Cooler Master TD500 Mesh v2 PC Case Review
Cooling Performance
Thermal performance is an essential factor for any PC case. Your system may look fantastic and seem silent from the outside, but all of that is for nought if your PC has the internal temperature of an oven. Your PC case needs enough airflow for your components to remain cool under load and to prevent any form of thermal throttling. For our test, we used the following hardware using fixed fan speeds (so that only the case and its included fans can influence thermal performance).
Fractal North
Intel i9-9700K @4.8GHz at 1.2V
ASUS ROG Strix Z370-F Gaming @ 100% Current Capacity/ LL lvl16
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition @ 9V via Fan Speed Reducer
Nvidia GTX 980 Reference @ 60% Fixed Fan Speed
Corsair LP Vengeance LP (Grey) @ 3200MHz
Corsair MP500 M.2 NVMe SSD
Corsair RM550X Power Supply
The graph below showcases Delta temperatures with a controlled ambient temperature of 20 degrees Celsius.
Something to note
During our testing we added a 120mm be quiet fan to the Cooler Master TD500 Mesh v2. This fan is a weak fan that we used to give the TD500 Mesh v2 an exhaust. We expect all users of this case to add a fan like this to their builds, and in most instances PC builders will add a stronger fan than this older be quiet model. By adding this fan, we wanted to represent a more real-world use case for the TD500 Mesh v2, but not give this case a strong advantage by a premium fan to this affordable enclosure.
600 RPM Testing
While the TD500 Mesh v2 isn’t the best performing case that we have tested, it does deliver great results within its price range. Remember that this is a sub-£100 case, and that our 600 RPM test is designed to see how good a case’s airflow is when we turn their fans down to almost silly low fan speeds. We do not expect users of this case to run their fans at 600 RPM, and the fact this case passed our 600 RPM fan test shows us that this case has strong airflow, even with weak fans.
1000 RPM Testing
During our 1000 RPM testing for the TD500 Mesh v2, you can see that Cooler Master’s latest case sits at the hotter end of our charts and delivers more impressive GPU thermals than CPU thermals. Even so, the TD500 Mesh delivers performance levels that are similar to many PC cases that a much more expensive.
Max RPM Testing
Cranking fan speeds to their 1300 RPM max sees the TD500 Mesh’s performance climb up our graphs, showcasing how this case benefits for every bit of speed that this case’s stock fans have to offer. With a max fan speed of 1300 RPM, these fans remain very quiet, so much so that we expect most modern graphics cards to be louder under load.
If users use a stronger rear fan or top-mounted fans, we expect users of the TD500 Mesh v2 to see stronger thermal results, and since most of today’s PC builders use AIO CPU liquid coolers, we expect most users of the TD500 Mesh V2 to have at least two top-mounted 120mm or 140mm fans.
