Corsair Carbide Series 330R Quiet Case Review

1. Introduction2. Corsair Carbide 330R: Packaging & Bundle3. Corsair Carbide 330R: Exterior4. Corsair Carbide 330R: Interior5. System Installation6. Testing Methodology and Thermal Performance7. Acoustic Performance8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

A 3.5″ HDD is securely held in position by Corsair's well-designed, tool-less mechanism. Four screws are used to hold a 2.5″ drive in place.

Building a high-powered system into the Corsair 330R is no problem; clearance for large components is very good. With up to 405mm of space for graphics cards in the upper slots – a figure that is cut to 290mm for the bottom two spaces – we had no problem fitting Gigabyte's WindForce GTX 780 in the low-noise Corsair 330R.

CPU coolers up to 170mm-tall can fit in the 330R without problems. It is possible to squeeze a unit a few millimetres larger than the 170mm limit into the chassis, but interference with the side panel's foam may occur.

A major oversight by Corsair was the length of the 330R's front panel audio cable. We had no choice but to route it through the middle cable management cut-out and sprawl it across our motherboard. It simply would not fit via a concealed path which used the bottom cut-out. The final appearance of our cable management efforts was clearly impaired.

Seasonic's platinum-rated SS-760XP 760W unit sat in the 330R with plenty of room to spare. The case's cable management cut-outs make routing power cords away from the PSU a simple and neat procedure.

With 21mm of room behind the 330R's motherboard tray, cable management can be a tricky procedure on times. We had to compress the fat 24-pin cable against the case's side panel to force it back in place.

Corsair provides appropriately-positioned cut-outs, although an additional gap near the vicinity of the front panel audio and USB headers would have been welcomed.

Bezel colour of an optical drive is of little concern with the 330R; its front door will hide unnecessary eyesores. On the negative side of that point, a fan controller with protruding knobs will prevent the door from closing properly.

Given that this chassis is designed for low-noise usage and does not feature a built-in fan control system, the latter point is of far greater inconvenience. The omission of even a basic speed-adjusting fan controller via a method as cheap as a basic variable resistor is very disappointing.

Recessed panels make connecting cables to a system's rear ports an interference-free task.

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