Features

The fans are middle quality and
beat out a lot of the cheap fans around. Even though they are sleeve
bearings they are very quiet and still have enough CFM for case cooling
duties. If you need more airflow they are easily removed. We liked that
all the fan had very little if any airflow restrictions, and no cheesy
looking notches punched into the case, just good old holes like you would
make to a case in your garage.

Removing the side panel reveals
more simplicity. Nothing fancy here. This gives you the ability to make
the case look really nice with your choice of mods without removing all
the stuff that you don't want. It's free reign on modding for the
Wavemaster LE.

One thing that we did gripe
about is that the pillars that support the power supply carriage are a
little large. They get in the way of the kind of room you would need to
conceal things such as CC converters and extra PSU looms.

Motherboard trays are a rare
sight these days, and for good reason. When they were more abundant on
cases they had a tendency to have high electrical resistance which would cause all kinds of headaches
since parts of the ground circuit goes through the chassis. Fortunately
the Wavemaster LE is a very tight fit with no tolerances that will cause
a grounding problem. The motherboard tray also gives you a lot of room
to work around which is a plus when removing heat sinks or changing out
hard drives.

The top access panel for USB,
firewire, and audio. All you have to do is push down until you hear a
click and it pops open. You do the same to close it.

A simple click and you have
access to your USB, audio, and firewire ports on the top and not the
bottom front of the case. For all you overclockers out there
Cooler Master has been so kind as to give you the option of removing the
access port and running.....

...a blowhole! Sure its not 120mm, but the case is not
really that big and the installation of a low RPM fan really had a
significant temperature advantage.

(click to enlarge)
What's left over from the access panel. |

(click to enlarge)
Here is the holder/filter for the top blow hole.
|

(click to enlarge)
The fan we installed was a Vantec Stealth LED. |

Here you can see the top blow
hole fan installed from the inside of the case. Notice the lack of
overspray on the overall finish of the LE, it's almost like blue
aluminum exists. Fine threaded screws are very evident all over this
case, not the self threading ones.
Performance and Installation
|

(click to enlarge) |

(click to enlarge) |
The installation of our A64
components went very smooth into the Wavemaster. The only hangups that
were apparent was the lack of space, but that's mainly because we took
them out of a full tower case. We would like to see Cooler Master come
out with a bigger Wavemaster, and perhaps that may be in the works.
Other than that, we were very impressed with the overall quality of the
case. All of our main board holes lined up with no forcing, and the
screws didn't strip. As far as room is concerned we were able to hide
the rest of our power supply looms, cold cathode converters, and other
stuff behind the hidden 3 1/2 in bays. The cooling of the Wavemaster was
very impressive for a case of this size, and we contribute that to the
overall simplicity of the case more than anything else. We dropped about
a 10C average on our components versus another mid-tower case of the
same size. The other case even had a side case fan! Overall the
Wavemaster is relatively flawless, and is absolutely beautiful with its
metallic blue paint. If you want one, Cooler Master will make them
readily available, so since we obviously will recommend this case, you
better hop on it and grab it while you can!

|
Club
Overclocker Rating |
|
Innovation: |
10
out of 10 |
|
Performance: |
10 out of 10 |
|
Quality: |
10 out of 10 |
|
Stability: |
N/A |
|
Overclocking: |
N/A |
|
Software Pack: |
N/A |
|
Value: |
9.0 out of 10 |
|
Overall Rating 9.5 |
|
|
|
|
Skill Level |
|
Project Skill Level
(10 being hardest) |
4
out of 10 |
|