Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Hardware Installation & Test Configuration
Interior
A small box containing accessories is located in one of the open 3.5" drive bays. Inside you will find zip ties, two motherboard standoffs, and a variety of screws. The case manual can be found in the PSU area in a plastic zip-lock bag.
Riotoro claims the CR500 features a "dual-chamber design." Although that may be technically correct, unlike the company's CR1080 mini-tower chassis, this case is not what you would consider a true dual-chamber design, lest we consider every case with a PSU tunnel as having such a design.
The interior of the CR500 is painted black to match the exterior of the case. The layout is extremely clean and rather spacious for a mid-tower case. There are three cable pass-through holes with rubber grommets in the motherboard tray and one in the top of the PSU tunnel. This chassis can be equipped with coolers as tall as 180mm and can accommodate multiple graphics cards. The specifications listed on the company website (and the box) state that the CR500 can only accommodate graphics cards up to 320mm in length without radiators or all-in-one coolers installed in the front of the chassis.
During testing, we found it possible to install a 240mm radiator with two 120mm fans and still have more than enough space remaining for long graphics cards. There are mounting locations for up to four 120mm fans; three in the front and one in the rear. The chassis ships by default with two red LED 120mm intake fans in the front and a single 120mm exhaust fan in the rear.
All-in-one coolers and radiators up to 240mm can be installed in the front of the chassis. Due to the fact that the two factory installed 120mm LED fans are mounted outside the frame, enterprising water cooling enthusiasts can use that design feature to their advantage in several ways. Need more space in the chassis' main component compartment? Clever system builders can utilize the factory-installed front-mounted fans by flush -mounting a bare radiator or all-in-one cooler to the inside of the frame. Need added cooling power? Leave the factory-installed 120mm fans in place and mount a radiator or all-in-one cooler with dual 120mm fans for a push/pull airflow configuration.
It should be noted that, as with many mid-tower ATX chassis, even though you can physically mount most all-in-one coolers in the front of the case, because of the fixed length of the tubing, some coolers might not be able to reach the CPU socket. Despite that limitation, these locations are ideal for mounting radiators for water-cooled graphics cards. A single 120mm AIO cooler can be installed in the rear fan mounting location over the CPU socket area.
The CR500 has four internal drive bays. The two mounting locations under the PSU tunnel can be used for both 2.5" and 3.5" drives. Behind the motherboard tray are two dedicated mounting locations for 2.5” SSDs, both of which utilize stamped steel mounting brackets that attach to the frame via thumbscrews.
Riotoro lists support for power supplies up to 180mm in length. During the review process we found that it was in fact possible to install power supplies up to 200mm long.
Test Configuration
| Drivers & Settings | |
|---|---|
| Chipset | Intel INF 10.1.1.42 |
| CPU | 3.8GHz (38x 100MHz) @ 1.2V Core |
| Motherboard | Firmware 7A78v17 (07/03/2017) |
| RAM | 16-17-17-36 |
| Graphics | Maximum Fan for Thermal Tests | AMD Radeon Crimson ReLive 17.9.1 |
MORE: Best Cases
MORE: All Case Content
TSMC founder says Intel has neither a strategy nor a CEO
30-year-old Pentium FDIV bug tracked down in the silicon — Ken Shirriff takes the microscope to Intel's first-ever recall
Cyberpunk 2077 update 2.2 claims to improve Arrow Lake performance by up to 33%, theoretically matching the Ryzen 7 7800X3D
