While KitGuru loves to get its hands on an enormous chassis with more fans than Justin Bieber, our real passion is silent performance. The idea that you can achieve excellent performance, in complete silence, is a real draw. Cooler Master has something very special coming up in this area. Something very special indeed.
Thinking back to the classis cinema phrase, ‘In space, no one will hear you scream', when Zardon put a Sapphire HD5670 CrossFire set up through its paces last year, it delivered an impressive 50 frames per second in Aliens Vs Predator at HD resolutions.
There are a number of CPU coolers that can run in (near) silent mode and most of the top vendors have a silent series of power supplies – so the dream of a powerful rig where you ‘can't even tell if it has been switched on', is almost a reality.
That brings you down to the case itself.
There have been many attempts to create the perfect ‘noiseless chassis' over the years. The most successful at noise reduction, like the Zalman TNN 300, were crazy expensive. The question has to be, can you deliver a noise suppression chassis, that looks fantastic and doesn't cost the Earth?
From what we have seen at CeBIT 2011, Cooler Master has achieved just this.
Once our fascination with the ladies passed, our gaze drifted to the system they were sitting next to.
The Project M chassis is well-built and has ample space for your kit.
As an ATX-sized chassis, it uses a combination of rigid steel, plastic and acrylic to achieve a strong design. In addition to regular drive bays, it also offers X-Dock connection points and a range of connectivity options, including and SD card reader and USB 3.0 port.
Inside, you can see the additional noise-suppression features like anechoic foam.
Air flow comes from the 800 RPM ‘silent' 120mm fans, mounted front and rear.
The chassis should be available in UK stores around the middle of May 2011 and probably won't cost much more than £70.
KitGuru says: Well worth considering for your next silent-build. Will be interesting to know just how much power can be installed into the Cooler Master Project Silent M, before you can actually hear anything at all.
Comments below and in the KitGuru forum.
Thats quite a nice looking chassis. simple and stylish.
noise supressing materials, very nice idea, surprised we dont see this more often.