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Cooler Master Masterbox 5 Lite doesn't cool

smaky

Hi, first of all, I believe that is the case proper name, It's actually was a Cyberpower pre-build but is now repurposed to my youngest's Covidschool/gaming PC. So, has anyone else had problems with this case having hideous airflow? I'm personally blaming this cases design for the death of my MSI 1050ti Aero GPU, a 4 year old card which never saw games more intensive than Rocket league, CS:GO, PUBG or Dayz and which was actually part of the original system in this case, in fact only the HDD, CPU and GPU remained from the original system in there. But I digress, this case has IMO, no cooling, the original system had only one exhaust fan at the rear, so a -px flow was bringing in dust and crud from every hole (and there aren't many) it could and it was like this for 2 years, I added 2 fans to the front to pull in air, It's then that I noticed the flaw with this case, everything rear or the front cover is fine, a joy in fact, this is a very easy case to work in and as you see in the pics, the GPU is now mounted vertically thanks to a Phanteks GPU mounting kit which in this case DOES NOT require any cutting of the material between the PCI slots as there isn't any on this chassis and with this mount the GPU is 3" back from the side panel so the GPU can breath (the 1050ti was in there till last week). THE PROBLEM IS THE FRONT PANEL, In that although there are 2 filtered slots for air to come in, the top one consist of (and I counted) 22 of the tiniest holes in the filter panel possible, approx 8 squared mm assisted by a filtered gap at the lower edge of approx 15mm X 120mm (kinder surprise egg for scale), and this was where 2 x 120mm fans where trying to draw air into, needless to say, I always ran with the case front off from then, and stability and temps dropped almost 30'C, and this is no super system, just an FX6300, I'd upgraded the CPU cooler from the stock after about 3 months and that resolved a lot of the hanging issues I was having, but the real story is that this case FRONT PANEL is a disaster, and I'm hoping that somebody knows of a mesh option to fit these cases??? as I don't really want to start hacking at this tinted perspex panel to much.

 

I've added some pics of the case and the gaps I spoke of and how she looks when you have to run her up.

 

And the specs...

CPU...AMD FX6300

GPU...Gigabyte GTX 1660 super (RIP MSI 1050ti aero)

RAM...16GB (4x4gb) 1600Mhz DDR3 Corsair Vengance

MB......Gigabyte 970A-UD3P 

PSU....Thermaltake 600W (caution as these will not run Corsair AIO RGB due to the lack of 3.3V supply on SATA power line (5th wire) and this is the reason this PSU ended up in this system)

SSD....500 GB Kingston

HDD....2TB WD Blue

Fans....Front 2 x Corsair ML140, rear Stock Cooler Master 120mm

Braided cable extensions from Reaper Cables

Wobbly head robot from McDonalds happy meal last week which shows when there is airflow in the case with a slight bobble of the noggin (if you are interested).

 

I think I must add this, there is a 6" gap between the rear of the case and the wall so hot air is not trapped there and there is a window 2' to the left of the image always ajar. Also PSU is in normal config, sucking from the bottom and exhausting to the rear.

 

In the last 2 pics the holes I referenced earlier are shown looking square onto them so there is no more than you see for air to get in.

 

Link to CM page: https://www.coolermaster.com/catalog/cases/mid-tower/masterbox-lite-5/

 

In the clearly sponsored sales blurb video the fans are fitted in front of the chassis, I did this first time, 30 seconds later they were removed and put in from behind the panel because in that config you have 3mm between the front of the lower fan and the front panel and from experience, those fans were howling with complaints of air starvation, moving them back did quieten them down a little, but this is still a loud system because of them always running max rpm (I am changing this soon), But as you see in the vid, there are no vents on top or either side panel and the star of the show doesn't even fit the window panel back on while the system is running because if he did the the screams of starved fans would soon overwhelm his soundguys ears and that card would be buried alongside mine.

 

So the conclusion is that Cooler Master murdered my beloved 1050ti with poor design. There needs to be a serious debate on whether they should stop selling this as I feel that many unsuspecting budget case buyers wont notice this till it's too late, I do note that the MB511 for example (and there are more in there range) is the same basic chassis, but they have ventilated the roof and increased airflow through the front, could the solution be to take this front IO and panel and just clip it onto the MB5L chassis??? But at what cost??? and you still have no roof vents. If I was reviewing this case It would get a solid 1 star, not for look, size, workability or compatability, they would all be up in the 4/5 star area, but the airflow is so dismal that all those stars are ripped away to reflect that this should be called the Oven Master Masterbake 5 lite.

 

 

As an added note for the keen eyed, you may have noticed the ML140 RGB fans (from an AIO fitted to another system) in what is an AM3+ system (no MB RGB support), this has been gotten around by using a Corsair lighting node pro and fan controller plugged into one of the 3 USB headers this MB has, in addition to the fans and as an experiment I added a home made RGB light strip (5V RGB 3 wire, this is important) which consists of 3 rows of 8 RGB leds and sit top and either sides of the case window, 8 RGB leds in a row for 2 reasons, firstly, Icue will recognise them as 3 SP fans (to be setup in ICue) plugged into channel 2 of the Node Pro and secondly I had 27 RGB leds left over from another project  and 9 per row just looks wrong when you're running the Icue profiles as none of their kits are made with 9 leds per item.

 

In true Linus fashion I seem to have drifted off topic, but I think in one way or another all is relevant, so thank for reading and if you do know of a standard front panel swap with more airflow for this case then please share.

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The Masterbox Lite is notorious for not having good airflow. Any case without good ventilation for their fans to draw air from will never suffice as a gaming PC, but most case makers in 2017-2019 disregarded this. 

 

The Masterbox Frame is a standard though across Coolermaster's lineup. You can modify your existing front panel by cutting holes or vents in it, or actually buy a Masterbox MB500 panel and install that for more airflow. @LukeSavenije successfully completed this swap but I cant find the post about it.

"Put as much effort into your question as you'd expect someone to give in an answer"- @Princess Luna

Make sure to Quote posts or tag the person with @[username] so they know you responded to them!

 RGB Build Post 2019 --- Rainbow 🦆 2020 --- Velka 5 V2.0 Build 2021

Purple Build Post ---  Blue Build Post --- Blue Build Post 2018 --- Project ITNOS

CPU i7-4790k    Motherboard Gigabyte Z97N-WIFI    RAM G.Skill Sniper DDR3 1866mhz    GPU EVGA GTX1080Ti FTW3    Case Corsair 380T   

Storage Samsung EVO 250GB, Samsung EVO 1TB, WD Black 3TB, WD Black 5TB    PSU Corsair CX750M    Cooling Cryorig H7 with NF-A12x25

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1 minute ago, TVwazhere said:

@LukeSavenije successfully completed this swap but I cant find the post about it.

maybe I should make one of those... give me a couple minutes

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I'm going to look for this front panel right now, thanks guys.

 

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5 minutes ago, smaky said:

I'm going to look for this front panel right now, thanks guys.

 

https://www.cmstore.eu/spare-parts/masterbox-mb500-front-panel/

"Put as much effort into your question as you'd expect someone to give in an answer"- @Princess Luna

Make sure to Quote posts or tag the person with @[username] so they know you responded to them!

 RGB Build Post 2019 --- Rainbow 🦆 2020 --- Velka 5 V2.0 Build 2021

Purple Build Post ---  Blue Build Post --- Blue Build Post 2018 --- Project ITNOS

CPU i7-4790k    Motherboard Gigabyte Z97N-WIFI    RAM G.Skill Sniper DDR3 1866mhz    GPU EVGA GTX1080Ti FTW3    Case Corsair 380T   

Storage Samsung EVO 250GB, Samsung EVO 1TB, WD Black 3TB, WD Black 5TB    PSU Corsair CX750M    Cooling Cryorig H7 with NF-A12x25

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OK, I've scanned the CM website and looked at all the case fronts and front IO panels and think that I may have answered that question in my first post, it seems that the MB5L is the only case that uses that specific front IO panel (I am probably wrong) the others look similar but are of a slightly different shape and I think the panels may not seal if just swapped without the front IO, so it may require both of these...but the cost, would it just not be cheaper to buy the whole case rather than just the front panel and IO? Which after I toss this deciding coin may be the route I go.

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it doesn't seal the io, it only blocks it for larger USB devices and alike... you can still fit something smaller like a dongle, and it doesn't really seal the top, but it does help and fits without replacing the io

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