Corsair Carbide Series 400R Case Review

Interior Impression

PC enthusiast look at a lot of things for value of a mid-tower case. Airflow, room, and ease of part installation top many people list. Corsair make a great attempt to tie all these essential features in to one box. The Graphite Series 400R also will impress many with the look and feel of the all back interior where even the screws match the paint.

The Rear Interior Panel

Immediately I was impressed with the the back panel. From a functionality the section near the front of the case you can see Corsair put much thought behind it. The four 5 1/4 inch drive bay from the back appears normal. Below the drive cage supports up to five hard drives supporting both conventional hard drives and SSDs. There is enough room for the drives to have it’s wiring fed from this side of the case. Three vertical cut outs are next to these drive bays. All case wiring that is built into the case is filter from the top cut out to the bottom. This allow for easy access to the motherboard. Tie down loops are abundant around the cut out for great cable management.

Next we see The motherboard cut out from behind. This is large and helps with any type of after market cooling device. Below we have another wire management cut out. All four wire management cutouts use rubber filters so cabling does not get damaged. Another cut out below the mother board is also available. The motherboard backing is about 3/8th inches from the door. The rest of this panel is 1-inch leaving plenty of cable management room.

Primary Interior

We will look at the interior on the primary side from top to bottom and front to rear. The four 5 1/4 inch bay have a simple tool-less installation slot. The six HDD caddies also have an easy tool-less flexible install. SSD drives will need to be screwed in. Five cables are fed though the wire management cut outs. The first four cable are convention in the motherboard up-link cables, IEEE 1394, audio uplink, and a four pin molex connector. A fifth cable also is fed through. This cable is a native USB 3.0 uplink for a motherboard, and not a pass through cable like many cases have these days. The two front panel USB 3.0 cables are merged into this one connection. This must be part of the future proofing Corsair mentions!

The motherboard cutout is big. It is set up for after market CPU cooling. The interior motherboards screws match the paint of the interior case which is a nice aesthetic touch. A nice smaller cut out is below the board mount for wire management. The larger board cut out lined in rubber is also a nice touch.

The bottom of the interior has two mounts designed for 120mm or 140mm fans. The bottom is designed as well for a conventional or long power supply. A washable pull out filter is also installed.

The rear of the interior is also set up well. The I/O panel comes with out a filler panel which is common among cases these days. The 120mm fan connects with a three pin power connector. Eight expansion slots have easily removable plates with thumb screws. Four rubber inlaid case cut outs are available for optional cooling. The power supply of course rounds out the rear of the Carbide Series 400R mid-tower case.

Air flow is also important with the case. Air will natively flow from the two front panel case fans out to the rear 120mm fan. Two case fans cane be install on the HDD cage boosting this air flow. If vertical air flow is needed a lower case fan can be installed. This fan will push air to the top vents which can have up to two fans installed. The side panel can also have cool air flow from the primary panel