Cooler Master MasterCase H100 Review (Page 3 of 4)

Page 3 - Physical Look - Inside

As I have previously mentioned, the sole side panel is located on the left side of the Cooler Master MasterCase H100. This allows you to get into your case. The side panel is relatively sturdy due to its small size. Otherwise, the first thing we are greeted with is not the internal layout, but rather a vertical steel bracket. This is where you can mount an additional two 2.5" drives, upping the count of total possible storage options to three 2.5" and one 3.5", or four of the smaller sized drive. This sort of mounting capability is really great to see in such a small case. This bracket is held onto the rest of the steel frame with four screws, so you will need to remove this as well to actually get inside.

With the bracket removed, you can see we have a pretty open chassis design, though this is not too surprising for such a small box. In the middle, we have the four mounted risers for your mITX motherboard. There is no other space for really anything else, as the power supply would mount on top of the motherboard, at least from this perspective. We do not really get a clear view of the bottom drive mounting options here, but from what it looks like, larger 3.5" drives should still have enough clearance with bottom mounted graphics card. This should still be kept in mind when you select components, in case you pick a thick but short graphics card. Otherwise, you can see that the top does not have any mounting options for cooling, which would have been nice to see. With such a small case, having these extra mounting spots would be helpful while keeping the components under control, at least in terms of temperature.

At the front, you can see we have a single large 200mm fan for intake. From the sticker, this is the Cooler Master MasterFan MF200R RGB, which is rated to spin at 800RPM while producing airflow of 90CFM and air pressure of 0.88mmH2O. According to Cooler Master, this fan has a noise level of 28 dbA and a mean time to failure of 175,000 hours. Otherwise, this is a voltage-controlled fan, so only a 3-pin fan header connection is attached. Finally, a four-pin RGB header is also connected to the fan to bring you some nice rainbow lighting, as we will see later on. If you do not want this large fan, or want to utilize the front area for liquid cooling, you can mount a single 120mm or 140mm radiator, though this can affect your other component clearances, including the power supply and video card.

The other thing to note here are the case cables, which include the typical front lighting and button pins, a USB 3.0 header, an HD audio connection, and the aforementioned fan connections. Cooler Master also includes a SATA powered RGB controller to control the lighting if you have a non-RGB enabled motherboard. This can also be connected to the reset button to utilize the reset button for controlling the lighting. As we mentioned previously, there is no cabling area as the other side panel does not come out. Therefore, we will see how clean I can keep my build when we get into our installation on the next page.


Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Outside
3. Physical Look - Inside
4. Installation and Conclusion