Cooler Master Maker 5 Chassis Review

Complete System

Building a system inside this chassis couldn’t be much easier, as the extensively modular design lends its self well to the hardware you desire the most.

As you can see, I’ve fully removed the upper hard drive bays, as I didn’t need them, and this frees up a lot more space for the long graphics card, as well as more airflow from the front fans.

The cable routing is excellent, with large grommets that make it easy to get your cables out of the way, keeping the build looking neat and tidy.

The same at the top of the motherboard, where you’ll notice a huge amount of clearance from the top radiator/fan mounts.

Large expansion cards obviously aren’t a problem here and you’ll easily find room for a multi-GPU configuration. The bottom cable routing grommets help a lot too, especially given how many GPUs have their power connectors on the side these days. CPU clearance is excellent, and those wanting to invest in large tower coolers are unlikely to find anything that doesn’t fit.

The 2.5″ bays are nice, and while I know some like to show off the SSD, this approach is very clean and keeps the interior looking clutter free.

All panels back in place, and we can see the importance of having good cable management, as the interior of the chassis is very exposed through that huge side panel window. The window is coated black near the bottom though, helping hide anything below the PSU cover with ease.

Overall, a great looking build, no doubt about that, but we can go one better as we have the optional tempered glass side panel window at our disposal, so let’s whip this plastic window off and kick things up a notch.

I was looking through the box for a set of fittings to attach this panel, but fool on me, you don’t need any! This huge glass panel has catches on the bottom that allow you to simply drop the bottom edge onto the bottom of the chassis, locking it in place. You then simply push the top flush and it has a precision fit that holds it snug in place. If you want it even more secure, there’s a small key lock at the top, simply give that a turn and that glass panel is going nowhere!

The glass has a much darker tint to it than the plastic window panel, making it quite hard to see what is going on within the chassis, at least until you turn on the system and fire up any lighting you have installed.

The red LED strip looks awesome, giving off a firey glow on the bottom of the chassis and giving a warm uplight to any components you have installed.

It can be turned on or off from the front panel, or you can enable a pulse mode where it slowly brightens to 100%, holds for a few seconds, then fades down to about 10% brightness and so on, it’s a nice tough and it’s a smooth transition that gives it a nice touch of class.

As for that other surprise I mentioned about the front I/O panel, it has built-in LED lighting too! There labels on the buttons and the USB ports are completely hidden when the power is off, and light up with a lovely and rich red lighting when the system is powered; a nice extra touch.