Cooler Master HAF XM Full Tower Chassis Review

Starting from the left side of the chassis I find that the chassis features a durable side panel with can be removed with central handle that works in a similar fashion to a car door handle, this allows for quick and easy access to the chassis without the need for rear thumb screws. There is also a large recess to the shape of the panel that not only adds a touch of style but also allows extra room for the side mountable 120mm cooling fans, or a single 200mm cooling fan. Across the top of the chassis there are a pair of large ventilation areas that provide airflow to any top mounted cooling solutions, namely the pre-installed 200mm fan found at the top/rear of the chassis.

The front panel packs plenty of features too, across the top we have two USB 2.0 ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a 3.5mm microphone jack and two USB 3.0 ports, moving down from there you’ll find 3 x 5.25″ drive bays with quick release covers, two hot swap hard drive caddies with support for 2.5″ or 3.5″ drives and finally, at the bottom, a large ventilation area to allow airflow the the pre-installed 200mm red LED intake fan.

The top of the chassis features a rubber padded section that is perfect for storing flash drives, memory cards or just loose change from your pocket, in front of that we have LED, Power and Reset switches.

The hard drive docks on the front of the chassis are really easy to access and provide you with a completely removable mounting tray for your drives, this makes installing and removing drives extremely easy and it also saves opening up your chassis to swap out any drives.

The right side of the chassis features a similar style panel to the left, albeit without the fan mounts and this time featuring thumb screws in favour of the quick release handle. The recess in the side panel should allow plenty of extra room for cable management too.

Around the back we see that the top panel is held in place with a quick release thumb screw, below which you’ll find three water cooler / cable routing cut-outs, each fitted with rubber grommets. A pre-installed 140mm fan acts as the rear exhaust, although the mounting area does also support 120mm should you wish to swap it out. Finally we have  8+1 PCI expansion slots and a bottom mounted PSU area, leaving plenty of room for multi-GPU setups.

Taking a look at the underside you can see the PSU can be mounted with its fan facing downward thanks to the ventilation toward the rear of the chassis and a compliment of four high quality rubber feet should provide a stable base and help reduce any vibration from within the chassis.