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Corsair Carbide Series 330R Quiet Case Review

drives

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.

system

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.

psu

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.

cable-management

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.

front-dvd

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.

rear-io

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

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2 comments

  1. I prefer the fractal cases at this price point, but its not bad.

  2. They are good cases, well built, if a little dull. if you want something more exciting its considered you would aim higher up their list than this one.