Product Listing

Cooler Master HAF X - The New Flagship

By Kenny Yeo - 25 Jun 2010
Launch SRP: S$289

Supersize Me! - Interior

Supersize Me! - Interior

One of the key features of the new Cooler Master HAF X casing is the ability to support non-standard size motherboards, such as Gigabyte's GA-X58A-UD9, which comes in the XL-ATX form factor. To accommodate such motherboards, the HAF X also has nine expansion slots to easily allow for 4-way CrossFireX or SLI multi-GPU configurations.

Support for the extra large XL-ATX form factor, means that the interior of the casing is spacious, especially if you decide to go with standard ATX-sized motherboards. It will also easily swallow up the largest graphics cards, so that needn't be one of your worries. The HAF X also comes with two special add-ons for graphics cards. One can opt either to install the specially-designed air duct, which helps guide air to cool the graphics cards; or opt to install the VGA brackets instead, which gives more stability to heavy graphics cards.

Lastly, the HAF X utilizes Cooler Master's familiar tool-free design, which made installing components a breeze.

Peeling open the panel, we were greeted with the massive internals of the HAF X. Note the CPU cut-out area which allows for easy installation of aftermarket CPU coolers.

Grommets at the sides of the motherboard tray helps make cable management easier and tidier by routing some of the cable underneath the tray.

There's six internal 5.25-inch drive bays, four of which are free for use. The bottom two are actually converted for use as SATA HDD hot-swappable bays, which can be used with standard 3.5-inch hard disks or 2.5-inch SSDs.

Drives in the hot swappable bays plug directly into this circuit board. Data is transmitted by means of SATA cables whereas power is provided through a standard Molex power connector.

Further down, we find the the hard disk bays. There's five in total, of which one can be used to install smaller 2.5-inch SSDs.

On the left is the special rack on which 2.5-inch drives can be installed on. On the right is the standard tool-free hard disk rack that can be found on many Cooler Master casings.

The PSU bay is lined with two long strips of rubber to help cushion and absorb vibrations. And as you can see, it's mighty spacious.

There's also this special rack for your PSU that not only secures larger PSUs in place, but the cut-out at the back also allows you to route necessarily cables around the front, while the others can be routed around the back of the motherboard tray for neater cable management.

 

Behold, the pièce de résistance of the HAF X is its whopping nine expansion slots. This is especially useful if you have a quad-CrossFireX or 4-way SLI-capable motherboard.

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9.0
  • Aesthetics 8
  • Functionality 9.5
  • Usability 9
  • Value 9
The Good
USB 3.0 ports
Lots of focus on cooling graphics cards
Spacious interior
The Bad
Not very pretty-looking
VGA bracket fits quite loosely
Side panels immensely heavy
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