Question bought a Cooler Master Qube 500

[QueBert]

I've owned a bunch of CM cases over the last 25 years, this one caught my attention because it's a flat pack and you have to build it. Oh, and it looks nice. It's replacing an Asus ROG Z11, which is for lack of a better work, weird. It's one of the best and worst cases I've ever owned lol. The Z11's a comically large ITX case, I'm sure it's the biggest. Yet it was still incredibly cramped inside. This is the polar opposite, it's not tiny but it could pass for an MATX yet somehow fits EATX.

I haven't had this much fun building a PC in ages, the Z11 was challenging and fun, but in an aggravating, I never want to do this shit again kind of way lol. This one even someone who's never built a PC could do it, Cooler Master has a series of 30 second videos for assembling it. 7 minutes of them total. It was a pleasure to build, there was nothing hard, frustrating or oddball. The only things that had me upset were my boneheaded mistakes. such as:

Every other new case/MB I seem to somehow bend a couple pins on the front panel USB 3 connector on the MB. It's keyed and I plug it in the correct way so I have no damn idea how I can still screw this up. So I spent 15 minutes unbending the pins with a flat head screw driver.

My stupid AIO has a screen, I don't know the the direction to mount it, but I THOUGHT the software had an option to flip the screen. So instead of actually reading the manual, I assumed I'd be able to change it in the software if it was flipped. Welp, it was 50/50 and I did it wrong. And after going into the software I found out it's not a 180 option, it's horizontal/vertical option for people who want to change the orientation of the actual screen. So I had to remove the whole damn thing and put it on right. With fat fingers and almost no space, boy that's fun. I probably should have grabbed some pliers, but that would have been too easy. So I fiddled with it until I got it. about 7 times I had to remove the entire pump because I had dropped one of the screws and it was under the pump lol.

I plugged 1 of the AIO fan's into the pump header because my MB only has 2 actual fan headers. Of course that one can't be adjusted so it was super loud. So I had to semi deconstruct and find a way to route it my AIO controller. I don't even know if you're supposed to plug a fan into a pump header. But it was the same connector so I figured it could work.


Back to the case, it looks super nice, size wise I'd almost think it was a large ITX case, I have an ITX MB in it and there's tons of room. I might even be able to do some decent cable management for once lol. And with it being flatpack all the panels are nice and thick and sturdy. I did struggle for 10 minutes trying to get my AIO controller box mounted, so I decided to watch CMs and they have this awesome mounting system for 2.5/3.5 drives I've never seen. You put rubber grommets in the case and these little stand off screws in the drive and it just pops right in. I know this isn't anything special, but I've built a ton of PC's and never seen it before.

Thermals are good, I don't have a GPU to really test it, but I'm under 30c with normal use, and with Prime95 running for 10 minutes I didn't GO above 50, this is a 13600k. And the fans became slightly audible but were still really quiet. Under normal use, I don't hear them at all. It's 1 fan that came with it and 2 Asus fans on the rad.


The only other negative is the case is white and my components are black, so now I have to at least buy a few white components so it meshes better.

CM really hit it out the park with this case.

Since I don't have a nice color scheme *yet* I'll just post a pic I found on Googles for people who haven't seen it. Interestingly, this is Cooler Masters official pic, and for some reason they show it with the optional radiator mount installed on the glass panel side. I find that to be odd as mounting a rad or fans up against a window would be pointless lol.

 

[Paperdoc]

Regarding connecting the AIO pump and fans to mobo headers, there are some easy "tricks" to that in many cases. Tell us the exact maker and model of your AIO system AND of your mobo so we can look up their details and advise.

 

[QueBert]

Regarding connecting the AIO pump and fans to mobo headers, there are some easy "tricks" to that in many cases. Tell us the exact maker and model of your AIO system AND of your mobo so we can look up their details and advise.

Thanks, but I'm ditching it to get something white that matches the case, and I don't think I'm going AIO again. It's an Asus Ryujin II or III, I forget. The Pump gets power from SATA (I think) or the USB hub. It came with a controller but I was too lazy to find a fan extension cable so it could reach it lol. But I managed to dig one up. I was attempting to cut a corner and learned unless you don't mind full speed fans all the time don't hook them to the pump header. This is probably common knowledge but I've been an air cooler guy 99% of my years. This MB only has 2 fan headers so it's a pain unless you have splitters or a fan hub.

I believe for my needs a Hyper Halo 212 would be a decent choice. I almost ordered the Halo 622, but I'm pretty sure it'll block at least 1 of my ram slots and I only have 2 of them.

 

[Paperdoc]

An important point about fan headers. Every mobo has at least TWO types, and they look almost exactly the same and do VERY similar things. But the difference is important.

ONE header type is for CPU chip cooling, called CPU_FAN usually. Its basic design assumes it will power a and control FAN. For reference it uses a temperature sensor inside the CPU chip and tries to keep that temp at a target value, changing the fan speed as the temp changes. It ALSO does a second function. It monitors the fan SPEED signal sent back to it on Pin #3 of the header. If it gets no signal (or on some mobos, a signal too slow) it pops a warning onto your screen so you know there is a problem to fix. MOST mobos will do much more than that, however. It may well shut down your system completely without even waiting for the temp sensor to report high temp inside. This is to prevent damage to your CPU from very rapid overheating with no cooling. Such systems also may refuse to let you boot up if it gets no fan speed signal almost immediately after power-on.

The second type is for case ventilation fans, called SYS_FAN or CHA_FAN often. It does the same type of job, but its sensor is one built into the mobo by its maker at a spot they judge vital to system performance. It also will monitor its fan for failure, but most do NOT take any action beyond the on-screen warning.

Other fan header labels may appear on some mobos like CPU_OPT as a simple mirror of the CPU_FAN header, AIO_PUMP (for constant full power to a pump only), SYS_FAN / PUMP that can be set to be EITHER a fan header or a pump header, and on some very old boards a PWR_FAN that has virtually no use today.

So the TWO differences are: which temperature sensor the header uses for guidance, and how active it will be to protect components if the fan fails. For those reasons the actual CPU cooler unit REALLY should be connected to the CPU_FAN header, and the case vent fans should be connected to CHA_FAN or SYS_FAN headers.

When your mobo has very few headers and you want to use more fans, you can use a SPLITTER or a HUB. Each is a way to have several fans share the same control signal and one form or another of power supply. Although makers and sellers treat those device names as if they mean the same thing, they are DIFFERENT. The fans on a SPLITTER must share the power from the header which has a max current limit. But a HUB gets power for its fans from the PSU directly and can supply MUCH more power to a larger number of fans.

If you need further details on any of this, post back your questions.

 

[Robmoo]

My HTPC sounds like it is attempting to take flight. It is around 6 years old with a Core i7 10700, 4 HD, and the stock Intel cooler. If it needs to update anything including the Plex Server directory the Noctua side fans spin up to max because they are linked to CPU temp and my cooling is totally inadequate. It was fine when I did the build because the only thing that taxed the CPU was the occasional transcode for running the Plex Server. Fast forward 6 years and everything taxes the CPU. I'm going to re-pot it from the venerable Node 605 to this case with a 240mm AIO. I can tone down the case fans with the enhanced CPU cooling and perhaps squeeze and few more years out of this build. Or I could drop $1500 to buy a QNAP TR-004 for 4 HD in RAID5, an HomeRun HD 4k, and a new Core i7 SFF build.

Wish me luck!

 

[QueBert]

My HTPC sounds like it is attempting to take flight. It is around 6 years old with a Core i7 10700, 4 HD, and the stock Intel cooler. If it needs to update anything including the Plex Server directory the Noctua side fans spin up to max because they are linked to CPU temp and my cooling is totally inadequate. It was fine when I did the build because the only thing that taxed the CPU was the occasional transcode for running the Plex Server. Fast forward 6 years and everything taxes the CPU. I'm going to re-pot it from the venerable Node 605 to this case with a 240mm AIO. I can tone down the case fans with the enhanced CPU cooling and perhaps squeeze and few more years out of this build. Or I could drop $1500 to buy a QNAP TR-004 for 4 HD in RAID5, an HomeRun HD 4k, and a new Core i7 SFF build.

Wish me luck!

Good luck, this case is awesome to build in so it should be smooth sailing.