Product Listing

Cooler Master CM Storm Scout 2 - A Worthy Successor?

By Wong Chung Wee - 2 Nov 2012
Launch SRP: S$159

Interior Design (Part II)

Interior Design (Part II)

The motherboard standoffs were not pre-installed, but we are pleasantly surprised to find that Cooler Master had included a standoff socket for making easy work of screwing the standoffs to the chassis. There are also etched instructions on the metal panel to inform us which standoff mounting holes that are in used for boards of different form factors. The socket can be used with bare hands or with a Philips screwdriver.

The etched instructions tell users where to install the motherboard standoffs accordingly; while the standoff socket is useful their quick installation.

We proceeded to install our standard ATX motherboard, our standard sized 10.5-inch graphics card and a PS2 ATX PSU and found the whole experience went without a hitch. We had the option to mount a bottom 120mm cooling fan in front of the PSU for additional cooling. At this point of time, we recalled our recent experience with the Enermax Ostrog as it also had the same option; however, due to the facing of its bottom drive bay, it was extremely difficult to accommodate the bottom cooling fan. Fortunately, we are glad to say that Cooler Master did their homework and made the orientation of the 3.5-inch drive bays such that drive installation will not be hindered by the power cables from the PSU or the installed bottom cooling fan.

 A standard enthusiast graphics card fits in just about comfortably. Further to that, there is an option to mount a 120mm cooling fan in front of the PSU after tidying up the power cables from the PSU.

 The rear view of the chassis after we installed the three main components (and yes, we purposely excluded the rear I/O face plate cover in this shot).

The installation of 3.5-inch hard drives involved snapping on a pair of HDD rails and guiding the drive with the rails into its bay. Take note that there are no removable drive cages for the Scout; instead, there is a removable panel from the middle 3.5-inch drive cage. We had to remove four M3 screws before we can take it away from the cage.

The HDD with the fitted rails can be slotted into the middle or bottom bays. You can shift the drive to a bottom bay so that one of the panels of the middle drive cage can make way for installing a much longer graphics card.

All our test components have been installed.

Any graphics card that is longer than 10.5 inches or has a large customized cooler will require middle drive cage's panel to be removed in order to fit into the Scout 2.

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8.0
  • Aesthetics 8.5
  • Functionality 7.5
  • Usability 8
  • Value 7
The Good
Unique aesthetical appeal
Good build
Many cooling options
Relatively tool-free installation
The Bad
Only 1 cooling fan provided
Not enough drive adaptors for SSDs
A tad pricey
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