HAF 935 Mid-Section, Full-size ATX System
We are going to start our build by installing a full-size ATX system in the HAF 935 mid-section. As we mentioned in Part 1, the lower section of the HAF 935 modular-case is a Cooler Master HAF 925 mid-tower enclosure, which is currently only available as part of the HAF 935.
ATX Power Supply
The HAF 935 case is designed to accept a standard ATX power supply. It mounts in the back at the bottom. The power supply rests securely on four rubber pads and is held in place with four machine screws on the back panel. A large opening in the bottom of the case allows outside room air to be drawn into the PSU through an easy to remove and clean dust filter.
We installed a Cooler Master V850 power supply, which is 170mm (6.7”) long. There are several large cutouts with rubber grommets in front of the power supply to help cleanly route cables.
ATX Motherboard
The lower mid-tower section of the Cooler Master HAF 935 case is designed to mount a micro-ATX, standard ATX, or Extended ATX motherboard. Brass standoffs are used to mount the motherboard. To see how things lined up we installed an MSI Z77A-GD65 full-size ATX motherboard into position. As expected, both the mounting holes and expansion slot openings lined up perfectly.
There is a large cutout behind the motherboard that provides access to the CPU area for installing or re-mounting CPU coolers.
Graphics Adapters
The HAF 935 enclosure provides plenty of room around the motherboard area for installing one or more VGA cards.
The GeForce GTX Titan graphics adapters shown here are 10.5” long. They easily fit in the available space but if you plan to use a longer VGA card, the HAF 935 enclosure can handle expansion cards up to 354mm (13.9”) long with the 3.5” drive bays installed or up to 480mm (19”) long with the 3.5” drive bays removed.
Peltier!? Gosh thats
Peltier!? Gosh thats insane….
Well it would be awesome if
Well it would be awesome if you had a PWM controled Peltier, which keeps the water temperature around 1°C so nothing freezes in or outside. Well I still dought its worth it, but it would be “cool”
You could use a heat
You could use a heat exchanger water plate between the cold peltier side and the water loop (with antifreeze) and solve the condensation problem. Also, this would allow sub zero water to be used from the peltier without introducing into your actual cpu cooling loop. I think the frozen website has one for sale.
Nice detailed info. I didn’t
Nice detailed info. I didn’t realise that the cutout behind the motherboard was to help with CPU/APU cooler setups. I guess I’m old fashion.
I am a little confused about “The HAF 935 enclosure provides plenty of room around the motherboard area for installing one or more VGA cards.” Do you mean room for large GPU cards? I don’t remember seeing a VGA port on those GPU cards (GTX TITAN).
Sorry – wasn’t trying to
Sorry – wasn't trying to confuse anyone. Old habit of using VGA as a generic term for Video Graphics Adapters (technically VGA stands for Video Graphics Array) – my bad. And you are correct, those Titan graphics adapters don't sport any VGA ports!
Who cares? Why do I need
Who cares? Why do I need this? I’m not running a 2-p or 4-p server at home. What audience is this big case targeted at?
In this regressing economy, it’s dangerous to recommend people to waste money on crap they don’t need. Whether it’s buying expensive graphics cards or cases, or CPUs, it’s all a waste of money. We in the Western world are losing our industrial base, and our jobs, both technical and non-technical, are flying away to those developing countries. This is not the time to think about ways to waste money…
I do see this case in my near
I do see this case in my near future 😉
Good review of a definitely
Good review of a definitely intriguing product. If you’re going to go monster with a full-size, I like this outside-the-box case design. The possibilities ….
Definitely not for people without imagination.
This case opened my mind to
This case opened my mind to the possibility of setting up a water cooled gaming rig and then a smaller one for a virtual box server with a asrock avaton MB, that hosts a test lab environment and then even another for a plex media server with all my movies and music, and even another for a backup server. This would “de-clutter” various servers/towers laying around into one corner of your man/woman cave. It might even have the power to save a marriage too!
It’d be cool if someone could
It’d be cool if someone could come up with a peltier cooling system that could measure dew point. That way you could run the system as cool as the current dew point would allow. I remember coming across a website a while ago where they were programming a microcontroller to do just that but it never came together.
Does anyone know if there’s
Does anyone know if there’s any restrictions on stacking two 925’s on top of each other? I want one for a media centre with 9 hdd’s and another as a gaming rig with with 2x 970 in sli.