Whether it's a super-cheap chassis or one of the best PC cases, almost every case on the market is some kind of rectangle. Sure, we've seen some weird cases that were circular or triangular and there have been some wild case modes. But there's never been anything sold by a major brand that looks quite like Cooler Master's upcoming Shark X PC.
Based on a 2019 mod called Leviathan by Inony, the Shark X looks a robotic shark that's jumping up out of the water. It's standing up and curved forward so a hexagonal, Cooler Master style RGB base holds it in place. A mini ITX motherboard and other relatively small components live in the shark's head, which is illuminated with three RGB eyes and giant RGB rings that hold its front fins in place.
You might expect Shark X to sell as an empty case that you can fill with parts of your choosing, but Cooler Master plans to release it as a full system sometime later this year. The Shark X will use a 120mm AIO CPU cooler, an SFX power supply and a Wi-Fi antenna in the back fin. Other than that, the company hasn't yet disclosed what components it plans to use so we can't tell you exactly how much RAM the shark has.
Senior Editor Sarah Jacobsson Purewal had a chance to view Shark X at Cooler Master's CES suite and said she was extremely impressed with the design. It looked very sturdy, colorful and like a real product, she noted. This is definitely one case you don't want to put under desk.
Sneaker X
If the old woman who lived in a shoe had to move to a PC chassis, Cooler Master's Sneaker X would be it. Based on another prior mod, the Sneaker X looks like exactly what it's name implied: a running shoe.
As with the Shark X, the Sneaker X is going to be sold as a full system, not a bare case. We don't know much about the specs, other than that it will use an SFX power supply, mini ITX motherboard and up to a 360 mm radiator.
Sarah saw the Sneaker X in person and said it also looks intriguing, but given that it has a rectangular bottom, she found it much less impressive than the Shark X.
Cooling X: Plain But Designed for Thermals
The most standard system Cooler Master announced at CES is codenamed Cooling X, which is set to release in Q2 of 2023. Spec-wise, it's already a bit behind, with last-gen components from AMD, including the Ryzen 9 5950X and AMD Radeon 6800XT.
Other specs include up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, up to 4TB of m.2 SSD storage and Cooler Master's own V850 SFX Gold power supply. One has to wonder (or even hope) that Cooler Master might change the specs to something newer before release.
What Cooler Master is pushing with the Cooling X, unsurprisingly, is the cooling solution for the parts. Both the CPU and GPU are liquid-cooled, and the coolant runs through the side panels, which have 21-fin heatsinks. Liquid goes from the radiator to the left side panel, the pump, the CPU, the GPU, the right panel, and back to the radiator to repeat the process.
The chassis echoes elements of the company's iconic Cosmos case, with handles on top, but is much smaller, measuring 14.63 x 10.47 x 5.88 inches. The company says the system is small enough to carry around (though at 38.1 pounds, that's debatable), or at least fit on top of your desk.
In Q3, Cooler Master will have a few more PCs, including the AIOX NUC (also a code-name), using an Intel NUC with a 12th Gen Intel Core i9 and a custom cooler made by Cooler Master. This isn't the first time we've seen Cooler Master experiment with NUC: it suggested it would eventually launch the KFConsole with the NUC 9 Extreme Compute Element and a Core i9-9980HK, but that never materialized.
Mini X
There's also a Mini X, which has side panels that can be swapped. This one also uses ITX motherboards and SFX power supplies, and Cooler Master is confirming more recent components, like Nvidia RTX 4000 and AMD 7000-series GPUs here. We dig the retro colors, similar to what we saw recently on Dell's updated G15.
