Cooler Master HAF932 Full Tower ATX Chassis Review

Noise Levels

With all the swiss cheesing in the case, there really aren’t a lot of mechanisms to keep the noise from reaching you. Since there is only one fan setting, which is ON, we wanted to see just how noisy this case was would be. Readings were taken using a noise level meter pointed at the center of each area, and held six inches away.

Here’s what we found out:

coolermaster_haf932_noise

When compared to competitors like the ANTEC Twelve Hundred we can see that the two cases are fairly similar in terms of noise levels. In fact, thanks to the 230mm fan in the front, the HAF932 is actually a little quieter than the Twelve Hundred on the lowest settings. It’s also quieter than the NZXT Tempest. Having said that, none of the cases are quite as a mouse and you definitely know when they are turned on.

Thermal Performance

The other aspect of performance that a case needs to be sufficient at is thermal performance. A case needs to provide adequate airflow so that it doesn’t roast your components. We took temperature readings at both idle and load conditions using nVidia system monitor.

Idle conditions were established after booting into the desktop and lettings things settle for 30 minutes while load conditions were established using a looping run of 3DMark Vantage and taking the highest logged temperature. Ambient temperature at the time of these reading was 23C.

Here’s what we found:

coolermaster_haf932_thermal

Despite the highly overclocked nature of the system, CPU temperatures never exceeded 59C under load on any of the cores in our Q6600 CPU overclocked from 2.4GHz to 3.6Ghz using the Coolermaster V8 CPU Cooler. There was no temperature variance between load and idle in terms of system temps (stuck at 30C) with a jump from 61C to 64C for the MCP when under load. Overall, I’d say the HAF932 definitely lives up to its name. Well, at least the HAF part and not so much the confusing 932 part.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The Coolermaster HAF932 Full Tower Chassis definitely lives up to its “High Air Flow” name. The big fans clearly revealed that one setting was enough to sufficiently cool a highly overclocked system down. The noise levels for this performance were also excellent and could likely be a result of the use of the larger fans vs a larger number of smaller 120mm fans. Coolermaster does give you the option to mount other fans if you so choose. I’d just leave them alone and enjoy the performance. It’s obviously working.

coolermaster_haf932-30

The other aspect that I really enjoyed about the HAF932 was just how easy it was to assemble. Except for the mounting of the power supply and motherboard, the system was put together completely tool free and all of it was held together well despite not being screwed down. I did run into one issue with the bottom most expansion slot as the last card would tend to slide down. If security is an issue, you can remove the tool free slot retention mechanism and go old school with screws.

Finally, I loved just how clean the build ended up being even with minimal cable tidying. I was also quite pleased with Coolermaster’s solution to the problem of having to disassemble a system just to install a better heatsink. Not only was it effective, but also simple.

Overall, I really like this case, but I would like to see some filters on those fans. Even after a few days of use, there is a thin layer of dusty inside. Other than that, this case is winner and one that I highly recommend.

Pros