Cooler Master MasterBox 5 – Canada Model – Review

TECHNOLOGYX TEST BENCH

Our build today went fairly smooth with no major hiccups and the Masterbox 5 was easy to build with. If you like today’s build and wish to replicate it, feel free to check out our links to amazon by clicking any of the components below!

BUILD

As mentioned earlier our build today went fairly smooth. A few notable mentions of course but overall a pleasurable experience. We will break it down by component for ease of learning in the order of our installation:

Motherboard (inc. CPU & Ram) – The motherboard installation was easy just make sure you install all the proper stand offs before laying your board in place.

PSU – Remove the PSU cover using the thumbscrew at the back and installation will be a breeze, we recommend leaving the PSU cover off under you are done all your cable routing and installations. This is just to keep the most space open for your hands in your chassis.

VGA – No issues with the VGA although Cooler Master has switched from thumb screws to plain screws which makes installation a little more tool oriented. Keep in mind your VGA length will be limited if you choose to use the 3.5″ bay in certain positions as well as a front mounted radiator.

Cooling- Choosing the Nepton 240M limited our options of placement to the only available, the front. In doing so we had to remove the 3.5″ bay, we had the option to move it over and it would have fit but we didn’t want to restrict the airflow. If we had used the fan bracket we could have mounted it above the drive bays creating a better direct path airflow but we wanted to play around with the modular abilities of the case.  As you can see the set up fit quite nicely. Remember you always have the option to go with a 120mm radiator on the back panel to keep the front panel to fans only. Housing both 120mm and 140mm fans at the front.3.5″ Bays – As mentioned we removed the 5.25″ drive bays and substituted it with the 3.5″ bays. this made for easy access to SSD and allows room for a second There are two screws at the rear that go in from the back but there is no included bracket to secure the bay to the front panel even though there are screw slots available. Keep in mind if you do upgrade and purchase the fan bracket to go up to a 360mm cooler you will have to put the 3.5″ drives on the floor level left of your radiator. This drive fits in all spots except E.

2.5″ SSD – This Single storage SSD fits in A,B,C, on top of the 3.5″ drive bay (D) or E. As soon as you choose to use a liquid cooling system on the front panel the SSD position is limited to E or on top of the 3.5″ drive on the floor setting.

CABLE MANAGEMENT

This part of the build was a dream. We had not one issue with cable management and are happy as could be. The only improvement we would recommend for this is to add rubber grommets to the pass-throughs to add a little more cleanliness and not being able to see everything on the backside. An abundance off tie-downs makes it easy as well as the lipped edges keep your cables in place.