Cooler Master Shows Off Limited Edition Sneaker and Shark Chassis Designs

Cooler Master’s has announced a variety of rather, uh, unique new products as part of its 30-year anniversary celebration. This includes a new case that looks like a gigantic athletic shoe dubbed “Sneaker X”, and an even more outrageous “Shark X” chassis. While the shoe case is listed as being available for pre-order in Q3 of this year, the shark chassis is only listed as “possibly” coming. You might not want to get your hopes up.

The Sneaker X case, which is bigger than it looks in photos, is a production version of a concept first created for the company’s 2020 Case Modding World Series. It was built by a modder named JMDF and won Best Art Direction in last year’s contest. In a video showcasing the modder’s work, you can see it is a very high-end production, complete with a custom-built hardline liquid cooling system. There’s plenty of photos of the worklog as well. The craftsmanship appears to be top-notch, and if you thought (like we did) it was some kind of mATX or ITX chassis, it’s not. The spec chart JMDF listed in the above links shows it uses a full-blown ATX Z390 motherboard, and a GTX 1060 GPU, so it does accommodate decent hardware, though it’s probably not the best chassis for your next RTX 3090 Ti build just because it looks pretty cramped inside the shoe.

In its livestream announcing the Sneaker X, Cooler Master noted that the Sneaker X case is designed for sports and fashion enthusiasts. Despite being marketed to what some would consider a non-hardcore fanbase, the case is actually capable of housing plenty of powerful parts, according to Cooler Master, including an AIO liquid cooler. Though the JMDF concept case included hardline cooling, we can’t spot the same type of tubing in the production version. Using the same cooling system would make the shoe more difficult to produce at scale and limit its audience. Cost is certainly a factor, given that the Sneaker X made by JMDF used to be listed on the company’s CMOD X site for $3,999. Cooler Master’s version will be available for pre-order by Q3 of 2022, with price and availability TBD.

The Shark X chassis is a bit more mysterious, as it’s a copy of a Case Mod World Series Winner named Leviathan. Cooler Master describes Shark X as a “limited edition scratch build,” which means the case being used was made “from scratch” as opposed to being a modified Cooler Master chassis. Like the Sneaker mod, the Leviathan used to be for sale on the CMOD X website for a hefty sum of $5,699 (it’s 404 now), according to Dotesports. In its livestream Cooler Master would only say that it would come with “top of the line specs” to match its unique design. The stream said it would “possibly” launch in Q4 of this year, so we’ll believe it when we see it.

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