Cooler Master HAF 932 Case Review

Interior Impressions Con't

Continuing our perusal of the fans of the HAF we come the lone exhaust fan. This 7 bladed, 140 x 140 x 25 mm fan (model DF1402512) is once again reported to move 57CFM of air at 1200rpm. We really do wish Cooler Master would release hard data on these fans as we believe this is a little on the low side. We are confident in this assessment because the real model number (DF1402512SEDN) is a DongGuan FMET model which has a 1300rpm version listed moving over 88 CFM; however, this is unsubstantiated and should be taken with a large grain of salt.

Much like the 230mm fans, the 140mm fan is fairly quiet and is fairly vibration free. It is certainly not in the same league as a Noctua NF-P12-1300 or Scythe S-Flex E or D but it is not bad by any stretch of the imagination either. It does exhibit more slop than its larger brethren but it certainly is not the worst fan we have handled either. All in all, it is decent fan which is quiet enough for most people; however, if you are a silent PC enthusiast it probably will be one of the first things you remove.


Moving on to the expansion slots you can see that Cooler Master has gone for a tool-less style of installation. Unlike some other similar designs this style is actually user friendly and just works. You get 7 of these slots which should be enough for almost any motherboard on the market today. The best feature of the expansion slots is the fact the removable covers are meshed so as to allow hot air to exit and allow cool air to enter. This is especially nice if you have multiple cards as this can cause dead zones which these little bits of mesh counteract. All in all this is an elegant solution to a problem which many case manufactures even refuse to acknowledge.


Skipping over the motherboard area for the time being, we come to the front of the case which houses the six 5.25 Bays. These bays also boast a tool free installation process. To be specificm, Cooler Master has once again gone for their patented one click method. We will get into greater detail into this tool-less locking mechanism in the installation section, but for now lets just say it is a great way to properly secure your optical drives, and the only thing better than its intuitive user friendliness is the speed at which you can lock down any 5.25 device.

If you want you can opt out of this tool free mechanism and use the old fashioned screw based mounting system. Please note, this tool-free mechanism is only on one side so if you are looking for a decent compromise between the two extremes you can always use the tool-free method for the left side and then screw in the device on the right.


The drive cage of the HAF 932 is mounted perpendicular to the 5.25 bays. While we are not a fan of this setup (as it does cause airflow dead zones and makes the front fan work that much harder to properly set up air flow) it does have it benefits. The biggest of these is it makes installation of your hard drive a snap. When you add in a removable drive caddy for each of the 5 hard drive slots you end up with a very fast and easy installation method.

Needless to say, this is another tool-less installation area which CM is well known for getting right. It will be interesting to see if the HAF 932 has the same issue with PATA drives as the CM 690 does. We will investigate this issue and give a very precise overview of the “nuts and bolts” of the hard drive installation in the installation section. For the time being we are going to give Cooler Master the benefit of the doubt and assume they redesigned the persnickety caddy system since we last used it.


Continuing onto the bottom of this case we come to one of the two mounting locations for the Power Supply Unit (PSU). Technically you can have a dual PSU setup, but the HAF 932 does NOT come with necessary power adapter to allow powering up secondary PSU when you turn ON the computer. For all intents and purposes this is a bottom mounted PSU case which can house the power supply at the top if you are willing to sacrifice cooling to do so.

As you will see later in the review the bottom housing area is more than large enough to accommodate even the largest of PSUs. The area below where your PSU will reside is meshed to allow your power supply's fan easy access to fresh air. This in a nut shell removes the PSU from your cooling equation, but it does mean the fan in the PSU should run slower as it will have a steady supply of ambient temperature fresh air. Everything in life is a trade off but we think this is a darn good one, and actually prefer this design to a more normal “suck the hot air out the back of the case via the PSU fan” method of case cooling.


If you are like us and you go with a normal length power supply, you can even install another 120mm fan right next to it for additional cooling. This is possible as the PSU mounting bracket can slide closed for more standard length PSUs or be extended to give full support for longer models. While some may consider this overkill, we are firm believers that there is no such thing as “overkill”. There is only “open fire” and “I need to reload”. Whether or not you ever use this location for an additional fan it is nice to see CM take the time to give you the option, and lets face you can never have too many options.