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Before proceeding further on into the review, we feel that it is necessary to outline the problems and damage suffered when our sample was shipped. These difficulties may be courier specific, but there is a clear design issue that has caused the trouble to occur.
Corsair's flimsy and entirely inadequate drive trays were not fit for the purpose of securing even Crucial's minute 75g M4 SSD, let alone the hefty 2TB hard drive. Both of the drives' trays gave way and, in the HDD's instance, took out the rack below.
Multiple points of weakness were evident in the feeble design, with breakages occurring at 8 different locations for the HDD's tray, and 4 for the SSD counterpart (as depicted by the red circles in the above image). There is no other way to describe the trays' fastening attempts than substandard.
We were forced to re-mount the 64GB Crucial M4 SSD and 2TB Seagate Barracuda Green HDD on a pair of unaffected drive trays. Luckily, even after the beating they had taken, the drives functioned correctly without any sign of lasting damage.
It's hard to blame DinoPC for this. Surely somebody at the 500R's design centre had expected the chassis to be shipped as part of a full system?
There are methods of ensuring that shipping problems such as this are prevented. The drives could be packaged separately, or extra padding could be installed in the system to prohibit movement. Unfortunately, these methods are far from ideal, and are unfavourable for a product that is intended to be used without any prior installation or hassle.
Our advice to DinoPC would be: either employ a case that provides enhanced security for its HDD/SSD mounting methods, or be prepared to pay the price in returned systems and unhappy customers.
