Corsair Graphite 230T Review

Interior

Popping off the side panels, which incidentally slide to the front - not the rear of the case - reveals a near-identical interior to the Carbide 200R. In fact the only real difference is that the Graphite 230T is slightly larger - all the cable routeing holes, the large CPU area cut out and drive bays are the same size and positioned the same. There's room for three external 5.25in drives, all in tool-free mounts and there's plenty of room for storage too, with four tool-free 3.5in drive mounts in the base.


There's an interesting slim 2.5in mount cage above the 3.5in cage too, which has room for four SSDs, meaning there's no need to sacrifice 3.5in drive bays for super-fast storage like you do in other cases. The 2.5in drive mount cage has another important feature; because Corsair hasn't stacked the drive mounts vertically, instead mounting them side by side, the top front 120mm fan has a clear gap behind it.


Combined with the the addition of a second 120mm front intake fan as standard and a large mesh front panel, we live in hope that the poor GPU cooling exhibited by the Carbide 200R won't repeat itself here. The rest of the cooling arrangement is the same as the Carbide 200R, with dual 120/140mm roof fan mounts sporting room for half-height radiators, plus a single 120/140mm fan mount in the base and a single 120mm fan mount in the rear. The front section is off limits, however, as the storage mounts are a single-piece design that is riveted in from the bottom. The fans are staggered too, meaning there's no way to mount a dual-fan radiator without extensive modding.


Extras are fairly sparse otherwise, but there is a removable dust filter thrown in under the PSU mount, which is located in the base of the case as per usual. The front panel is also protected by a dust filter, although you'll need to remove the panel to clean it. There's essentially no limit for PSU length if you're not planning on occupying the bottom fan slot, while CPU coolers are limited to 160mm - fairly typical for this size of case.


If you need more leeway here then you might want to look at the excellent Obsidian 750D, which raises the bar for CPU coolers to 180mm, but Fractal Design's similarly-priced Arc Midi R2 also offers more clearance. Thanks to the slim 2.5in mount cage, GPU clearance is also well-catered for with a limit of 430mm for one graphics card, but lower slots are limited to 340mm by the 3.5in drive cage.

Build quality is excellent overall, if a little plastic-laiden inside. However, the Graphite 230T has some of the best side panels we've seen. The paint is super-scratch resistant and the panels slide in from the front (which hurt our brains at first) with no effort at all, unlike some more expensive cases that often need a little (or a lot) of persuasion.