Introduction

Here at Overclockers Tech towers we review a great many cases in which many companies claim that their products are ‘Water Cooling Ready’,  however reality often differs from this.  Drilling holes in the back of the case for tubing in/out does NOT constitute a liquid cooling compatible chassis.

 Overclockers Tech are a liquid cooling specialist website, however our frustration is apparent when a myriad of companies are vying for the top spot-erstwhile skimping out on essential features, such as water cooling control, lack of a eight-pin EPS hole and so on. At the risk of repeating ourselves  we will send a general message to chassis manufacturers out there.

Drilling holes in the back of your product and then installing rubber grommets inside of them does NOT  make a chassis water cooling ready!

Enter Coolermaster

A company with a great reputation in listening to its customers and in all honesty this company has not produced a single ‘Lemon’ in all its time that we have been reviewing their products. Granted we want to see more Coolermaster case products support water cooling from the outset, however the former-mentioned company looks like it is doing very well.

 Specifications

A rather modest set of specifications, with admittedly no real selling points. All is as it should be,  however sometimes these lists can be deceiving.

• The stylish metal mesh front panel with brushed aluminum stripes for a classy look
• Supports all high-end graphics cards up to 405mm/15.9″ and USB 3.0
• Supports liquid cooling solution at top (240mm) or rear (120mm)
• Supports up to 9 fans, including one pre-installed 140mm blue LED fan in the front
• Two 120mm fans can be installed on the side panel to cool the graphics cards
• Tool-less mounting of ODD bays and 2.5″ brackets for quicker installation

For a RRP of £55 then tools-less mounting looks like a good thing to have and liquid cooling too? Well at the latter specification this has made us prick up our ears. We at Overclockers Tech are extremely interested in the Water cooling specification, so with great eagerness we move on.

Packaging

The Coolermaster Centurion six came packed in a drab generic box with a ‘not for re-sale sample only’ printed on the side. That is ok for us reviewers I guess, however consumers reading this review may wish to see the box art itself.

The inner packaging is exactly the same as any other case manufacturer on the market, with two foam inserts and a polymer bag. Nothing interesting, but this solution works so why change it?

When the packaging was removed, we encountered a rather intereting chassis. This design reminds me of an early 80′s look and sports a nice retro feel to the product.

Before we go any further it is worth noting that we have photographed the Coolermaster Centurion Six with slightly differing lights in order to gauge how well the scheme reacts to a myriad of different light sources.  As one can see the slightly more red coloured light makes the whole case glow a nice sunset colour. The front I/O panel is nothing new with two 2x USB3.0 ports and the same in the older USB2.0 format.  However what we really do like is innovation of installing the power and reset buttons on the front-side panel and this helps to lend not only to a classy but the retro look as described earlier.

The front panel of the Centurion Six has a rather attractive grill design which reminds us of the panel of an old guitar amplifier, which further enhances the 1980′s feel, only interrupted by the Centurion logo itself. If we then proceed to the top panel we notice the fan grill and its design. When examining this closer we see fan mounts for both 120 and of the 140mm varieties, however if we look closer we can spy the radiator mounting (that’s right RADIATOR mounting holes on a £55 RRP case) and yes that is a big thumbs up for this product.  However we do not see the same for the 140mm type as this will allow for a 280mm radiator as well as a 240mm. Having said this for a case that is designed for air and water cooling as bonus we cannot grumble too much on the absence of 40mm-based radiator support.

The side panel of the Centurion Six sports a grill design that consists of two 120mm fans, however once again there is an absence of the choice of having either 120 or of the 140mm variety. Moving on to the rear panel we see the usual water cooling in/ out holes with grommets. However we really like how these are placed as with most chassis the rubber slips off with the least excuse,  however these are quire firmly attached. The holes themselves can easily accommodate half-inch inner diameter tubing. We also spy the usual 120mm fan exhaust which also looks to be compatible with the 90 and 80mm fan sizes.

 Nothing really to report here, apart from the usual seven PCIE blanking plates and the power supply mounting hole.

Well that is it for the external tour, so let us now examine the internal parts of the case, which admittedly we are really looking forward to.

Internal Tour

As with most cases the side panels come off with a simple twist on an ever present thumbscrew. The panel itself slides off smoothly and since the whole frame (apart from that of the front panel) is steel then the former mentioned feels rather solid.

The first impressions of inside of the Coolermaster case are one of a quite Spartan look, which is not an issue when taking the price point into account. Also the lack of rubber grommets on key areas of the wire management is also not an issue, due to the same conclusion.  However what we have noticed though they lack grommets there are indeed in all the right places and are large enough to fit a thick 24-pin ATX PSU cable. However let us look at other areas before we address the wire management in detail.

The internal 3.5 inch drive cages can fit around nine hard disk or solid state drives, with three being supported on removable caddies.  Moving into the three 5.25″ bay areas, these are also tool-less, sporting the usual locking mechanism for chassis of this product price point. We could describe the rest of the features like the PCIE backing plates, 120mm rear exhaust fan and the PSU hole, but do the consumers realy wish to hear about them, giving that this is a budget case and as one can plainly see by the images below that there is nothing special (but in turn nothing wrong either) about them?

We thought not, let us move onto what we are really here for, this being the Wire management and ‘Water Cooling’ features.

As we mentioned before, the inside of the case may look Spartan, however all the wire management holes are in the right place, for example the PSU cable hole is right after the Power Supply Unit itself and as plainly shown the motherboard tray plain supports lots of clips in order to tie the consumers cable on to. Essentialy what we are saying is that though this may be market as a budget case, there is no excuse at all for sloppy wiring on behalf of the end-user.

We can slo see that the CPU managment hole is larger than that of the CPU area itself, which is great for motherboards that still use a MCH (Northbridge) and any after market coolers.

As we can see by the images below the top wire management section, certainly has a eight-pin EPS feature. THe second image shows that though there is certainly room for a radiator on the inside-albiet a slimline like the XSPC RS 240MM, there is certainly no room for the fans to go internal as well.

We thought that it would be prudent to check on this issue, by re-reading the enclosed instructions. Indeed this does bare our theory out that there is no room for the coolnig fans internally. However judging by the forementioned instructions the radiator would have to be screwed in by the following manner:

3rd Party Fan Grill———120MM FAN———through the top of the case———-into radiator, as born out by the photographs below.

As plainly shown by the instructions the end-user would require eight screws for the above system to work, however none are supplied with the case itself. Another slight oversight with this would be that if the fans are external, then they need to be powered right? If we have this in mind the fan power cables will then need to go from outside of the case and connect to the motherboard, however if we give the reader a quick reminder than we can gleen that there is no hole present for the three-pin fan power cables to go internally.

Lastly we move onto the enclosed accessories and as we can see there are a number of differing screws present here

Thats it for the internal tour folks, we would have loved to show you fitting in an internal radiator, however with the abscence of the much needed screws we cannot do so. Let us now move onto the conclusion of the Coolermaster Centurion Six Chassis.

Conclusion

Coolermaster have produced a great chassis here in terms of aesthetics and it reminds us of a 1980′s feel and rock guitars. For a RRP of around £55 to £59.00 then it is an absolute bargain and has a nice solid feel to it. The brushed aluminium effect-together with the unique placement of the power/reset buttons really helps the product to stand out. Internally the wire management holes are all in the correct place and are large enough and together with the motherboard clips should enable the end-user to have an overall tidy case. The powder coating is of excellent quality both internally and external and though it is a steel-based chassis we cannot grumble at this -due to the nature of its pricing.

We are a liquid cooling based website and as such we have a few minor grumbles with the cooling aspects of this case. In the first instance if Coolermaster are marketing this product as water cooling ready then they really should include the mounting screws for the radiator as the fans have to go external to the case. To add to this if the latter items are external then one would expect a hole for the fan power cables to enter the chassis and head towards the motherboard. Personally we think these are small oversights but are still there and we think these could be addressed in a minor revision.

As far as the air cooling is concerned if the top grill supports 140mm fans then would logically would extend that to the side panel, allowing for quieter fan cooling of essential items like graphics cards.

As far as design and air cooling we have very few grumbles and indeed the product is an absolute must for those on a tight budget. Apart from the side panel not having 140mm fan mounts we have no complaints what so ever and if we explore the wiring system then we can see the obvious attention to detail and for that we are grateful as we have reviewed other cases of a similar price point that lack a eight-pin EPS hole for instance. We think this case is designed for air and water cooling as an almost bonus feature. We cannot recommend this chassis as ‘Water Cooling’ ready but it does come close and would be better if only Coolermaster had the foresight to include the radiator mounting screws!

Regular readers know that we only recommend a case water cooling ready if it can fit a custom radiator such as the XSPC RS240MM together with its fans internally.

For air cooling we have no hesitation to give this elegant case a nine out of ten and the water cooling features a 6.9. Therefore if we combine the results each would obtain a Gold and a Bronze Award. However if we average these two things out then we would recommend a strong Silver for the Coolermaster Centurion Six.

Pros:

• Elegant classy looks
• Unique placement of Power/Rest buttons
• Lots of placement options for fan
• Quality feel
• Good powder coating
• Wire mangement placement is excellent
• Tidy internal looks
• Massive CPU inspection hole (large enough for Mosfet and MCH)
• Water Cooling Supported (But also see cons)

Author

Gilgamesh