Cooling And Dust Protection
Cooler Master's Cosmos SE sports an easily removable dust filter in the front. Behind it, two 12 cm fans (Cooler Master A12025-12CB-3DN-F1) pull air into the enclosure. The fans feature blue LEDs you can turn on or keep off. Rubber rings decoupling the fans from the chassis are glued into place at the factory.
Consequently, the fans are attached with custom-made, longer screws. Some of the cases that went out to reviewers had problems with threading, but Cooler Master assures us that those issues were fixed on all retail models. Of course, if you've experienced any different, let us know in the comments.
If you want even more airflow, two additional 12 cm fans can be fitted to the hard drive cage in a similar fashion. Again, the custom-length screws and decoupling rubber pieces come bundled with the case.
The top of the enclosure also sports a dust filter. It can be removed by unfastening a thumb screw on the back of the case and then pulling it out. A 14 cm fan (Cooler Master A14025-12CB-3BN-F1) is installed underneath. There’s space for up to two 12 or 14 cm fans, though a second fan makes the top 5.25-inch drive bay unusable for anything except components that don’t reach far into the case.
Another 12 cm fan (Cooler Master A12025-12CB-3JN-F1) rounds out the factory-installed complement of coolers. All of the bundled fans hum along at 1200 RPM, and only the two front ones are decoupled from the chassis. They're powered either in series through a four-pin Molex connector or separately with three-pin headers that attach to a fan controller or the motherboard. Unfortunately, the Cosmos SE doesn’t come with its own fan controller.
Two more dust filters are resident on the bottom of the Cosmos SE, mounted externally close to the power supply and hard drive cages. If you need to clean them, they can be pulled out toward the front and back. One more thing: the rubber feet that this chassis stands on are screwed, and not just glued into place.
The hard drive cages can be removed, but only at the cost of the fans that are installed on them. It’s simply not possible to get rid of the drive cage elements and retain the fans for a better overall airflow. An alternate option for installing the coolers, maybe attached to the rails for the radiator installation, would have been nice.
Water Cooling
As usual, a 12 cm radiator fits on the back of the case. In addition, there’s space for 28 and 36 cm radiators at the top and the front, respectively.
Additional fans with the usual frame depth of 2.5 cm can be screwed onto the case directly, and fit between the top part of its metal frame and top cover without any problems. There are also holes for the fans' power cables.
The screw holes for the radiator could have been a bit more toward the side of the case to avoid collisions between tall CPU coolers and thick radiators (or radiators with fans on both sides). Finally, we should point out that 24 cm radiators will block most of the top 5.25-inch drive bay.
Installing a radiator on the front of the case has its own drawbacks. If you use a 24 or 28 cm product, then you have to either forgo all of the hard drive bays, or unscrew and remove the 5.25-inch drive cage and retain use of the bottommost two bays.
Either way, the previously-mentioned retention rails are used for the installation. A push/pull configuration is possible if the radiator with its fans is screwed onto the front of the rails.
