Cooler Master have had a lot of success with their HAF range of chassis, their highly practical and durable design has proven popular with system builders, gamers and general PC enthusiasts. Anyone serious about performance wants a chassis that can handle powerful, modern components in a safe and reliable format, and that’s something that the HAF range has always delivered.
I recently had the pleasure of reviewing the HAF XM, a chassis that really did offer up features in a big way, and while some man not be keen on its visual appearance it was still more than worth of an Editors Choice Award. Yet it’s that distinctive styling that really stands out in the HAF range and the HAM XB that we are looking at today bares a lot in common with its Full-Tower brother the XM, albeit in a test bed lay out.
“The Cooler Master HAF XB takes the famous High Air Flow series to a revolutionary new form factor with extreme cooling performance. Despite its compact rugged design, there is plenty of space for even the tallest high performance tower heat sinks, thick water cooling radiators and up to 3 of the longest high-end graphics cards. Within seconds the side panels with their rigid carry handles and the top mesh panel can be removed, transforming the HAF XB into a Test bench with direct access to the hardware.” – Coolermaster.co.uk
Test benches have a lot of uses in this industry, not only are they handy for people who review a lot of hardware components such as RAM and graphics cards, but they also serve a great purpose for system overclockers, people who do repairs, testing and in some cases they can be pretty handy for LAN tournaments too, so it will be interesting to see where the HAF XB fits in to all this.
The HAF XB comes well packaged and features the same black / purple theme as other cases in the HAF range.
In the box I found an easy to follow installation guide, a collection of clip-on 3.5″ hard drive rails, cable ties and the usual assortment of screws and bolts.
