External Appearance
With 11 5.25" external drive bays and one 3.5" external bay at the top, the Stacker's size starts to become obvious. I've shown the front of the Stacker without the three drive bay covers that would hide the drive bay convertor. The convertor changes three external bay positions into four internal 3.5" HDD bay positions, with those positions cooled by a 120mm whisper-quiet fan.
The very top of the front facia houses six USB2.0 ports for connection to your mainboard, headphone output and line input speaker connectors, a powered FireWire400 port and the reset and power buttons. The review sample's HDD activity light is orange and the power light is blue.
You don't get a replacement standard drive bay cover for the top external floppy bay, a pain for those that aren't using floppy drives and want to block that opening off since it's not being used.
'CM Stacker' is embossed into the black, plastic top lip of the facia.
The drive bay convertors slide in through the front of the case, after you remove the requisite number of bay covers. The convertor cage comes in three parts. The main cage is flanked by a pair of mounting plates, to which come screwed the same mounts as Cooler Master supply for your other optical devices. The plates are dampened by four rubber grommets on each side, so as to reduce drive vibration noise. You slide the plates into the cage, then slide the cage into the front of the Stacker. More on the drive system later.
The drive bay covers are all black perforated mesh, with the main part of the cover a hard, black plastic. Disengaging them from the main Stacker chassis is hard work; they sit very snugly when in place and you need a screwdriver or deft, strong fingers to prise them free.
Let's look round the back.