Supplier Cooler Master Website www.coolermaster.com RRP R2,299
After years of little to no innovation in the PC DIY case industry. Cooler Master has come up with a very interesting concept in the 935. The HAF family isn’t new and neither is the Stacker series. They have, however, for the first time been put together into the world’s first stackable PC chassis. The need or appeal of this isn’t obvious at first, but consider a situation where you want more than one desktop PC but don’t want an additional or separate case.
Or imagine you want to water cool everything in your system, with plenty of radiators and the cleanest look possible. The HAF Stacker 935 allows just that with its modular design and expansion capabilities.
Although it is sold as two separate parts, the HAF Stacker 935 is really meant to work as one unit. This is because by default, Cooler Master sells the 915F and the main tower chassis together. You may opt not to use the 915F expansion if you prefer, but then you’re not making use of what it is that makes this case interesting to begin with.
As far as cases are concerned, the main unit is a standard mid-range tower chassis. It obviously has some very basic modifications to allow for its unique features, but in general it’s nothing you’ve not seen before. So you should expect three screw-less 5.25″ exposed drive bays, nine 3.5″ internal bays and obviously multiple radiator support to name but a few of the features. The chassis, even though large in size, does not support the XL-ATX standard. Not too much of a train smash as these boards are far and few between lately, but it’s something worth being aware of if you were looking to buy this. As mentioned earlier, everything else is standard affair.
The 915F expansion chassis is where you would ideally build a second mini-ITX based system. It is constructed of the same material as the main unit, but is obviously smaller in dimensions. It’s very long for a mini-ITX case but that is expected as it had to match the main unit and thus Cooler Master doesn’t have much of a choice there. Having said that, it does not utilize this space efficiently at all as cooling for the system here would be limited. The PSU is mounted at the top of the 915F and because of its low profile, there’s a shallow limit to how big or effective a CPU cooler one can provide. PCIe graphics card support is great however as you can install a full length card in there. Cable management wise, you’re not going to fair well because there simply isn’t a way to hide cables at all in the 915F, but this is in line with the main HAF chassis it sits on top of. There really isn’t much room to route cables around the back of the motherboard tray because you have about 2cm of depth at most to play with.
The biggest gripe we have with the HAF Stacker 935 though is that the 915F has no USB or power/reset buttons. That means you can’t use it separately from the main unit. Fortunately Cooler Master does offer the 915R which addresses this issue and then some, so you can have two truly independent systems within that same body. Other than these few oversights, the Cooler Master HAF Stacker 935 is a true innovative case and well worth your consideration, especially when paired with the 915R, as it really does make all the difference here. At the right price this may very well prove to be a popular case amongst power users and high-end gamers alike.