Corsair Carbide Series 400R Review

Corsair Carbide Series 400R Performance Analysis

Building a system inside the 400R is a piece of cheesecake. The large cable routeing holes and space behind the motherboard tray make it very easy to tidy away cables and route wires efficiently. In fact, even the biggest PC building n00b should be able to look like a cable routeing ninja when building a system inside this case.

Snapping the side panels into place and firing up our thermal tests also revealed the fans inside the 400R to be reasonably quiet. Unfortunately, however, the same can’t be said for the fan on our test AMD Radeon HD 5870 2GB and the whiny noise generated by this fan easily seeped out of the case, thanks mainly to the large amount of empty fan mounts dotted around its exterior.

Meanwhile, the case's cooling performance was a little more impressive than its acoustic performance, with the 400R achieving a CPU delta T of 51°C. This is only narrowly behind the cavernous Xigmatek Elysium and the classic Antec Twelve Hundred and actually better than the much more expensive Lian Li V2120 and Corsair Graphite 600T. It is also, incidentally, the exact same result as we saw from the Fractal Design Define R3.

GPU cooling was similarly good as well, with the 400R returning a GPU delta T of 41°C. This enabled the case to sneak ahead of the Define R3 in this test, although only by a single degree. The 400R also outperformed the Cooler Master HAF 912, which is one of our favourite mid-range cases.

Conclusion

The Corsair Carbide Series 400R is a success for Corsair, as it delivers good cooling performance at a reasonable price point. There’s also plenty of cooling flexibility built in, thanks to the myriad fan mounts, as well as plenty of useful features such as an excellent cable routeing system and LEDs that can be switched on and off.

The flip side of this is that all those extra fan mounts allow noise to escape all too easily, meaning that you’d want to pick your components carefully if you were to build a rig inside the 400R. We dare say that many people will also find the design of the case's looks a little bland too, although this is of course a matter of personal taste.

However, the mid-range case market is notoriously competitive, and the competing Fractal Design Define R3 is similarly priced, offers many of the same features and also includes sound-proofing and fan mount blanking plates. As a result, we have to stop short of an unequivocal recommendation, although you’ll be far from disappointed if you do take the plunge with the 400R.