Cooler Master TD500 Mesh: BLINDED by WHITE, great case, reviewed

TD500 Mesh Quick Summary

A quick summary: The CoolerMaster TD500 Mesh case has a cool looking polygonal mesh front which doubles as an air filter, allowing lots of air through the case but with a tiny bit more dust upkeep needed than with a separate filter design. However the less restricted air makes this case perform very well thermally, in the top of the charts, and handling up to E-ATX motherboards with both front and top 360 mil rad spots, it can easily fit the latest long GPUs too.

The design is striking, the angular TG cut side panel unique, and triple ARGB fans look good, though there’s no rear fan, USB ports are few, rear motherboard tray cable clearance is small, and the PSU cover is riveted in. Overall, it’s a solid choice for both thermals and good looks. 40s

TD500 Mesh: BLINDED by the WHITE, great case

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TD500 Mesh Features

The TD500 Mesh has both white and black versions, and lists for 100 us dollars, 95 pounds in the UK, 140 Canadian Pesos, and 170 Auzzie dollars, and this white mid-tower has pretty good availability, and comes with a 2 year warranty. Key features are the white design, with three ARGB 120 mil fans mounted outside, directly behind the single mesh full front intake, and the crystal cut custom TG panel side with both panels having captive screws.

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With clearance for super long GPUs up to 410 millimeters long, there’s also plenty of room for CPU air coolers and standard power supplies, though you can use longer PSUs by sacrificing the hard drive cage area. Measuring 49 centimeters long by 21 wide and 47 high, it weighs in at a hair under 7 kilograms, that’s just under 15 and a half pounds.

Inside the box the CoolerMaster TD500 Mesh comes with an accessory box with screw bags, cable ties and if your motherboard doesn’t do +5 volt ARGB, included is a small one-button ARGB controller with 14 presets which you can hook up to your reset switch. Since our older B360 board doesn’t have a 5 volt ARGB header, this will come in pretty handy.

The ARGB fans are compatible with major brand motherboards like ASUS, MSI, and ASRock; with the included cable it connects to normal ARGB, and there’s an included wire for Gigabyte boards too. And the TD500 Mesh mid-tower supports ATX, E-ATX, Micro-ATX, as well as Mini-ITX, but if you have a E-ATX board, be aware the extra width will cover the three rubber grommets for easy cable management.

Inside the CoolerMaster TD500 Mesh

Rear tray cutout is a nice wide 16.8 centimeters by 14.5 high. Unfortunately the CPU power cutout top left is narrow and stuck in the corner, so you’ll have to angle it up and wiggle it through. While it is possible to fit dual 8-pin through in a comb, you should probably do this first before anything else as it’ll be the only challenging part of the install.

The front is fairly easily yanked off by pulling it from the bottom, and even though you could do two 140 mil fans, the panel cutouts are only for 3x 120 mil fans, so a 240 or 360 will fit here, and with rad only, the GPU length limit would be 38cms, and in a push/pull configuration, it gets cut down to 35cms.

The wide open magnetic mesh filtered top also does 240 and 360 mil rads with support for 2x 140 mil fans, so you could probably squeeze in a 280 with the offset spacing design. The color matches the front gray, though it likely looks darker here, kinda wished they would have gone with white instead. If you’re shopping for an AIO, we recommend 240 or 360, as the 280’s once installed can be challenging to wire around, and occasionally have unexpected issues due to their width. This case only has 4.5cms clearance to motherboard components so you’ll probably have top connectors blocked by the rad fans at the very least.

Rear panel’s got the standard 7 PCI slots, no vertical GPU mount, and space for a 120 mil exhaust fan with 2cms vertical travel, though no fan comes installed here. We grabbed an all white MasterFan 120 Halo to fit here, and we like the Halo’s additional ring and side accents.

TD500 Mesh Side, Front panels

Side glass is 3 mils thick measuring 43 cm wide by 44.5 high, the glass has the angular ridges on the outside and the whole thing sits on the bottom lip with captive top screws, so putting it back in is really easy. The rear panel also has captive screws, and with 19 mils clearance for wiring, some areas of the tray here bulge reducing it to 15 mils, so be aware this can be a bit tight especially with added ARGB and fan wiring in the case.

The top I/O panel has a white LED power button, white hard drive access light, reset switch, HD audio jacks, and just two USB 3.2 Gen1 ports. Because it’s attached to the case and separate from the top, removing the front for cleaning is quite easy. But considering this case came out in 2020, we’re kinda surprised to not see a Type-C port here at least, and the dual USB may not be enough for some.

In addition, the power button… is not the usual feeling, it’s… OK. The front mesh acts as a filter, though it doesn’t stop as much dust as a dual layer front and filter combo, it does provide less resistance, so this trade-off allows for better airflow and better temps.

Again at the front, the lowest fan ditches the need for a super short Philips driver for interior screw removal by using these custom white pins. While we appreciate the aesthetics that went into this, getting out the center pin requires patience and don’t remove the pin shroud, as the end splays open in an X-pattern, and putting it back in takes a minute for each one. The holes these mount into are also smaller than normal, but normal sized holes are directly under them. Hmm, okay.

On the bottom the feet are rubber padded and there’s a PSU filter, which is basically just a square of white mesh held in by tabs, not really great in one of the areas which will need cleaning the most, requiring work to get it back in place. Some plastic rails allowing the filter to slide out would have been really appreciated.

Inside the PSU area, there’s a dual hard drive cage, and if you have a long power supply you can sacrifice this area by removing the closer side and taking out the trays to increase length from 18 to 29.5 centimeters if you really need it. The other side of the cage is riveted in place.

The riveted PSU cover has a whole cut out to show off your black PSU which we’ve covered, and on the top there’s two SSD mounting spots using a grommet and post plug design, and actually two more spots on the rear of the motherboard tray, but they only include grommets and posts enough for two SSDs, though you could half mount four SSDs I guess.

TD500 Mesh Temps, Build

Sound levels were measured at a 0.5 meter distance at default speed, great with this CoolerMaster TD500 Mesh, measuring an average of 38.5 decibels, very good. Temps were fantastic in the case scoring in the top bracket, and adding a rear exhaust fan barely lowered temps by a degree Celsius, though that’s within margin of error, so the airflow situation is near the best it can get already. You can check Gamers Nexus in-depth review on the temps, his team can spend far more time than we can on this aspect, and kudos to you guys!

For this build we used a matching MSI Gaming Arctic B360 with i3-8100, cooling handled with a new Hyper 212 LED turbo White edition. 32 gigs of HyperX Predator RGB DDR4 at 3200 megahertz is our memory, and storage is an XPG PCIe 500 gig m.2 drive and Seagate 6TB hard drive.

We’ve got an MSI GTX 1660 Ti at 24.5cm long installed, though the 2080 Super we have in studio easily fit with 7cms to spare, and that’s enough for a push/pull front AIO setup. This was tested with the FSP Hydro PTM Pro 850 watt modular PSU, thanks again to FSP.

Building in this case was very easy, and if you’re doing a rad up front that’s totally fine and will make finishing the build easy, but for those instant experts who demand top only installation, just be aware wiring the top motherboard headers with the rad and fans already installed there requires patience and a steady hand.

So how is the TD500 Mesh?

At the hundred dollar price point, the CoolerMaster TD500 Mesh does deliver a lot, with a futuristic angular design and interesting front panel that provides terrific airflow and has some great looking ARGB fans. There’s dual 360 AIO support, which you don’t find in many cases, and the glass side panel is unique and has captive thumb screws for super easy access.

Building in the case was a breeze, except for the aforementioned CPU 8-pin area which actually wasn’t too hard, and handles long GPUs no problem delivering really excellent temps with low noise. We’re really impressed with the finished result.

We like the huge magnetic filtered top, though we do wish it was white, with the 360 mil rad option which is a point over the MasterCase H500 which can only do up to 280, but that case also has swappable acrylic or mesh front, a handle for easy moving which we really loved, and a removable PSU cover too, along with a bottom rear plastic slide filter at about the same price. If you’re doing a full custom water loop, you may need the flexibility in the extra space that the MasterCase H500 provides.

Back to the TD500 Mesh, it has a good value for its price and three front ARGB does have a certain appeal, the lights are dazzling with a white interior, and modes for the fans were interesting and looked good, and the front has no wires for easy removal and cleaning. One note is that the reset switch on the top is kind of difficult to press, and it has some different effects, apart from that maybe we can change it once and never touch it again, just do it once or twice, so that it’s not that big of an issue.

Good value for its price

Just too bad there’s no rear exhaust fan, which is a bit disappointing for looks, though it doesn’t impact thermals more than about a degree. But I’d argue that if you’re picking this case it’s partially for looks, okay, mostly for looks, and not just thermals, so I’d be shopping for a fan for that spot immediately.

So CoolerMaster does offer the MasterFan MF120 Halo White Edition that’s ARGB for 22 bucks… so yeah, we grabbed one to complete the build. Wait, was that your plan all along? To bring the price down into the hundred dollar range and make a sale on an accessory? Hmm… well played, CoolerMaster, well played.

So apart from the very good things on the TD500 Mesh, and there are many, there’s a couple of places that need improvement, like the ghetto bottom filter that isn’t easy to remove, and the riveted PSU cover could use screws instead, to make a very customizable case.

In addition, planning a white build means that your black PSU will be visible, unless you use some thin magnetic whiteboard to cut to fit. While it did stick to the PSU, we used some thin 3M foam spacing to push it against the side and the result looks way better, a two dollar solution instead of white vinyl electrical tape which didn’t look good, or buying a white PSU which will run you around 85 bucks and up.

It’s a bit nit-picky, but the two extra SSD mounting spots without mounting hardware… I mean, if you have more than 4 drives… but the majority, note i said majority, of consumers won’t have this issue. Though it’s kinda like opening a bag of potato chips as a kid for the first time and seeing it’s just half full. But you still get the weight of the chips you paid for, i guess?
So this item is worth a mention, but not worth deducting any points.

Finally, the front I/O USB could use at least a Type-C, if not another couple of USB 3 ports. The MSI Sekira 100R, link up here, and Sharkoon Elite CA300T both feature Type-C along with 4 ARGB fans, coming in -just- above this price range, so this is a missed opportunity for future proofing.

However, CoolerMaster certainly has their supply chain on point, and where those cases may be challenging to find or not available in your area, there’s stock everywhere on this model. One of the best cases coming in at this price, research shows the others would be the Phanteks P400A RGB or the Be Quiet Pure Base 500 DX, so you have some other options. But perhaps not as stylish as this. 42s

Cheap white AIO to match?

As for the 120 Halo we liked the looks and it performed well, and it arguably looks better than the Sickleflow 120 ARGB White edition. The Hyper 212 LED Turbo White edition especially with the white front shroud looks really nice, but wish there was a refresh with ARGB, though the Hyper 212 Turbo White released around September 2019 and the Halo and Sickleflow ARGB whites in October and November 2020 respectively.

For the CM MF120 Halo, the 4 white only spindle LEDs light up the fan nicely, and it does light up the case top well, but white tends to drown out ARGB color a bit. Replacing both to make them match will cost you 40 bucks, nearly the same cost as the whole cooler.

Another option, is water cooling, and CoolerMaster doesn’t have white 240 or 360 AIOs, though it does have silver. Trying to find a decent looking white AIO we came across this Thermaltake Th240 ARGB a hair under 100 bucks, almost the same as a Hyper 212 Turbo white with two white ARGB fans, so that may be an option for you.

Overall, we’re… really impressed by this case, the design is great and we bought this case upgrade for our media PC with the white Gaming Arctic B360 motherboard. It’s lightweight with excellent room and temps, and if you decide to pick up a TD500 Mesh, shopping through our affiliate links will help us here with no extra cost to you. And follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at techspinreview.

We have more cases, hardware and tech reviews on the channel so be sure to check those out too. Good job to CoolerMaster for making the TD500 Mesh a case we’re excited to use, and we look forward to new cases from them not using the 500 number ha ha!

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