Reviews - Corsair Carbide Series 400R chassis review

[HEXUS]

Corsair's first sub-£100 chassis put to the test.

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[kalniel]

Arriving in stores next month with a double-digit price tag of around £90, the mid-tower Carbide Series 400R audaciously claims to be the best case for under 100 bucks

ho ho

[MadduckUK]

needs a CM 690II as a comparison case really. The USB ports being useable for both 2.0 and 3.0 is brilliant though, as transition time is here.

This and a H100 may have to be purchased to welcome in Bulldozer.

[cjs150]

Best case under £100

CM690II or new Fractal Arc Midi beat this totally

What is the obsession with all those 5.25 bays? I can make do with 1, 2 at most (optical drive + bay reservoir). What do people put in those bays now?

Also why some many hard drive cages? How many HDs do people actually run? I make do with an SSD and a normal 2TB drive, I can understand people wanting 4 bays (RAID) but after that it just gets silly

Not a bad case, but not exactly an advance on existing cases.

[Brewster0101]

Best case under £100

CM690II or new Fractal Arc Midi beat this totally

CM690II and the Lancool K62 are both cheaper. These two cases are always over looked now as they are over 12 months old, yet they are still better than most < £100 cases.

I nearly brought the Corsair 650 the other day to replace me Lancool K62R, but after reading alot of people commenting on its poor fans and the fact they are not silent (even at 200mm) I decided to keep my case as its fans are brilliant and silent....

[Percy1983]

What is the obsession with all those 5.25 bays? I can make do with 1, 2 at most (optical drive + bay reservoir). What do people put in those bays now?

I do actually have 4 optical drives in mine, but I guess I am a minority.

Cases looks good in my eyes, I can't justify the cost of most cases out there.

[this_is_gav]

A standard tower build for colleagues and friends will include a DVD R/W, an IcyBox trayless hot-swap thingy (for backups) and commonly a bay for extra USB ports and a card reader.

For my own system I've got a DVD R/W, 2 of those IcyBox trayless caddies and an AKASA all-in-one unit with USB, Firewire, audio, fan controller and card reader.

[Champman99]

I much prefer having all those 5.25" drives. My server is built in a Xigmatek Utgard and because its all 5.25 it allows me to use all hotswap bays as mentioned above. Including 5.25 drives right the way down with nice hard drive cages which fit in those drives is surely the best solution. Many people like the space that provides for hot swap bays, radiators, fan controllers etc.

[Brewster0101]

Also I think the Hexus rating is way too high for this case. It seems they are almost too scared to criticise a case from Corsair. Looking at the lack of products that Hexus do review nowadays, I wonder if manufacturers don't consider Hexus too seriously now!!!

Seriously the price is a maybe con for a case of this spec...

[cjs150]

A standard tower build for colleagues and friends will include a DVD R/W, an IcyBox trayless hot-swap thingy (for backups) and commonly a bay for extra USB ports and a card reader.

For my own system I've got a DVD R/W, 2 of those IcyBox trayless caddies and an AKASA all-in-one unit with USB, Firewire, audio, fan controller and card reader.

Anyone who lives in Alnwick is alright as far as I am concerned!

But you could do the same build using USB3 external HD as your back up, USB could a powered external USB hub (I prefer them because you can charge devices which not all ports hung off MB can do) and a fan controller such as MCubed BigNG (if they still make them) which can be (with velcro) stuck just about anywhere in the case that has decent airflow. That leaves you with a card reader and DVD player

So you really do not need all those 5.25 bays - with a slim line optical drive you might even (eventually) get to fit a card reader and a optical drive into one bay!

[this_is_gav]

No you don't need them, but for convenience they're hard to beat.

You could also argue that you don't need a 5.25" DVD R/W as you could always use a USB-powered one.... but you wouldn't.

Are you from the Alnwick area? I don't actually live in Alnwick, I live in Shilbottle, a couple of miles away, but no-one would have heard of that, so I put Alnwick.