Hardware Installation, Evaluation & Conclusion
The MasterCase Maker 5t includes mounting brackets, cable ties, and a rolled-up pack of various screws in a decorative metal tin. Cooler Master adds a cleaning cloth to a separate bag that contains assembly and warranty instructions.
Motherboard leads include a split PWR_LED connector, an HD Audio cable without any legacy AC 97 dongle, and two USB 3.0 cables.
The MasterCase Maker 5t infuriatingly uses both SATA and legacy ATA power connectors for the fan/LED control module and front panel accessory lights. This required me to fish through my modular cable kits to find an appropriate combination cable, as the alternatives were to run two cables, or to use only legacy ATA power with SATA adapters.
The MasterCase Maker 5t’s card support bracket doesn’t actually fit under a card, and its individual support dividers must be angled in from the sides. Long cards require it to be rotated 180°, but doing that in turn requires the individual dividers to also be flipped back to the correct orientation. Other than those minor inconveniences, hardware installation follows the steps outlined in our How To Build A PC.
Here’s how the MasterCase Maker 5t compares to other glass-paneled cases in today’s performance charts:
CM MasterCase Maker 5t
Corsair Crystal 570X
Phanteks Enthoo Evolv
*Shared on 3.5" tray **w/o Center Cage ***By 5.25" Adapter Tray ^Slot 1-4
With a total height exceeding 21” by a fairly large margin, I’m sure Cooler Master would love me to label the MasterCase Maker 5t a full-tower. But it doesn’t have full-tower features, and the height under the handle is only 20.5”. Thus, it’s a mid-tower with external fluff.
Test Results
Glass-paneled cases take a long time to warm up, but although the Crystal 570X has more glass, the MasterCase Maker 5t has slower fans. All of the cases in today’s comparison would function better with a larger cooler, and all are designed for liquid cooling. Still, our original configuration was designed to weed out poorly-ventilated cases, so to increase cooler size would be to lower our minimum cooling standard.
The MasterCase Maker 5t makes scant noise on its own, and also does a fairly good job of containing the noise of internal components.
The MasterCase 5t’s two intake and one exhaust fan are so much quieter than the three intakes of the Crystal 570X that it scores nearly 12% higher in overall performance, which is a comparison of cooling to noise.
Every glass-paneled case produces poor value, and the general direction has been that more glass panels bring even less value. That’s at least partly (and probably mostly) due to the cost of shipping glass and replacing panels that get broken before the buyer actually receives the package. Yet the MasterCase 5t bucks this trend by being priced higher than the Crystal 570X while having fewer glass panels. Cooler Master would likely credit the ultra-smooth metallic red paint of its interior panels for the bulk of its excess price, however, and there’s no denying that its extra weight means extra material went into its production.
The MasterCase Maker 5t has the best fit and finish of any case I’ve tested in a while, and it’s also a little sturdier than most premium cases. The convenience of tilt-down side panels is also far more important to me than the style of screw-on floating glass. Yet fan speeds that are a little low for our test leave me with an evaluation conundrum: How can I award a case that barely squeaked through our cooling evaluation? How can I not award the ATX Mid-Tower that I’d personally like most to own?
Fairness dictates that I put those thoughts in my verdict.
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