Cooler Master Launches MasterBox K500L

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The MasterBox K500L is a new mid-tower chassis from Cooler Master with practical internals and distinctive frontal styling that manages to avoid the cliches of its market segment.

In today’s highly saturated case market, making a new, compact mid tower stand out isn’t easy. At this point, everyone has basically converged on the same internal layout, hardware support, and cooling configuration. In this situation, polarizing styling can only help, as it’ll appeal to at least some amount of shoppers who might otherwise not even realize a product exists. We’re not saying the look of Cooler Master’s new MasterBox K500L is extremely polarizing, but it is different enough from the inoffensive fans-behind-glass motif that has become nigh ubiquitous.

Externally, the K500L adopts an angular, extruded frontal fascia with a geometric mesh section that covers two fans. A third fan is actually hidden behind the solid section above the mesh, but a vent between it and the angled top I/O panel provides for ample air intake. Moving past the front, the K500L loses its distinctiveness and becomes more of what we’ve seen before. The top panel has a large mesh cutout, and the left-side panel can be optionally had as a transparent acrylic sheet that is simply attached by four thumbscrews.

As mentioned earlier, the K500L’s internals comply with much of what the industry has converged on. The simple layout is split to two sections by a tunnel that covers the PSU (up to 180mm in length) and 3.5” drive cage, which fits two drives. The case fits motherboards up to ATX standard, graphics cards up to 400mm in length, and six 2.5” drives. There are seven expansion slots in total and no provisions for mounting a graphics card in a rotated orientation. As for cooling, the K500L can fit three 120mm fans or dual 140mm fans with a radiator at the front, dual 120mm fans at the top, and a single 120mm fan with radiator at the rear.

The Cooler Master MasterBox K500L is available in versions with a left-side panel constructed from either steel or acrylic. Both versions have an MSRP of $65.