Building With The Cooler Master Storm Enforcer
Cooler Master’s Storm Enforcer fits into more traditional mid-tower dimensions, its tall feet and front-panel peak pushing its height to a mere nineteen inches. With an extra-deep door constituting more than an inch of its 21” total depth, this case's interior is limited to ATX-sized motherboards and a maximum graphics card length of 11.1”.
Sacrificing the four-bay center hard drive cage gives builders room for cards up to 16.7”. Fortunately, that sacrifice wasn’t needed for our build.
The Storm Enforcer includes several 3.5” drive rails, a pair of 5.25”-to-3.5” external bay adapter rails, a 3.5”-to-2.5” hard drive adapter tray, several screws, a PC speaker, and cable ties. If you need more 2.5” drive mounting space, you'll find a two-drive cage mounted to the case’s floor.
Installing our 2.5” drive in the adapter allowed us to use one less power cable in the installation, since our power supply's cable has three leads spaced approximately 6” apart.
Drive latching pins for 5.25” devices rest within a swinging mechanism, engaging the drive’s mounting holes with the flip of a lever.
Shoulders on the two factory-installed standoffs center the motherboard over holes to insure proper alignment. These also enable one-handed installation, since they prevent the board from sliding out of position.
Cooler Master unclutters the Storm Enforcer’s cable kit slightly by omitting USB 2.0 connectivity, though some users will likely prefer the added ports you get from some competing products. The firm goes on to add clutter by including an AC'97 audio lead. Motherboards have used HD Audio for many years, guys. Let's retire AC'97 once and for all!
Our oversized motherboard fits inside the Storm Enforcer with barely enough of its cable holes exposed to pass through SATA connectors. Most of our larger cables were forced to follow an alternative path around the hard drive cage, though the case at least has space above the motherboard we could use to route our ATX12V lead.
Red LED fan lighting finishes the Storm Enforcer’s gaming theme, without being so bright as to distract us from getting our work done.
