Cooler Master 690 II Advanced Black and White Mid-Tower Chassis Review

With completely white side panels, it’s quite an interesting look once they are removed to reveal more black. The complete interior is black and looks amazing with the white edges. We get a first view of the motherboard tray, optical drive bay and storage cages. The general layout is what we’d expect from a mid-tower sized chassis with plenty of space for cable management and watercooling installation.

Taking a quick look at the opposite side, we can see the colour scheme follows on throughout and gives us a clear look at the cable tidying opportunities. There are a total of four rubber grommets for passing cables through and a large cut-out behind the CPU socket. There is also a nice amount of space between the motherboard tray and side panel so that certain cables can be hidden and tucked away allowing for a cleaner looking case, and added ventilation.

The four 5.25″ optical drive bays utilise the patented Cooler Master quick-release design which gives a tool-less installation and removal and is one of the simplest designs we’ve ever seen from a chassis manufacturer. The clips are simple and durable and allow for your optical drives to be locked into place with little to no effort.

Below the optical drives we find a total of six 3.5″ drive bay drawers. The top mount includes an extra added 2.5″ adapter allowing the easy installation of an SSD or smaller based mechanical hard drive through the use of four included screws. The remaining five bays have a simple bend and snap installation procedure to install 3.5″ drives and with the option of removing the bottom four bays, you can choose whether you need extra storage space or the choice of installation a radiator and having a custom loop watercooling system.

Towards the rear of the case, we can see that motherboard support includes Mini-ITX, Micro ATX and full-sized ATX with graphics support up to 11.96 inches in length. There are a total of 7 expansion slots for your graphics cards and other similar PCI based cards.

The power supply is installed from the side, but is attached to the case from the rear as normal. The power supply will sit slightly raised due to the elevated stand-offs which allows the power supply to get extra ventilation and to exhaust any hot air to the bottom of the case of which a dust filter does also come included with the accessories.

Located at the top of the case is a pre-installed 140mm fan with space next to it for either another 140mm fan or a watercooling radiator when both fans are removed. If using the stock fan, you can either connect it via 3-pin or via Molex depending on your preference.

There is also a 120mm exhaust fan that we spoke about earlier. This is located on the rear of the case and has the choice again of being connected via Molex or 3-pin fan header.