Cooler Master Sileo 500 Case

Removing the front bezel requires a firm jerk of the panel to free it from the plastic pop tabs holding it in place.

The unfiltered 120mm air intake fan's mounting points are accessed here.  You can also see the LED bulbs at the top and bottom of the black housing mounted over the intake fan's stamped venting area.  On the reverse side of the bezel are two acrylic pieces that reflect the light evenly over the length of the power and reset buttons.

     

No windows are present on the Cooler Master Sileo 500.  Windows look nice but they go against two major points this box is really putting forward, low price and low sound.  Windows hurt both of these goals.

Around back we find an oversized 120mm intake fan that has mounting points for 90 or 80mm fans if the end user wishes to swap out the included 120mm unit.  120mm fans are extremely effective at providing lots of air flow with a low sound signature.  Power supply mounting is up top.  We can also see seven expansion slots with extra venting to the right of them below.  Looking a bit closer you can see that the expansion slots are tool free.

The right side panel offered nothing besides a standard solid panel to look at, so we moved on without any pics.  With that said lets crack the Sileo 500 open.  This is our first look at the sound dampening mats that come preinstalled.  Sound travels in waves like ripples on water.  By cushioning the waves of sound the noise level is reduced.  Pretty simple concept.  The Cooler Master Sileo 500 has preinstalled sound mats on both side panels, the roof and floor of the case to diminish as much sound as possible.  Here's a quick shot of the mat itself.

     

This is a smaller midtower case as you can see and as we've noted.  The case during installation didn't give us any real trouble with hardware.  However, I do wish to point out that the slightly smaller size when coupled with no removable motherboard tray can make for a bit of a cramped feel.  Not too cramped, as the area is large enough to accept modern VGA cards up to 10.5" in length.

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