Funky shapes (pillars, pyramids, and cubes!), materials (glass, cloth!): The 2021 PC case market doesn’t lack for variety and experimentation. Some chassis are designed to blend into the background, but we’ve reviewed a handful of recent models that have unusual front panels or internal layouts that set them apart. When it comes to color, though, most are more or less the same: black, white, or some shade of silver, with other colors as outliers. With the MasterBox NR200P Color, Cooler Master throws some new shades into the market with four vibrant models that cost $139.99 each, and comes up a winner among Mini-ITX cases. This one gets an Editors’ Choice award for ease of building and sheer eye appeal.
A New Hue Review
Now, to preface: The MasterBox NR200P is not an entirely new case. Cooler Master first released this model in the more common black, gray, and white color schemes. The MasterBox NR200P Color variant, though, is much more interesting, as it’s available in four color schemes: Flamingo Pink, Caribbean Blue, Sunset Orange, and Nightshade Purple. We received the Flamingo Pink for review, though in hindsight we wish we’d opted for the Nightshade Purple, as it appears to be the only violet PC case on offer from a major case designer, discounting a few third-tier offerings from relative unknowns. The other three NR200P hues aren’t common, either, but Cooler Master has a near-monopoly on purple at the moment.
Though it’s not the only pink case on the market, our pink review unit is quite the sight. The pink is bright, vibrant, and eye-catching. Underneath the pink shell is a white interior for contrast, but when the case is fully assembled, little of the white shows through, barring the case’s white feet.
The front panel is simple sheet steel with the Cooler Master logo etched on; minimalists might be pleased, but it’s plainer than the rest of the case. The top, bottom, left, and right panels are all similar, with heavy perforation to allow air to flow through. Right out of the box, all three of these are steel, as well, but you also get an optional tempered-glass side panel that can be installed on the left.
Most of these panels are easy to remove. The left and right panels are held on by plastic clips and pull off without removing any screws. The bottom panel is held on by a single screw and slides off in a cinch after this screw is removed; taking this panel off makes building the system easier.
The top panel is more difficult to remove. It’s held on with a different type of plastic clip that requires some finger work. You need to pinch these clips together and pry the top panel off if you want it off. The difficulty reflects the relative lack of need to remove it, though; Cooler Master planned around this, and there is little reason to take off the top panel for interior access reasons.
The front I/O panel is a bit of a letdown, with just two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports and a single 3.5mm audio jack.
The Building Experience: A Different Approach
Building a system inside of the MasterBox NR200P Color is much unlike most other cases. This isn’t all that surprising for a case in the Mini-ITX form factor (these tend to be all over the map, in terms of build approach and ease), but it does require a bit of forethought to figure out just how everything fits in.
Mounting brackets for cooling hardware and storage devices are literally everywhere inside this case, and some are easy to overlook unless you break out the manual. And this is one of the rare cases for which I do highly recommend the manual, even if you think you’ve seen it all before.
After removing the left panel, the first thing you’ll need to do is remove a metal mounting bracket that runs the length of the case. This bracket is designed to hold either two 120mm or 140mm fans, or a single 3.5-inch drive. You can install up to a 280mm liquid cooler here, as well, and we found this spot the best place to add one.
For now, let’s stay focused on the cooling hardware. The case ships with two 120mm SickleFlow fans. Contrary to what Cooler Master says on its website, these do not come pre-installed. Instead, Cooler Master ships them, unmounted, in a box set at the bottom of the PC. These are intended for installation at the top of the case, which can hold two 120mm fans but does not have enough clearance for a liquid cooler’s radiator.
Installing the fans is easy enough and does not require removing the top panel. Cooler Master pre-installed some rubber mounting pads in the screw holes of the top fan-mounting brackets. These rubber pads help to reduce fan/chassis vibration noise, but they also make installing the fans a bit easier. It’s not an entirely no-screws process, as you’ll need to screw these small peg-like screws into the fans. But after doing that, you can just slide the fans into place.
More of these rubber pads and peg-like screws are included for all fan-mounting locations. It helps to remove the PSU cage before doing this, but we’ll go over that more in a moment.
As to why Cooler Master didn’t pre-mount these fans? I see a rather sensible reason. Mini-ITX motherboards simply don’t have as many fan headers as larger boards do; for example, the board we used for this review has only three. After you plug in the two fans on a liquid cooler and the water pump, there’s nothing left. You can get around this, of course, with splitters, adapters, or third-party fan controllers, but some users may simply prefer to leave the fans off. Depending on what model of liquid cooler you have, it may also be a better idea to swap these fans out for the ones that shipped with your cooler.
In addition to the side and top fan-mount locations, the case also has room for a smaller (92mm) fan on its rear, plus two 120mm fans on the case bottom. A liquid cooler’s radiator can be installed on the bottom, as well, but in practice this isn’t a great option, as it can get in the way of large graphics cards if you mount them in the traditional horizontal alignment.
If you plan to add a cooler at the bottom of the case, it’s probably best that you mount your video card vertically instead, if you can. The MasterBox NR200P Color has two vertically oriented add-on-card slots, and it ships with a PCI Express x16 riser card that makes mounting your card vertically a real option right out of the box. If your card is more than two card slots thick, however, you’ll need to install it in the regular horizontal orientation instead. In that direction, you get three add-on-card slot placeholders, which is sufficient for even the biggest video cards on the market.
The MasterBox NR200P Color has four places where it can support a storage device, but in practical fact you can’t have more than three installed at once (excluding M.2 SSDs, of course). We already mentioned that a 3.5-inch drive can be added to the removable fan bracket that covers the left side of the case, but you can also add a 3.5-inch drive over the power-supply cage that resides in the middle of the case. You can’t use both of these mounting locations at the same time, however, as the 3.5-inch drives would collide with each other. A 2.5-inch drive can also be mounted on the PSU cage, and you get two additional 2.5-inch drive mounts on the front of the case, underneath the front panel.
Now, as for mounting the power supply itself? Its cage hangs off of the motherboard mounting tray with a few metal clips and a single screw holding it in place. With that screw removed, the cage slides right off, and you can then insert a PSU into it. It can’t hold a full-size ATX power supply, but both SFX and SFX-L compact models will fit snugly inside. We used a Cooler Master V850 SFX Gold unit, and it fit just fine.
The motherboard is similarly easy to install, but just like when working with the fans, it’s helpful to remove the PSU cage first. Except for the aforementioned fan bracket over the left side of the case, nothing really gets in the way of adding or removing the cage, so it’s safe to reinstall it near the end of the system-building process.
Verdict: A Spicy ITX Winner
With four colorful models to choose among, in a market dominated by black, white, and gray, Cooler Master’s MasterBox NR200P Color is a fresh sight. The interior design requires a little getting used to, even if you are a Mini-ITX veteran, but once you peruse the manual, it’s an easy chassis to build in. Add to that the optional tempered-glass side panel, the bundled PCI Express video-card riser, and the $139.99 price, and it’s hard to find much fault with the product and its positioning. Just pick a color.
