A Look Inside
Getting inside the MasterMax Q500L is very easy, just remove the four thumbscrews on the acrylic side panel and take it off. Be very careful with this side panel since it is acrylic not tempered glass and is more prone to getting scratched. Once inside you can see the layout is a little different than your typical ATX case layout. This case does offer support for ATX, Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX motherboards.
So the big difference between this case and other ATX cases is that there is no power supply mount on the bottom of the case. It is instead mounted to the front of the case. This allows Cooler Master to keep the overall size of the Q500L down. In order for this to work has installed a power supply extension cable that is connected to the power connection on the back of the case.
Looking at the bottom of the case we can see the large ventilation holes, again you can fit two 120 mm fans down here. As I mentioned there is a locking mechanism for the expansion slots, which means you have to remove it to access any of the expansion slots.
The included fan is nothing to really write home about. It is does not have any RGB LEDs or anything like that. The motherboard tray has a large CPU cutout as well as several cable routing holes.
Getting into the opposite side one the case is pretty easy, just remove the thumbscrews on the side panel and it will sort of release, just sitting there for you to remove it. Once inside we have a pretty basic layout, but we can see tie-down points for cables, which is always good to see on a case.
On the rear of the motherboard tray there are two removable hard drive mounts. These support either one 3.5-inch hard drive, or two 2.5-inch solid state drives each. So in total you’ll be able to install 4 hard drives inside of this case. Even though this case is so small there is quite a lot of room behind the motherboard tray for routing cables.
