Cooler Master Storm Scout Mid-Tower Case Review

Installation


We started by installing the PSU, which went without a hitch. The opening at the bottom of the motherboard tray allows PSU leads to run behind the motherboard tray and into the hard drive cage without cluttering the main chamber of the case. Unfortunately, the opening will get quite cramped if you plan to pull numerous PSU leads and the header leads through at the same time.


As far as cable management is concerned, the Scout is challenging to say the least. Bottom mounted PSUs always make hiding away cables a chore, but thankfully Cooler Master does arm you with some features to help you along. All along the rear of the motherboard tray are simple notches that you can use to thread zip-ties through or twist-ties.

Our first attempt – pictured above – looked great until we fruitlessly tried to reattach the side panel. As mentioned earlier, the side panels to protrude at the center by almost an inch, but only toward the rear of the case. To effectively hide cabling at the rear of motherboard tray, it must be bundled closer to the rear of the case and kept as flattened out as possible. After a few attempts, we were able to get most of the unwanted cabling hidden away in this location, along with some of the fan power and PSU leads.

If you don’t mind seeing a few PSU leads in the open and didn’t deck-out your Scout with five hard drives, they can very easily be left at the bottom of the hard drive cage.


Moving on to hard drive installation, we must say that we were pleased with the simplicity and ease of installation that the Scout’s rail system provides. Not even a screw driver is required for the rails as they snap into place with minimal effort. Since the fasteners are not threaded, you’ll obviously not want to carry the drive around by the rail, but it is secure enough not to fall off. Although drive caddies look a little cleaner and “higher end”, we can’t argue with the practicality of this simple rail system.

The hard drive can be mounted in two orientations, but we prefer to keep all of the cabling hidden toward the non-windowed side of the case. Those who frequently swap out hard drives can leave the connectors facing the window for ease of removal.


Cooler Master includes one set of adapters to install a small 1.8 inch or 2.5 inch hard drive into the Scout. To use these adapters, they are simply screwed onto the hard drive and then subsequently used with the included 3.5 inch rails just like a normal hard drive. It would have been nice if Cooler Master included a pair of these for those looking to run a SSD raid array, but given the price of the case, we definitely won’t hold this against them. In fact, we’d consider this a generous bonus feature.