Inside the Carbide Series 400R
What the 400R lacks in exterior appeal, it more than makes up for with smart, well-thought-out interior design. And a lot of what's good can probably be attributed to Corsair's chassis product manager George Makris.
In addition to being a self-confessed "computer gaming/enthusiast/overclocking nerd", Makris is one of the most enthusiastic chassis designers we've met and he claims to "have a talent for listening to what customers want".
He might have a point, as one look inside the 400R suggests that the entry-level Carbide will fulfil the needs of most high-performance users.
Rattling through the feature list, the chassis' all-black interior offers a bottom-mounted power supply compartment, five tool-free 5.25in drive bays, six tool-free 3.5in hard-disk bays (with screw-in support for 2.5in SSDs), removable dust filters for the front intakes and power supply, a sizeable cutout in the motherboard tray for easy CPU cooler installation, eight expansion slots for multi-GPU configurations, and a handful of Corsair's trademark rubber-grommeted cable routing holes.
The chassis' 206mm x 503mm x 521mm frame provides an abundance of room to work with, and there's space for extra-long PSUs and graphics cards measuring up to 316mm in length.
The Carbide Series 400R ticks a lot of the right boxes, and Corsair's attention to detail doesn't go amiss, either. Captive thumbscrews that allow you to remove both side panels without losing the screws are a nice touch - albeit not quite as nice as the Graphite Series' quick-release side panels - and extra cutouts in the tray that help you run cables to both the top and bottom edges of your motherboard are particularly helpful.
There doesn't appear to be a lot of room behind the tray for excess cable management, but the bulging side panel alleviates any of those concerns - space constraints simply weren't a problem while loading the chassis with our high-end X58 test rig, and Corsair's addiction to cable management is evident throughout. Using the four rubber-grommeted holes and the ample supply of tie-down loops, we were able to put together a very tidy-looking system in next to no time.
It doesn't get much tidier than that, but the Carbide 400R's interior cavern isn't perfect as some features have been purposely cut. The drive cage can't be rearranged or removed, there's no integrated fan controller and no side-panel fan as default - those features have all been set aside for the 400R's forthcoming offshoot, the pricier 500R.
And there are other potential deal-breakers, too. For example, Corsair provides no option for a windowed side panel and, unlike one of its immediate rivals - Cooler Master's CM 690 II Advanced - there's no external hot-swap SATA bay.
Unlike the Graphite and Obsidian lines, the Carbide 400R doesn't attempt to do it all, but what it does it does particularly well. Building into the chassis doesn't feel like a chore and the voluminous interior has been thoughtfully arranged to prioritise ease of use.