Welcome back to Techspin, and we’re testing the Cooler Master HAF 500, it’s an ATX case with a mesh front, 2 huge 200 millimeter ARGB fans and it’s perfect for a high-end build with a long GPU. It’s based on the previous H500 lineup with great airflow and one big difference, it has a removable top panel for easy AIO installation.
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Quick Summary on the Cooler Master HAF 500
The Cooler Master HAF 500 is a really solid tempered glass side panel case with huge dual 200 millimeter ARGB fans sitting behind a mesh front, and a 120 mil ARGB at the back. With 410 millimeter clearance for GPUs, it supports the latest RTX 40 series long GPUs so you’ll have no problems, and supports 280 and 360 mil radiators front and top, with a 10 Gigabit Type-C USB 3.2 Gen2 in the front I/O.
Top AIO installation is way easier with the removable top panel, gaining access to top corner motherboard wiring, but working vertically, you’ll run into the issue of how to support this above. The PSU cover is removable, but can be tricky to remove with front I/O cables connected; and the tray cutout is cramped to run PSU cables through. Some small points on an otherwise great product. The Cooler Master HAF 500 is a very good, spacious and easy-to-build-in case.
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HAF 500 Specs, Design
The Cooler Master HAF 500 is comes in white or this black, with availability and pricing varying by region, list price on AmazonUS is $170 dollars, on sale for $153, but we picked ours up for about $110 dollars paying just 3400nt here in Taiwan.
Cooler Master HAF 500
US $153 UK £147
CA $165 AU $199
SG S$— SA SAR550
NL €144 AE AED1480
PL PLN 2250 SE 1495kr
JP ¥23770 IN ₹–
TWD $3400
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Handling E-ATX, the standard ATX, Micro ATX, ITX and SSI CEB sized boards, the Cooler Master HAF 500 has a removable cable cover to accept wider motherboards. A tempered glass side panel with a top loading design sits on the bottom ledge and snaps in at the top, with a rear screw to keep everything secure. GPU clearance is 410 millimeters to the front and the case opening here is wider at 424 to make installation easier, with CPU cooler clearance at 167 and PSU length at 180 millimeters.
Cooler Master HAF 500 PC case
E-ATX, ATX, Micro ATX, ITX and
SSI CEB motherboards
GPU clearance to front: 410mm
Side opening length: 424mm
CPU 167mm
PSU 180mm
The case is 516 millimeters long by 224 wide and 510 high, that’s 20.3 inches by 8.8 and 20 inches high. Weighing in at 9.5 kilograms or 20.9 pounds, it comes with zipties, a screw bag and a manual.
Cooler Master HAF 500 PC case
516mm long / 20.3″
224mm wide / 8.8″
510mm high / 20.0″
9.5 kg / 20.9 lbs
HAF 500 Mobo Compatibility, Dimensions
Handling E-ATX, the standard ATX, Micro ATX, ITX and SSI CEB sized boards, the Cooler Master HAF 500 has a removable cable cover to accept wider motherboards. A tempered glass side panel with a top loading design sits on the bottom ledge and snaps in at the top, with a rear screw to keep everything secure. GPU clearance is 410 millimeters to the front and the case opening here is wider at 424 to make installation easier, with CPU cooler clearance at 167 and PSU length at 180 millimeters.
Cooler Master HAF 500 PC case
E-ATX, ATX, Micro ATX, ITX and
SSI CEB motherboards
GPU clearance to front: 410mm
Side opening length: 424mm
CPU 167mm
PSU 180mm
The case is 516 millimeters long by 224 wide and 510 high, that’s 20.3 inches by 8.8 and 20 inches high. Weighing in at 9.5 kilograms or 20.9 pounds, it comes with zipties, a screw bag and probably a manual which I can’t find right now.
Cooler Master HAF 500 PC case
516mm long / 20.3″
224mm wide / 8.8″
510mm high / 20.0″
9.5 kg / 20.9 lbs
With a removable drive cage for two hard drives or SSDs, there’s 2 additional spots behind the motherboard which use a screw peg into the drive then push into the rubber grommet design. The tray cutout is 208 millimeters wide by 145 high, and there’s 28 millimeters at the rear for cable management, with three rubber grommets for cable pass-through. The top of the motherboard tray lip has 2 small wiring cutouts that would be difficult to use but are made easier because the top panel is removable.
Cooler Master HAF 500 PC case
Cutout: 208w x 145h / 8.1” x 5.7”
Rear wire clearance 28mm / 1.1”
Cooler Master HAF 500 Fan, AIO Capability
The Cooler Master HAF 500 comes with these front dual 200 millimeter ARGB fans, this also supports two 140 mil fans, or a 240, 280 or 360 mil radiator, and the exact same for the removable top, which has a spacious 55 millimeters from the top to the motherboard edge.
The rear has a color matched 120 mil ARGB fan, this area has no vertical travel but clearance above and below. The last included fan is on the top of the drive bays, an angle adjustable fan with no lighting, to assist GPU cooling.
Cooler Master HAF 500
Front: 3x 120, 2x 140mm, 2x 200mm
240, 280, 360mm AIO
Top: 3x 120, 2x 140mm, 2x 200mm
240, 280, 360mm AIO
Top clearance to mobo: 55 mm
Rear: 1x 120mm fan (no travel)
HDD bay top: 1x 120mm
The case I/O is top center, with a 10 gigabit USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, dual USB 3.2 Gen 1 should be 5 Gigabit speed, and an audio combo jack. And a square reset/ARGB button, and a Cooler Master shaped white LED edge-lit main power button. This is a short depress switch with a ticky sound press button There’s also an ultra tiny white LED just to the left to indicate drive access.
To remove the front, first we’ll undo the right side panel, which has captive screws top and bottom. The tempered glass side has a non-captive thumbscrew at the top to undo, then gently pull outwards and then lift up. To remove the front, there are 3 tabs on both the left and right side you’ll need to push, and the panel comes off. There’s no wiring to the front which makes cleaning the mesh easy.
On the top, the full width inset magnetic filter covers this open lattice design. Finally the bottom filter pushes down slightly and slides back, this covers the PSU intake. The case rear has 7 PCIe slots with standard screw removable covers, with one above the GPU first slot. The PSU cover is removable, and the PSU area has rubber feet for your power supply. For the bottom, they have long plastic feet with long rubber strips, 34 millimeters of height for easy airflow and you could probably sit a card reader under here easily.
The Cooler Master HAF 500’s glass side is 449 millimeters wide by 474 high, with metal supports bottom to connect to the ledge and top to snap into the dual sockets, with a thumbscrew at the top back, the tempered glass is 3 mils thick. The feet on this side form a ledge which is flush with the glass.
HAF 500 ARGB, Extras, Build Tips
The case comes with an ARGB board needing a SATA power connector that connects up to four fans, with an extra ARGB header to connect to other devices. There was weirdness during wiring this up with the Cooler Master ML360L V2 ARGB, this took longer than normal to chain up, maybe it has a preferred port or something, we never did determine the exact cause.
The inclusion of an angular fan on the drive bays is unique, vertically GPU temps go down a few degrees as it feeds it room temperature air more directly and assists pushing air out the rear, at 45° it’s still beneficial but the effect is less, according to testing done by Gamers Nexus.
GPU power wires also run through this area, you’ll need to ensure stock wiring pigtails don’t fall into the spinning fan blades, be careful here. We’re using Silverstone extensions for a clean look, and we had to run the GPU power wires through the top drive bay, that’s a first for me.
We recommend you first build on a motherboard box, test then remove power cabling to install it. Building in the Cooler Master HAF 500 was easy, setting aside the side panels safely, and always matching motherboard standoffs holes as you install it With the CPU in and AIO cooler installed, then an m.2 drive and DDR4 or 5 plugged into the motherboard, the AIO radiator was resting up front with no fans as we plugged in the CPU 8-pin and Motherboard 24-pin power.
Top mounting an AIO is a bit trickier than front because you’re working underneath, and there’s gravity. After screwing the AIO to the top, we loosely attached fans with two screws each and wired up fan headers and ARGB to the rear ARGB splitter and top right motherboard headers. When everything’s working, next comes the Front I/O wiring, a quick test with onboard graphics, then the GPU.
Cooler Master HAF 500: Testing
For noise the Cooler Master HAF 500 we’re getting 39.3dB with this build, with a 42.4dB max, and that’s measured at 20 inches, about 51 centimeters distance. It sounds like the two internal 120 mil fans are making more noise than the large slower spinning 200 millimeter front fans.
For CPU only thermals we saw 45.9°C case thermals after 10 minutes, and GPU only thermals hit 53.6°C. This isn’t tested with this same build, unfortunately time was tight and this build needed to be finished quickly as it’s about to be sent out.
For this build, we have a MSI B660 Tomahawk WiFi DDR4, an Intel i5-13600K, a Cooler Master ML360L V2 ARGB with the rad mounted up top, paired with 32 gigs of Kingston Fury RAM. An MSI RTX 3080 Suprim is our GPU, with a ThermalTake Toughpower GF 850 watt power supply./ We’ll throw testing we did here up on screen, showing what this setup achieved for thermals.
HAF 500 + CM ML360L V2 AIO
Case temp, 21°C ambient
*Only CPU 100%: 23.4°C avg
*Only GPU 100%: 29.1°C avg
*Testing with new digital thermometer probe,
values may be inaccurate, further testing required
Great Points on the HAF 500
The Cooler Master HAF 500 has everything you want, lots of airflow, big ARGB fans and filtered intakes, 10 Gigabit Type-C USB 3.2 Gen2, and a removable top panel and PSU cover for easy building, plus an extra assist fan for your GPU. Spacious and long enough for new RTX 40-series cards, the only problem may be finding this at a sale price.
A very solid case, building in the Cooler Master HAF 500 was very easy due to the removable PSU cover and especially the top panel. Making this a convertible means a lot of structural rigidity is needed in the design and frame, and there’s just a little flex which is pretty impressive. The ARGB is also vibrant, and with a huge magnetic top filter, the finished build looks great.
Both the top and front supporting 240, 280 and 360 millimeter radiators gives the consumer lots of placement options, and the top being removable makes using a 280 up top less of a headache, though we don’t have a 280 rad to test. Usually the headache caused with a 280 is from the width interfering with top corner motherboard wiring and even RAM height, but working with 360 was fairly easy.
For improvement on the HAF 500
Small things for improvement first. The drive bay mounted fan is a great idea, but GPU power wiring also is right in this area. If you’re using default PSU cables, they come with pigtails, and the possibility for the pigtails to fall into the spinning fan is very high, they should have a grate or mesh on the top to protect against this. It also was in the way of our Suprim’s GPU support stand, and we had to run the aftermarket cable extensions through the top bay of the drive cage.
Next the PSU cover can be sometimes difficult to remove with the front panel I/O connected. I’m hiding cabling here, though if you have it above, I guess there’s no problem? That rear hole for PSU wires to go through is really cramped too. Top motherboard tray holes are a bit smaller than normal also, guess the removable top design needed more material to keep it rigid.
If you are wiring up a top mounted radiator, this is also where you’ll spend the most time, and you’ll enter… the Danger Zone. The removable top panel was awesome for getting access to this usually cramped space, however there’s nowhere you can put it with a rad attached. Gravity works against you as you work underneath it for an AIO, and holding a 360 in one hand isn’t an option because you need both for carefully wiring through small passthroughs, and plugging in all the fan and ARGB headers.
Most of the almost-accidents occurred when we were wiring, so basically anytime we needed the panel removed to do work. To raise the rad-attached-panel, we tried chopsticks diagonally, bad idea they rolled everywhere, and small boxes fell out too easily. We finally used a long ruler lengthwise, but that had a dangerous tendency to want to slide out. I wasn’t pulling on them but the little actions with wires below made it shift around a bit each time.
Working below a heavy unsecured panel is hazardous, we nearly dropped the rad in the case a few times, luckily, quick reactions saved a possibly expensive fall. We ended up using a large same height box behind to angle the rad onto for support, just secure it, or the rad might slide and fall into the case. Does this removable panel help? Immensely. But it really needs some kind of bracket system or a strut to hold it up.
I’ve worked on a case for an MSI project awhile back that had a top slide out radiator mount, super easy to use as it could slide it out completely and rest it up top. This one you can sit it askew, but it’s a bit precarious, and doesn’t give you extra working space this way. Anyways, this is retooling by Cooler Master at the mid-tier PC case price point; hope they’ll improve with their next version of this case.
Because it really does come down to the price. In Taiwan at 110 USD, this is a decent deal vs the TD500 mesh we got for 95-ish dollars, the longer huge space, big fans, 10 Gig Type-C and top panel is worth it. In the US at MSRP of $170 however, you could buy another whole case with that 60 dollar difference, and even with pandemic shipping affecting this, it’s hard to balance that with what you get here.
Consider the H500 we reviewed awhile back, link up top right on your screen, that came in at $120 at the time, that had a top handle, four USB ports- two of which were USB 3, removable PSU cover and notably, a swappable acrylic front panel, smaller case though similar great build experience, though no Type-C. So if you can get this Cooler Master HAF 500 at sale prices, I think this will be a better value proposition.
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