HAF 915F mini-ITX System
Mini-ITX Motherboard
Now we are going to look at the Cooler Master HAF 915F case which is also designed to mount a mini-ITX motherboard.
Again, the motherboard mounts on top of four brass stand-offs and is secured with machine screws. You can see the rear 120mm exhaust fan that comes pre-installed in the 915F in the photo above.
Note: Because the PSU has been relocated to the front of the HAF 915F enclosure, there is plenty of room to install a large tower-style cooler (up to 170mm / 6.7” tall) like Cooler Master’s very popular Hyper 212 EVO CPU cooler.
And if you would like to water-cool your CPU, the HAF 915F case can easily accommodate a 120mm fan/radiator combo on the rear panel.
ATX Power Supply
One of the big differences between the HAF 915R and HAF 915F mini-ITX enclosures is where the PSU mounts. In the HAF 915R, the power supply was mounted in the back but in the HAF 915F the PSU mounts behind the front bezel. The 915F includes a special power cord that delivers AC line power from a receptacle mounted on the back panel to the PSU up front.
The HAF 915 case is designed to mount a full-sized ATX power supply of your choice. The PSU sits on four rubber pads and is secured to the front panel behind the bezel with four screws.
VGA Card
The Cooler Master HAF 915F case can also accommodate a dual slot VGA card with ease.
Drive Cages
Another big difference between the HAF 915R and the 915F case is how 3.5”/2.5” HDD/SSDs are mounted. The HAF 915F enclosure features one external 5.25” bay (see photo above) but does not have a 3.5” drive cage like the 915R. Instead, the HAF 915F case provides two mounting locations for 3.5”/2.5” HDD/SSDs. Both locations are in the middle of the chassis, one on the floor and the other on the right side wall bracket.
To mount a 3.5” HDD or 2.5” SSD, you first install four shoulder screws through rubber grommets into each drive. The drive assembly then slides into elongated holes in the mounting locations. While functional, the 915F drive mounts are not as secure/robust as the mounting options provided in the HAF 935 mid-section and HAF 915R enclosre.
3.5” HDD and 2.5” SSD Installed in HAF 915F
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.