Corsair Carbide 400R Case Review

Cases & PSU/Cases by leeghoofd @ 2011-08-19

Corsair has established itself quite nicely into the market of high end cases with their Obsedian series. Immediately compting with brands, that have been manufacturing cases for ages. Due to the high quality build and included features the price level was pretty elevated. Though Corsair is back with a vengeance. Targetting the sub 100 euro market now with it's latest Carbide series cases. It's main rivals probably will be from Coolermaster with it's legendary CM690 series. Or the newer but also insane popular HAF and Storm cases. Again not an easy task for the Corsair development team to design a case that looks slick, yet build of high quality components and including top notch features. Biggest issue is to keep the price at an affordable level. Time to introduce you to the Carbide 400R.

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The removable plastic HD trays are positioned at a 90°C angle in regard to the front fans. This allows for easy acces/removal with the GPU still in place. The HD tray has got numerous big cutouts to maximise air flow generated by the two front fans. All HD trays are SSD ready. When installing an SSD you need to remove the small plastic pin as shown in the below pictures

 

 

 

 

 

The optical drives fit snugly via the toolles hold downs. Even my grandma can work with this case...

 

The bottom removable dust filter slides in and out easily. This facilitates easy future cleaning.

 

  

 

 

 

Like all high class cases the front bezel has got dust filters. The front panel pops off easily to allow fast access to the white LED 120mm fans or to clean the filters. Below two shots with the white leds on and off.

 

 

 

The 400R Carbide case stands on 4 big rubber damped supports. Like mentioned a few times before it's all in the details.

 

 

 

   

 

A close up on the 120/140mm fan cutout on the bottom of the case. It depends on the length of your PSU if you can install one or not. The sidepanels have got a protrusion that on one side facilitates tucking the powercables away. On the other side it allows to add up to two 120/140mm fans. Again rubber grommets to prevent vibration. Plus an installed fan doesn't interfere with big tower CPU coolers. Another classy detail are that the thumbscrews, that secure the sidepanels, don't fall out. So you can't loose them easily.

 

 

 

 

 

The connector for the USB3.0 can be plugged straight into the motherboard. If not supported ( mostly on older boards, like our testbed board ) Corsair supplies an USB3.0 to 2.0 convertor. Time to build in some hardware...

 

 

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