Cooler Master’s MasterCase H500P Is All About RGB & Keeping Things Tidy

It amazes me the selection of cases available today. I don’t think I know of a single company that makes the venerable beige box anymore (that’s not a challenge to go find one, either). Cooler Master has refreshed its range of chassis designs, including a $50 one with a tempered glass panel.

The latest one to launch is the H500P, and it’s all about keeping things cool, hidden, but at the same time, filling a room with the sweet, sweet spectral onslaught that is RGB lighting. The front panel is dominated by two very large fitted 200mm RGB fans, which come with their own leads to be hooked up to any RGB lighting system the user wants, including ASUS Aura, Gigabyte Fusion, MSI Mystic, and ASRock RGB. The catch is that you will need an RGB controller of some kind, as the case does not come with one.

The side panel is gray-tinted tempered glass, so you can show off the inside of your build. A nice little addition is a vertical mounting position for your graphics card, so you can show-off that triple fan monster of a GPU. You will need a PCIe riser cable in order to make use of this though.

The PSU and underside has a large shroud to keep drive bays and cable management tucked away and out of sight. This creates the illusion of a much cleaner system, as long as you take the time to wire things up properly. On the back side, there are additional shrouds to cover up cable routing, and the back side of the motherboard tray where the heatsink mounts are usually found. This seems a bit odd, as the reverse side is not visible, although, it will cut back on the amount of wires that will get caught and possibly pinched when closing the system up.

There is plenty of room for additional fans, including support for 3x 120/140mm fans on top, or 2x 200mm fans. The same is available on the front, but there are two 200mm fans pre-installed already. On the rear is the normal exhaust fan for mounting a 120/140mm fan. For liquid cooling, the top can hold anything up to a 360mm radiator, 55mm thick, while the front can take most standard radiator thicknesses.

Expansion is somewhat limited, but with optical drives fading into obscurity, and a bigger emphasis on SSDs, space for storage isn’t such an issue. With that said, the H500P can hold 2x 3.5″ drive bays under the shroud, 2x 2.5″ drive mounts on the reverse of the motherboard tray, and an optional bracket can be installed if you need a 5.25″ drive bay. Motherboards from Mini-ITX, up to a 12″ E-ATX board are supported.

The exclusion of a riser cable does make the vertical GPU mount optional, rather than a feature, so it’s an extra cost to consider. Most motherboards these days will come with RGB headers, so the lack of an RGB controller isn’t too much of a concern, but if you plan to give an old system a new look, you will need your own controller.

The MasterCase H500P is on sale now for around $150, and you can check out the full specs over at Cooler Master’s site.