fan, this one however without the blue LED. All fans can either be directly hooked up to the motherboard 3 pin fan connectors or an optional fan controller. If not available just hook them up straight to the power supply 4 pin molex connectors via the included adapters. And if that cooling performance is not up to your standards you can mount up 6 more to create a tornado flow inside your case...

 

 

 

 

 

Big cutouts for easy cable routing and management. The big motherboard tray cutout facilitates CPU cooler instalation. If needed you can even mount a small 80mm fan to blow some cool air on the rear of the motherboard CPU socket location.

 

 

 

Dust filters on the bottom mesh area (note that the one for the PSU mesh is not installed on the right picture ) Big Rubber feet minimize vibrations and keep ya case rock solid in position.

 

 

 

Four rubber grommets damp your power supply (note again no dust filter in the picture)

 

 

 

Time to mount our test gear into the CM 690 II Advanced case. It comprises off the following parts :

 

Asus Crosshair IV motherboard

AMD 1090T CPU with Thermalright VenomousX cooler

4Gb Corsair Dominator PC12800C8 ram

Asus 5870 ATI videocard

Corsair Sandforce F60 SSD

NEC 16X Optical DVD drive

BeQuiet Systempower 600W PSU

Note : We specially chose this BeQuiet PSU , as it is non modular. So decent cable management is a requirement for a clean build.

 

 

 

Cable management is a breeze with such an abundance of pre cut holes and room. GPU's up to 300mm and CPU cooler up to 177mm are supported. If your CM 690 II looks messy on the inside, it's the assembler to blame...

 

 

 

The pre cut holes are cleverly positioned. Allowing routing of the 8 pin CPU cable. The big bottom cutout should be more than sufficient for most power supplies.

 

 

 

Our BeQuiet Power supply is pretty small for it's size. Thus barely resting on the last two rubber grommets. A nifty cutout, just above the PSU, for the audio cable is also foreseen.

 

 

 

The test results :

 

 

The optimal airflow generated due to the 3 present fans helps to grab the top spot amongst the cases I tested. The Bitfenix case lacked a front fan, while the Xigmatek Panthéon had two, but blowing sideways over the HDs. The Coolermaster leaves no option open for heat to be trapped inside your case.

 

 

Similar temperature behaviour for the motherboard chipset temperatures. The onboard sensors were readout via the AIDA64 software and logged. Especially the Southbridge chipset benefits nicely by the extra airflow provided by the front 140mm fan. We only installed one SSD and 3.5" HD. So more drives will reduce the airflow. The hot 890FX Northbridge chipset operates at lower temperatures too, increasing overal stability and lifespan. With the option to install 2 sidepanel fans more airflow can be generated directly onto the GPU's and motherboard.

 

 

No change in GPU temps, probably the fan is spinning at a lower rpm to keep the GPU at the readout temps.

 

 

 Since both previously tested cases were already dead silent. It was hard to improve the 35dBa sound readout of the Xigmatek. 35dBa is similar to the noise you hear in a quiet living room. In most situations the GPU/CPU fan, HD rattling will be responsible for the extra noise. The used fans are dead silent !

So what do you get for a case retailing around plus minus 90 euros ? A super ventilated case, nearly silent in operation, with even more cooling potential if you ever feel the need to add extra fans. If Air cooling is not your thing, this case has room and space foreseen for bottom and or top 120/240 radiators. (radiator dimensons have to be verified ofcourse)

The craftmanship is top notch. No sharp edges, beautifull black finish. Coolermaster provided more than enough holes to neatly tuck away all them horrid PSU and S-ATA and other cables. Our BeQuiet PSU is not modular and has pretty long cables with a whole shabang of connectors. there was absolutely no problem to hide them from eyesight inbetween the mobo tray and the sidepanel.

Storage wise we are spoiled again, not only has Coolermaster provided us not only with 2.5" SSD compatibility, also the 1.8" versions are supported. The old rotational drives are cooled by the front 140mm fan. The tool free hard drive trays are solidly engineered and click firmly into place.

 The external S-ATA X-dock is already being semi copied on new competitors cases introduced at CeBIT 2011. We had some issues with drive recognition, but that was purely the Operating System Install to blame. A reboot gave us each time access to the files and folders...

At the given price of around 90 euros it will be hard for competitors to beat the combo Coolermaster has put together here. The windowed version is, as expected 15 euros more expensive. There's even a special Nvidia Edition for the fans of the green team. Similar to Corsair 600T,  a white version makes your build to really stand out of the crowd. 

 

 

 

Due to the superb craftmanship features and cooling performance we award the CM 690 II Advanced the High End and Performance award :

 

  

 

I would like to thank the following persons without whom this review would not be possible :

Rogier from Asus NL for the continuous support

 

Gareth from Corsair for the RAMs and SSD drive