Introduction

What do you give the case-modder who has everything? Not easy, but perhaps the unusual Cooler Master Musketeer 2 System Dynamics Detector could fit the bill.

Cooler Master the company needs very little introduction -- they're known for their CPU coolers, cases and accessories amongst other things. The Musketeer 2 falls into the latter category, its main purpose being case embellishment.

The Muskeeter 2

The System Dynamics Detector refers to the three old-style analogue VU meters on the front panel. Two of them measure the volume levels on the right and left channels respectively, with the middle gauge displaying hard drive activity.

Analogue VU meters give the Musketeer 2 a cool retro look, like Nagra tape-recorders (well, a little bit at least).

On top of that, you get two sliding volume controls for the right and left audio channels and the VU meters illuminate in seven (7) different colours, user-selectable through a switch. You can even set the Musketeer 2 to auto-cycle through the colours, if you're feeling psychedelic. The VU meters themselves display levels from -20dB to +3dB and the hard drive activity gauge goes from 0 to 100%.

The whole lot is enclosed in a solid steel box, that you mount in a free 5.25" drive bay.  The Musketeer 2 weighs a good amount -- 800g according to Cooler Master -- so I was curious as to what caused the heft and opened up the enclosure.

Inside the Musketeer 2, there's plenty of free space and a sparsely populated circuit board. Oh well, must be the heavy-gauge steel then that accounts for the weight. My review unit came in black colouring but Cooler Master also caters for users with aluminium cases with a silver-coloured version of the Musketeer.

Installation

Installing the Musketeer 2 was easy enough, although I wasn't happy to have even more cables snaking through the case.  You need to connect a cable from the motherboard LED headers to the Musketeer 2, and then there's the sound VU meters to hook up as well. These are connected via a PCI backplane blanking plate with a stereo cable picking up the signal from the soundcard output.

This brings us to the first problem with the Musketeer 2: the sound metering and volume controls are only useful for stereo (two-channel) sound. As the users the Musketeer 2 is aimed at are likely to have 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound this is a strange design miss.

Cooler Master provides all the necessary cables for installing the Musketeer 2, bar one: a Molex power 12V DC splitter. In my and most enthusiast's systems, 12V Molex connectors are usually all taken. Easy and cheap enough to obtain yourself, but Cooler Master should include one with the Musketeer 2 nevertheless.

In use, the Musketeer 2 works as advertised. The needle indicators of the VU meters wiggle along to sound and hard drive activity, and you can create seven different kinds of unearthly glow from them by pressing a switch, which can be mounted either at the rear using up another PCI backplane, or at the front, taking up a 3.5" blanking plate. The red glow for the VU meters was a funny choice though, as the red needle indicators become invisible with that one selected.

I had a quick look at Cooler Master's original Musketeer, which according to their Web site displays voltage with one dial, sound pressure with another one, and temperature with the last one. On the original Musketeer, the sliders adjust voltage to fans, and thus their speed. Comparing the older Musketeer to version 2, I can't help thinking that the newer variant is much less useful. Apart from the stereo-only sound adjustment and metering, flicking between different colours for the meters is amusing -- the first twenty minutes or so.


Conclusion

The neat retro looks of the Musketeer 2 can't hide the fact that the device is ultimately of very little use to most users. And Cooler Master obviously knows that as well. But the goal, I guess, in producing such front panel is to cater to those who need something different to showcase their chassis. The Musketeer 2 definitely accomplished that. Case modders with a thing for neo-retro and with a 5 1/2 " bay to spare will find it hard not to be enticed by the Musketeer 2. However, most will find the pricetag of approx. US$50 a bit high for something with so little use. But then again its the cool factor you're paying for.