In case you haven't noticed, vinyl is making a comeback. But do you know what's not making a comeback anytime soon? CDs, DVDs, and other forms of optical media. That's the message Corsair sends with its Carbide Clear 400C ($99.99), a rather elegant-looking mid-towerchassisthat partially owes its uptown looks to the lack of any cutouts in the front panel.
Some case makers try and offer the best of both worlds by hiding 5.25-inch drive bays behind front-panel doors or sliding covers. Corsair decided not to bother with them altogether, and for many builders, that's just fine. Heck, even Blu-ray discs are facing extinction with the advent of ubiquitous broadband connections and streaming media.
However, not everyone will be on board with Corsair's train of thought, and it's not just optical drives the Carbide Clear 400C shuns—the same is true of fan controllers, audio breakout boxes that come with premium-level sound cards, and anything else you might want to shove into a 5.25-inch drive bay.
但需要这些海湾有很多其他的人r chassis options if they're building or updating a PC. The Carbide Clear 400C is among Corsair's first cases to ditch optical-drive bays altogether, and for that sacrifice users are treated to a compact mid-tower that, nonetheless, can accommodate up to a giant-size Extended ATX (E-ATX) motherboard. They also get a case that lives up to its billing of delivering "clean, modern lines with an all steel exterior." If you pay a visit to Corsair's website and check out some of its other elegant cases (such as theCarbide Clear 600Cor any of its Obsidian family of cases), you'll notice that the Carbide 400C does have a sparer, cleaner appearance, in fact.
Similar Products
SilverStone Redline Series RL05
Be Quiet Dark Base Pro 900
NZXT S340 Elite
The Carbide Clear 400C isn't flashy by any means. Its visual points of interest are subtler compared to showy cases that scream for attention. Things like a large side-panel window with a flip-out handle, a mesh top (it's really a removable dust filter), and a front facade with big ventilation holes along both sides keep the Carbide Clear 400C from being too boring. That's not to say that gamers looking to build a visually loud system will be all that interested in the Carbide Clear 400C. But if what you're after is classy styling that crosses ever-so-slightly over the conservative line, it is certainly an option.
Corsair also offers a non-windowed version of this case to consider, the Carbide 400Q. It's a quieter alternative to the 400C, both in looks and in noise. Instead of a giant window to show off the case's guts, the 400Q uses a black side panel with sound-dampening material lining the inside. The same stuff is also found on the right-side, front, and top panels.
Either way you go, Corsair will take it easy on your wallet. Both the Carbide 400C and 400Q cost $99.99 list, and that's if you are purchasing direct from Corsair. Give it time, and you might find these cases go for even less on the web.
Design and Features
The Carbide Clear 400C doesn't have a domineering presence. Not many mid-towers do, though we've seen some that tread the line between mid-tower and full-tower.
That's not the situation here—the 400C measures 18.3 by 8.5 by 16.7 inches (HWD) and weighs around 18 pounds. It's a smaller, lighter version of the aforementioned Carbide Clear 600C, which itself measures 21 by 10.2 by 17.9 inches and weighs about 22 pounds. The two also share a similar aesthetic, only the 400C doesn't boast the "inverse" design of the 600C (on that case, the motherboard faces, atypically, to the right) or its external drive bays. It also looks less like a mini-fridge than the Carbide Clear 600C does when viewing it from the non-windowed side.
From the outside, the Carbide Clear 400C is a mostly steel case, a point that Corsair really tries to drive home. However, we'd argue with the claim that it's an "all steel exterior," as the ventilation dividers on the side of the front panel are plastic. So are the door handle and the feet, the latter of which are clearly visible from just about any angle. Are we nitpicking? Admittedly so, but not without reason.
The distinction between plastic and metal construction is an important one because it directly affects the quality of construction. In the event we needed reminding of that, we promptly busted one of the several plastic clips that hold the front panel in place. We weren't being ornery or careless; we were simply trying to access the dust filter that sits behind it. The instruction manual makes it sound rather easy, just "grasp the front panel from underneath, then gently but firmly pull away from the chassis." Sure, if you're Thor. But for mere mortals like ourselves, it takes quite a bit of effort to remove the front panel, and even then you risk breaking one of the plastic clips like we did. Pro tip: A better method is to remove both side panels first, then push the clips in as you pull the front panel off. You get access to this filter much more easily, that way.
Another fan filter, held on by magnets, covers the top of the 400C and helps give the chassis some character. Sitting in front of it is an I/O panel consisting of two USB 3.0 ports and individual headphone and microphone ports. These are flanked by power and reset buttons, along with an drive-activity LED.
There's more plastic inside the case. It comes in the form of two overlapping (and somewhat flimsy-feeling) shrouds, one that protects and hides the power supply and a second one that covers the removable 3.5-inch drive cage. When both are in place, it gives the case a chambered look, hiding a lot of cables.
The top section houses the motherboard tray and several cable cutouts; the three cutouts to the right of the motherboard zone are lined with rubber. If you're installing a Mini-ITX motherboard like we did, or even a MicroATX motherboard, you might find that the rubber-lined cutouts are too far away to be of any use—it really just depends on the length of your cables and if you want to stretch them over the main section that far.
You can install up to five storage devices in the Carbide Clear 400C, including two 3.5-inch drives in the bottom section and three 2.5-inch SSDs in a cage that's attached to the back of the motherboard tray. The 3.5-inch bays use carrier trays that load from the right side of the chassis (i.e., the back-of-the-motherboard side). And the 2.5-inch bays are lined up like soldiers above, also behind the motherboard.
That should be plenty of drive space for most builds, especially as gum-stick-size M.2 SSDs that plug directly into the motherboard grow in popularity. The Carbide Clear 400C comes with a 140mm fan installed up front to draw in cool air and a 120mm fan in the rear to serve as the exhaust. The front fan comes pre-positioned near the top.
There's room for another 140mm up front, or you can take out the provided 140mm fan and install three 120mm fans as front intakes. For more demanding builds, you can add another two 120mm or 140mm fans up top, or go with liquid cooling—the Carbide Clear 400C supports up to a 360mm radiator up front, a 240mm radiator up top, and/or a 120mm radiator in the rear.
Installation
As we mentioned earlier, things got off to a rocky start in our pre-test-build assessment when we broke a clip on this case trying to remove the front panel. Other than that, though, we didn't run into any major issues installing a system inside the Carbide Clear 400C.
Typically, the first step in a build process is to remove the side panels, and that's how we started this one. The right-side panel—the one without a window—is held in place with a pair of thumb screws, one of the greatest inventions ever to grace the PC. For whatever reason, some case makers feel the need to negate the benefit of using thumbscrews by twisting them so tight that you need to fetch a screwdriver and some protein bars to remove them. Kudos to Corsair for not doing that. As an added convenience, the thumb screws only loosen, and remain tethered; they don't remove completely from the side panel, so you don't have to worry about dropping or losing any of them.
The windowed side panel is a little different. Since it swings open like a door, two metal hinges hold it in place. With a little back-and-forth wiggling, the side panel lifts right off the hinges. Just be careful when tossing the panel aside, as you don't want to scratch the acrylic window. (Tempered glass at this price point? Wishful thinking.)
With the side panels removed, we focused our attention on removing the shrouds covering the power-supply mounting area and the drive cage. The shroud that sits over the drive cage is held in place by (drumroll, please) more thumb screws. These are found behind the motherboard tray, and like with the ones holding the side panel, we were able to loosen them without a screwdriver.
Once the drive-cage shroud is off, the other shroud slides right out. You have to remove both in order to install the power supply.
If you're not going to install any 3.5-inch hard drives, now would also be a good time to remove the drive cage entirely. We didn't install any hard drives, ourselves, but we still kept the cage in, just to get a feel for what cable management would be like with it in place.
You can install up to three SSDs in the back. These slide right into place without the use of any tools, though if you frequently swap out drives for whatever reason, you might wear out the plastic clip that holds them in place.
With our storage situation taken care of, it was time to clean up the build, starting with the re-installation of the power-supply and drive-cage shrouds. (You don't have to put them back on, but the case won't look as clean inside if you don't.) This is where things get a little tricky. Before you slide the shrouds in place, you'll want to snake any power-supply cables you plan to use through their cable cutouts. You can also slither some cables through the drive-cage area, assuming you removed it.
Since we were installing a Mini-ITX motherboard (a low-cost, AMD-based Asus AM1I-A), we couldn't really take advantage of the rubber-rimmed cable cutouts. They sit too far away from the motherboard and would make cable management awkward, assuming the cables would be long enough to reach their destinations in the first place. Instead, we took advantage of some other holes in the motherboard tray. This allowed us to keep the front of the case mostly clean, but it also meant having to do some housekeeping around back.
背后的挑战只是扫电缆the motherboard tray is that there's not a lot of room to work with. Even after routing cables so they'd mostly sit flat behind the motherboard tray, putting the side panel on took a bit of negotiating and force. We won out in the end, but a little more space behind the motherboard tray would have made things easier. This is hardly a problem exclusive to this chassis, however.
We ended up with a mostly clean layout, though there wasn't a whole lot we could do about the 24-pin ATX power cable and 4+4-pin CPU cable, both of which are braided a bit thick. Even if they were long enough to route through the rubber-edged cutouts, you'd still see them stretching across the motherboard tray, only horizontally instead of vertically. Nevertheless, we ended up with a mostly clean build inside with very little in the way of airflow obstructions.
Pluses and Minuses
Sometimes less is more, and that's the design philosophy Corsair took with the Carbide Clear 400C, at least in terms of aesthetics. It isn't a flashy case by any means, nor does it have any sharp angles or aggressive curves, traits that typically appeal to gamers. What you do get with the Carbide Clear 400C is a massive acrylic side window to view your build, and if you want to add some internal lighting to spruce things up, you certainly can. If not, you're left with a classy-looking case with a relatively small footprint considering what it can hold.
外的样式,设计一些谬论red our enthusiasm. One is the amount of force required to remove the front panel. This wouldn't be a big deal except that it's the only way to access the dust filter that sits in front of the intake fan. We broke one of the plastic clips holding it in place on our first try, but even if we hadn't, we'd be concerned that they'd wear out over time. Use great care with this panel.
The Carbide Clear 400C could also use more (or differently placed) cable cutouts, though that's mainly an issue only when installing a Mini-ITX or MicroATX motherboard. For standard ATX and even E-ATX motherboards, the rubberized cutouts sit closer to the board and should work well.
Of course, the biggest question you have to ask yourself if considering the Carbide Clear 400C is: Do you need any external drive bays? Corsair doesn't provide any here, which is both part of the 400C's charm and a potential downside. Omitting 5.25-inch drive bays wasn't really a risky move by Corsair, as the company offers plenty of other chassis options for people who need them. And Corsair is not alone; plenty of other case makers, such as NZXT, Thermaltake, and SilverStone, are going the optical-less route in some of their larger chassis. But for the growing number of users who've long abandoned optical drives, the Carbide Clear 400C is worthy of consideration, especially at its $99 price point.
The Corsair Carbide Clear 400C drops 5.25-inch drive bays while delivering an affordable, compact mid-tower that looks good.
Like What You're Reading?
Sign up forLab Reportto get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to ourTerms of UseandPrivacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
谢谢你如果gning up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Sign up for other newsletters
