All the world’s a stage for some showy PC builders, and Cooler Master may have just cooked up the ultimate theater for their aspirations. The MasterFrame 360 chassis series integrates a display space in its front section to showcase collectibles or even 3D-printed avatars, in addition to the usual transparent view of your pricey PC parts. But what if you can’t think of anything tangible to put there? Fortunately, the Stage LCD model we received in the family features a video screen up front, too: a 1080p display that can serve as an info display or a backdrop for your creative showcase. This PC case is hard to compare with most others on the market, since its design is unique in a host of ways. One glance at it, though, and you’ll know if it’s the case you’ve been waiting for. It’s a good thermal and acoustic performer, but this one is all about the look...and whether you have a little treasure to park on its platform.

Design: A Stage That Might Upstage Your PC Itself

Cooler Master offers three versions of the MasterFrame 360: its Panorama version for around $220, the Stage Mirror for around $230, and our tested Stage LCD, for around $300.

The Panorama features a boxed front area suitable for holding figurines or other collectibles you want to show off, while the open-faced Stage Mirror uses a fixed mirror in place of the Stage LCD case’s 1,080-by-1,920-pixel LCD panel. The front ledge of the Stage LCD version is rubberized to help keep anything on it from sliding around, and two ARGB spotlights above it can be angled to highlight various portions of whatever you place there.

Above the spotlights are a power button, a hole for the power-on indicator LED, two USB 3.x Type-A ports and a single Type-C port, a combined headset audio jack, and a reset button. As typical, the fourth (microphone) pole of the combined headset jack goes unused when connecting standard headphones, which makes single-cable headsets, headphones, and headphone/microphone splitter cables equally compatible.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD has zero expansion slots in their standard positions, but instead relies exclusively on its included PCIe 5.0 x16 riser cable to position a single card vertically in its three-space holder. Space above and below the motherboard area is left open to support multiple radiators, and the area behind the motherboard tray is designed to hold the power supply and cables, and leaves ample room. 

Cooler Master surpasses visual expectations by installing a second glass panel behind the motherboard on the case’s right panel and using concealer panels to hide power supply cables.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Stuck under the front edge of the Stage LCD is a wired remote for its panel controller, which features a mode button and two brightness-control buttons. Pressing the mode button switches the panel’s controller among photo-gallery, video, and desktop display modes.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The mesh covering the bottom differs from the top in that it’s secured with screws rather than magnets and hooks. Both panels are perforated steel measuring 1.0mm thick, though the painted finish likely makes up a small portion of that measurement (for example, 20-gauge steel measures ~0.91mm without paint).

The MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD has enough space between its I/O panel and its interior drive cover to fit boards up to 10.8 inches deep, including examples such as ASRock’s EATX-labeled X870E Taichi Lite (10.5 inches deep) and even the odd SSI-CEB part. A column of standoff holes labeled “E” for EATX actually refers to SSI-CEB, which is the smaller of two common commercial form factors that fall within the EATX (up to 13 inches) envelope. 

While this case also fully supports full-ATX boards with reverse-facing connectors, it does not have the rear-facing connector hole needed to reach the front-panel header of MicroATX reverse-connector boards like Asus’ B760M-BTF WIFI or MSI’s B760M Project Zero. For cable-hiding builds, stick to ATX boards only.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

A card brace is the one thing that will prevent most users from installing a larger-than-ATX motherboard in this case (such as the previously mentioned X870E Taichi Lite). Factory installed, it barely clears the front edge of standard ATX boards. Removing the brace (one screw) forces the card to hang from its rear bracket. Thus, users who want to run a 10.5-inch-deep motherboard and an 11-inch or longer graphics card will be forced to devise their own card brace.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

A hider cover conceals your drives from view through the right side panel. The drive cover is really only intended to cover the back of the drives, as Cooler Master instructs builders to put either two 2.5-inch or one 3.5-inch drive on the other side of the tray. But after measuring 5/8 inch of space behind the drive cover, I tried mounting a pair of 2.5-inch drives there and found that the cover was even designed to provide connector access in this configuration. You’d still need to add some thin spacers on this side to make room for the 3.5-inch drive’s hardware to poke through from the other side, but I can’t think of a much easier way to crown yourself a modder.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The top and bottom panels are each designed to hold two 360mm-format radiators side-by-side. While we found the opening large enough to hold an even longer (420mm) radiator, the inset center section of the front panel is too shallow (38mm) to hold any fans below that oversize part. Meanwhile, anyone hoping to just use that shallow space to hold a third oversize fan will find that there’s no place to mount the bracket in this area.

Thus, while six 120mm fans fit in two rows of three, anything larger (140mm/180mm/200mm) is limited to a single row of two.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The back of the motherboard tray is concealed behind two cable covers, with the rear holding a two-position adjustable cover for the power supply’s intake fan. These covers dictate the case’s rated 210mm power-supply depth limit, which applies only to the lid's depth. (The cables can stick out much farther.)

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

This is the side that you’re supposed to mount your drives to...

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

And a basket design helps keep your cables from drooping out from below the cable cover....

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

ARGB cables for the top lights hang out from behind the forward cable cover on the motherboard tray. Note that these are conveniently fitted with pass-through connectors; the cables are not long enough to reach a motherboard on their own.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

You won’t need to pull the face panel off as I did, even though doing so is super-easy (know that I also had to disconnect its cables to get it to lie flat for this photo). The LCD panel’s controller is found here, its four-pin connector interfacing the previously mentioned wired controller and its Type-C-appearing connector, featuring a custom data and power interface. A microSD card allows for local storage of photos and video; the mode button lets you play back the contents of folders on the card. A warranty sticker covers the factory 16GB microSD card, so that upgrading the controller’s storage cancels Cooler Master’s warranty coverage.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Building With the MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD

My MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD sample includes a manual, a PCIe 5.0 x16 riser cable, 18 #6-32 panhead and 13 #6-32 combo-head screws, 10 M3 drive mounting pins, a Phillips-drive standoff socket, five additional motherboard standoffs, four damping grommets for mounting a 3.5-inch drive, four #6-32 shoulder screws to prevent crushing those grommets, 10 M3 panhead screws, a dozen plastic-thread fans screws, and 10 zip ties. Whew!

The drive pins are a variance, as the manual says there are only supposed to be half as many, and that they’re supposed to have the larger #6-32 threads to fit 3.5-inch drives, but we’re not sure that we’d want to hang a heavy 3.5-inch hard drive vertically on push-pins.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

In addition to the previously mentioned ARGB cables for the front-panel spotlights, the MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD connects to our motherboard using a 9-pin combined front-panel (power/reset button and indicator LED) connector, HD Audio for its headset combo jack, 19-pin USB 3.x for the two Type-A ports and a Gen 2x2 cable for the single Type-C port. A single USB 2.0 port connects the motherboard to its panel via a mostly empty two-port header block, and its panel gets power directly from the power supply via a SATA drive power header.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Thanks to all of the case’s cable covers, the only clutter that stands out in our build is the cable that connects its wired remote to the display panel. And that only looks out of place from this angle. Talk about clean!

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The finished build looks ready to show off whatever I’d like to put on its rubberized stage, or even to stage my favorite web page. (Ahem!) Now if only I had a miniature version of this case to place there...

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD Interface

So, about that screen. How to manipulate it?

Holding the brightness up and down buttons simultaneously for a few seconds causes the MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD’s controller interface to enter flash drive mode. Inside are a driver for using the panel as a Windows display device, an image folder from which it retrieves images in slideshow mode, a video folder ("MP4") from which it retrieves videos (which supposedly can also be run in order, like a slideshow), a folder labeled “NO” that the controller won’t access, and a folder labeled “TOOL” that contains an installable program for converting videos to a compatible 1,080-by-1,920 (vertical) mode. The MP4 folder contains one of Cooler Master’s background videos, and the NO folder contains an alternative background video you can pull out if you want to use it.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Pushing the remote’s mode button switches it among photo, video, and Windows Display modes. In the last mode, the panel essentially acts like a second monitor.

The panel’s controller automatically checks the microSD card’s root directory for new firmware and begins an update when it finds a file, but I was apparently the first reviewer to try loading a corrupt firmware file. Oops! Cooler Master got us the needed recovery file, but I’d still recommend against updating firmware unless you really need to.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Testing the Cooler Master MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD

I used our standard ATX case testing rig to compare the MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD against every other LCD-equipped case I’ve tested over the past two years.

With only two LCD-equipped cases to compare, I added the similarly configured Lian Li O11 Vision Compact to our comparison and found it was one of the coolest cases…despite its lack of fans. Hyte's Y70 Touch Infinite was the only case we could compare that lacked factory fans and featured a potentially case-warming display panel (i.e., in place of fans) to match the MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD, and it’s the only competitor the new case beat without adding more fans.

The MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD also does a better job of containing noise than the Y70 Touch Infinite, making it our choice among cases that have a large LCD panel.

As you can see, that choice is very limited. Looking for any reason to choose the pricier Y70 Touch Infinite, all I could come up with was the alternative case’s hard-to-access dust filter (versus not having one at all) and the fact that the MasterFrame 360 Stage LCD’s self-adhesive remote pad fell off the bottom whenever the room got cool.

The adhesive issue is the kind of petty nuisance that I would have addressed directly to the manufacturer had this been a pre-production unit, but the cases are already in the channel, and I don’t think it’s a big enough issue to make a return worthwhile: We’ll probably just tape ours in place or get some hook-and-loop Velcro fasteners to hold it on better.