FSP has really stepped up their RGB game with the mid-tower CMT340 case.
Howdy howdy guys ponchato here, and today we'll be taking a look at the recently released
CMT340 from FSP.
We'll go over the features, design, cable management, and benchmarks, so let's get started.
For raw specs, the 340 is somewhat smaller than a typical mid-tower case, coming in at
about 370mm deep, 470mm tall, and 210mm wide (that's 14.5 by 18.5 by 8.1 in inches).
It's also fairly hefty at about 6.2 kilograms or 13.7 pounds, owing mostly to the two tempered
glass panels.
It can fit ATX, micro ATX, or mini ITX motherboards, and has 7 expansion slots with replaceable
covers held on with screws.
Thankfully, no bend and snap covers here.
In terms of capacities, it can handle CPU coolers up to 160mm, graphics cards up to
350, and power supplies up to 170mm in length.
The price comes out to just under $100 USD, so I'd call this a midrange case.
The two big features of the 340 are the tempered glass and RGB fans.
It has two 4mm tempered glass panels, one in front and one on the side, with the front
panel offset about 5mm from the front of the chassis to allow airflow into the fans.
It is open all the way around the edges, but it isn't a huge gap.
As we'll see in the benchmarks later, this does end up holding back system cooling a
little bit.
Both glass panels are tinted, with the front more heavily tinted than the side, and both
have a black border around the edge to hide the mounting hardware.
The side panel isn't mounted like most TG panels I've seen, but rather like old school
non-tempered-glass side panels with channels that allow it to slide into place and two
thumbscrews at the back of the case.
A super nice feature as a result of mounting the side panel like this is that it won't
fall off when you take out the screws and slide it back; it'll just rest on the bottom.
The front panel is also easily removable with four thumb screws on the interior, which you'll
need to do if you're going to replace the front fans or put in a radiator.
Because the 340 comes with three 120mm fans in the front, you get strong cooling performance
out of the box.
The 4th and final included fan is in the standard rear exhaust position, which gives it a typical
front-to-back airflow pattern.
We'll talk a bit more about the lighting effects in a bit, but looking at total air cooling
capacity, the CMT340 can fit two additional 120mm or 140mm fans on top, in addition to
the included three up front and one in the back.
If you're going for liquid cooling, it can fit a 360mm radiator up front, though you
will need to move the hard drive cage to its rear position to allow enough room.
On top, you can fit a 240mm radiator.
Despite being able to fit two 140mm fans, you won't be able to fit a 280mm radiator
because the motherboard is mounted too close to the top of the case and there's not enough
room front to back for the radiator to fit.
As for filters, the top includes a magnetic filter to keep dust from settling inside the
case and the power supply intake is also filtered, though it does require tipping the case on
its side to access.
The fans are powered and controlled with a small board mounted on the backside of the
motherboard tray, which is powered with a single Molex connector.
I'd like to see companies start using SATA power connectors for things like this instead,
since it's much more likely for someone with a modular power supply to only need SATA cables,
rather than Molex.
You can use the fan controller's built in RGB effects, cycling through them with a button
on the front panel, or you can plug it into your motherboard's RGB header if you prefer
running your own lighting effects or need to sync the case fans with other components.
If you go with motherboard control, you can actually plug in the RGB button header into
your motherboard to have that button act as a reset switch - that button is a repurposed
reset switch to begin with.
The built in RGB effects are actually pretty sweet.
There are 17 different styles including an "off" setting, and the LEDs do look very nice
behind the tinted glass.
The lighting is colorful, and not excessively bright.
They're subtle in a well-lit room, and importantly, they aren't blinding at night.
It's a nice balance, and altogether makes for one of the better looking cases I've reviewed.
The front I/O is composed of two USB 3 ports, microphone and headphone jacks, power and
hard drive activity LEDs, and the power button.
I'd just like to say I much, much prefer just having two USB 3 ports on the front like this.
When case manufacturers split it into one USB 3 and one USB 2, you have an extra cable
to deal with from the front panel and it makes the cables just that much more cluttered.
I mean, it is 2019.
I think we can start phasing out USB 2.
Looking at storage capacity, there are two removable 2.5" trays on the power supply shroud,
each held in place with a single thumb screw.
If you don't want to mount your SSDs where they're visible, you can move them to the
back of the motherboard tray where they mount vertically.
The hard drive cage comes with two trays, each of which can fit either a 3.5" or 2.5"
drive, bringing the total capacity to either four 2.5" drives or two 2.5" and two 3.5".
Unfortunately the cage has no rubber isolation grommets for the hard drives, but since it
uses drive caddies rather than hard mounting to the case, drive noise doesn't transfer
to the case all that much.
The drive cage can be positioned closer to the back to make room for a radiator at the
front of the case, though this will limit how much room you'll have for the power supply.
With the cage in the forward position, my 170mm modular power supply just barely fits,
and with the cage in the rear position you'll be limited to less than 150mm - a 140mm power
supply should fit nicely though.
If you won't be using a hard drive at all, the drive cage can be entirely removed to
make more room.
As for cable management, I love how many cable tie points they have on the motherboard tray.
I count 10 on the motherboard tray, another 7 toward the front, and they even included
two cable ties at the base.
There's also a large hole above the motherboard tray for the CPU power cable, another decently
sized opening in the power supply shroud, and two large routing holes at the front.
And there's plenty of space for cables as well; a little over half an inch directly
behind the motherboard tray and more than an inch toward the front.
Lack of grommets on the openings is a mark against them, but FSP otherwise did a fantastic
job with the cable management options in this case.
When it comes to assembly, the process of getting my test system into the case was pretty
easy for a compact mid tower like this.
FSP includes 8 power supply screws which you'll need for the way it gets mounted in this case,
17 SSD screws in case you lose one, 16 motherboard and hard drive screws, and 8 fan screws if
you'll be adding fans to the top of the case.
They also included some zip ties for the cables, though I always use velcro ties in my builds
instead.
The rear I/O shield for the motherboard popped into place without any trouble, and all the
motherboard standoffs are preinstalled so I simply dropped it in and added all the screws.
The graphics card installation is also very easy.
Remove the screws holding the expansion slot covers in, unscrew the bracket clamp, and
drop the GPU in.
I'm a bit torn on which style of mounting I prefer, with the screws outside the back
like this or with them inside as it is on most cases.
Both of them have their downsides, but for this case the exterior mounts work a bit better
since they allow the case to be a little shorter front to back.
Hard drive installation is about as simple as it can get.
Pull the drive tray out, pop the hard drive in, making sure the notches in the tray are
inserted into the drive's mounting holes, then slide it all back in place.
Easy and straightforward.
Installation of the power supply is a bit unique.
This is the first power supply mounting system I've seen like this, and I actually really,
really like it.
The supply doesn't mount directly to the back like in most cases, but rather mounts first
to a backplate, then the backplate mounts to the case.
This allows you to very easily install the power supply without needing to wrestle it
into position underneath the shroud - you just slide it in from the back.
You'll definitely want to install whatever modular cables you'll be using first, though,
since there's not a lot of room to maneuver underneath the shroud.
This setup also allows you to easily add or remove modular cables as needed, since you
can just slide the power supply out rather than completely remove it from the case.
My only complaint in this area is that the bumpers that the power supply rests on are
hard plastic rather than a soft rubber or foam for better isolation.
After managing the cables, this case comes out looking pretty clean.
I didn't even have to use any of the cable tie down points, since there was enough room
around the edges to hold everything in place and out of sight.
The cable routing holes are well positioned and allow all the front panel headers and
power connectors to be nicely organized on the front.
Even with a really busy build, the CMT340 makes cable management a breeze.
Now let’s look at the benchmarks.
My test bench is a Ryzen 5 2400G cooled by a Cryorig H7 Quad Lumi, the graphics card
is a GTX 1060 3GB from Asus, and the power supply is a Seasonic Prime AirTouch 850.
Load temps are recorded while running Prime95 and Unigine’s Superposition, and temperatures
are reported as deltas; degrees above ambient.
First we’ll look at noise from the case fans.
These measurements are taken with only the case fans running and everything else stopped.
There's an important note here: since the fans use a proprietary connector, you can't
control fan speed in this case.
They run at roughly 1200 RPM, which is a bit faster than what I'd use, but it's still a
decent balance between airflow and noise.
The main issue is, the fans will be running at the same speed whether the system is under
heavy load or completely idle, which puts the minimum noise level at 38.7 decibels.
Now here’s the overall noise chart at idle and load.
Because of the constant fan speed, the 340 does hit around 40 dB at idle.
Load noise level actually isn't that much higher since the case fans are still running
at the same speed, where it reaches just over 44 decibels, just behind the other cases I've
tested.
Here we'll look at the CPU temperatures.
This is a bit more interesting.
The idle temperature quite a bit lower than other cases at only 7.9 degrees.
However, the limited airflow rears its ugly head here with the 2400G hitting a 61.6 degree
delta.
It's not unsafe by any means, but the restriction caused by the front tempered glass panel being
so close to the intakes leads to a notable decrease in cooling performance for the processor.
A top-mounted AIO would probably work wonders here, since airflow through the case isn't
all the great.
As they say though, beauty is pain.
Things look a lot better on the GPU front.
Idle temperature is right in line with other cases I've tested, and the effect of poor
airflow is far less pronounced.
This is likely due to the fact that the graphics card can exhaust air directly out of the case,
rather than relying on the case fans to whisk away the heat.
This is one of very few situations where I think a blower cooled GPU would actually fare
better than an open cooler like this.
So the CMT340 is much more about appearances than objective performance.
And to be honest, it is a very good looking case.
The triple RGB fans in the front combined with the cool built in lighting effects, along
with fantastic cable management and nice styling, make this case a winner in the looks department.
That said, if you're going to be running an extremely high powered build with a hot GPU
and house fire CPU, this case is going to limit your overclocking potential unless you
choose components specifically for this case.
Namely, a liquid CPU cooler to mount at the top, and a graphics card with a blower cooler
to exhaust air out the back.
It's a small detail but I also wanted to mention that FSP packs the case in polyethylene foam
rather than Styrofoam.
This stuff way easier to deal with because Styrofoam spews all those little pellets everywhere,
while this foam... doesn't.
I would love to see more cases shipped like this.
If you're looking for a compact case that's easy to build with, easy to manage cables
in, and looks great all around, the FSP CMt340 is well worth a look.
Follow the link in the description to pick one up for yourself.
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I wanna hear from you.
What matters more to you, looks or cooling?
Let me know in the comments below!
Thanks for watching, I hope I helped, and I'll see you in the next video.
I am not a fan of cable management, and it's soooo nice when cases have enough room to
just shove all the cables into the edges.
I like how that's how we deal with cables, "just jam it wherever it'll fit bro".
Now the next step is wireless power inside computers.
Is such a thing even possible?
Yes it is.