Page 3 – Physical Look – Inside
After removing the side panel, you can see the internal design of the Cooler Master MasterBox 540. To be consistent with the exterior, the interior of the case is also painted matte black. The paint is sprayed evenly inside the chassis. At bottom of the case, there is a power supply chamber with ventilation holes on top. Not only is it designed to shelter the power supply, but the chamber is also the place for you to put up to two 3.5" HDDs or two 2.5" SSDs. The air for the power supply chamber can come into the case through the dust filter-protected ventilation holes at the front of the case directly. If your computer is fully loaded with fans, graphics cards, and long radiators, fresh air can be pumped by the fans of up to 360mm radiators into the chassis through the air intakes at the front panel, hit the graphics card, and be expelled out through the exhaust grille at the top panel. If the user only plans to use a small radiator or just a CPU heatsink with the top ventilation grille covered, the hot air can be expelled out through the rear exhaust grille on the back panel. Note the CPU heatsink clearance for this product is 165mm, which is good, but not great.
As a mid-tower that pushes the size envelope, the Cooler Master MasterBox 540 can support regular ATX motherboards, and of course, smaller boards such as mATX and mITX. I noticed all the risers were screwed on to the tray already from the factory. Users do not need to install the required risers according to the size of motherboard that will be used. After bolting the motherboard into position, the heatsink or water cooler block can then be easily installed and removed thanks to the big rectangular opening on the tray.
From the above photo, you can see there is a Cooler Master SickleFlow 120 ARGB 120mm fan from the factory on the case’s rear exhaust opening. This is a 4-pin PWM ARGB fan specified that can run as low as 650 RPM to up to 1800 RPM. If the user wants to use an all-in-one water cooling system, it requires an extra step to install the radiator directly onto the chassis, which means removing the preinstalled fan. If the all-in-one water cooling system requires the radiator to be mounted on the top panel, the removable top panel can be very handy. The user can remove the top panel before installing any cooling equipment on it. The benefit is to have unlimited working space to mount your components.
For the Cooler Master MasterBox 540, the power supply unit needs to be mounted at the bottom of the case. In order to guarantee the cooling performance of PSU, the chassis is raised about 22mm off the ground, and there are slots to accommodate the fan in the PSU. Inside the PSU chamber, four nubs with foam pads at the top elevates the PSU up about 4mm to further reduce the airflow resistance to the power supply cooling air. The grille on the bottom also has an externally removable dust filter pre-installed, such that the quantity of dust sucked into the case is reduced. As you can see from the above photo, along with the grille on top of the PSU chamber, a rectangle opening on the side and two trapezoid shape openings on the top of the PSU chamber are present for better ventilation. The expansion slot covers of this chassis feature stamped holes for the same purpose, but I would prefer for it to be a solid piece for better dust prevention, since I really doubt it makes a significant difference to just have several small holes here.
From the above photo, it can be seen the case has openings for up to three 120mm fans or two 140mm fans mounted in the front. For cooling performance, this case can accommodate decent cooling solutions. For example, you can have a 360mm radiator mounted on the top panel, and if you somehow have another 360mm radiator, that can go on the front too, haha. That aside, you can really have a lot of fans installed. If you really want some fancy looking cooling solution, three ARGB fans can go behind the front panel. The lightly tinted tempered glass side panel will allow the light to be emitted through.
To keep the computer components clean, the whole front panel can also be easily removed such that the user can get access to the front dust filter for cleaning. Note the RGB LED strips in the front panel are powered through a pogo connector, so there is no need to worry about unplugging and plugging any connector when popping off the front panel. The case can fit graphics cards up to 410mm in length with the front fan mounted. For those long and heavy graphics cards, there is no GPU holder for additional support.
Upon removing the right side panel, you will see the other side of the lower chamber and the motherboard tray. Two 3.5" HDD trays are located to the left side of the power supply area for easy installing and removing of the hard drives. For the 2.5" drives, you can have maximum four of them, with two mounted on the 3.5" HDD trays, and the other two mounted on the back of the motherboard tray. Regarding cable management, between the motherboard tray and the right side panel, the room for cable routing is about 20mm, which is not a lot but enough to use. Furthermore, the I/O connector cables are pretty much the same as what you could find from any other cases. According to the above picture, there is no Velcro strap provided from factory, which means we need to use zip ties for cable management. By the way, there are three long openings with rubber grommets to route cables. There is no need to worry about the safety of the cables or your fingers during installation thanks to these grommets.
Generally speaking, the interior design of the Cooler Master MasterBox 540 is very good. All of the components you need for building a computer can be nicely accommodated and kept cool. It is also nice to see standardized ARGB connectors and a controller is included. The paint job quality of the interior is also good. More importantly, there are tons of room to mount large radiators, and there are big openings to allow easy connections between the PSU and the motherboard.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Outside
3. Physical Look - Inside
4. Installation and Conclusion
