The Corsair Carbide 400Q Case Review
by E. Fylladitakis on April 29, 2016 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- ATX
- E-ATX
- Carbide
Conclusion
With the Carbide 400Q, Corsair wanted to create a compact and elegant case that also offers good thermal performance and very low noise levels, all for a reasonable price tag. These are just too many eggs for one basket and a single design cannot possibly excel on all five of those areas. It is the balance between them that matters and we feel that Corsair did a fine job balancing their design to the best possible extent.
The Carbide 400Q is one of the most compact cases currently available that can support an Extended ATX motherboard, as well as top tier graphics cards and liquid cooling systems. It cannot support many drives but these are more than enough for the majority of home and office users, most of which own a maximum of two or three drives. There is no support for external drives, forcing users who want to work with optical media to go for an external device. This can be a problem for professionals, especially for those that need to receive or share digital material with their customers. Most home users and gamers will not mind, as the bulk of digital material is being transferred online nowadays.
In terms of quality, the Carbide 400Q is very good overall. The mechanical strength of the steel chassis is excellent. It is next to impossible to bent or twist the chassis, even if a lot of force is applied. The paint job is excellent, highly resistant to fingerprints and scratching. Our only concern lies with the plastic frame of the faceplate. The plastics are thick and of very good quality, but it is very tightly attached to the metallic frame of the case, requiring a lot of force to remove it.
With the stock configuration in mind, the balance between thermal performance and acoustics is towards the latter, but the Carbide 400Q still offers thermal performance comparable to that of most ATX tower cases and can easily support a relatively powerful system. If the user wants to, the Carbide 400Q can support even systems with triple graphics cards and liquid cooling, but that would require the removal of the top panel cover and the installation of more and more powerful fans. This would defeat the purpose of buying the Carbide 400Q in the first place, as the end result would probably be a cramped, noisy setup.
In conclusion, the Carbide 400Q is finely balanced between thermal performance, size and acoustics. It currently retails at it MSRP price of $99, which is reasonable for such a case but, in our opinion, if it could have been a little lower it would be more competitive in a crowded market. Nevertheless, the Carbide 400Q can be a very good choice for a typical gaming PC, allowing for relatively low noise levels and good thermal performance using the stock configuration with the case fan thermally controlled by the motherboard.
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vanilla_gorilla - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
" It is the balance between them that matters and we feel that Corsair did a fine job balancing their design to the best possible extend."Extend? You mean extent? Even that seems poorly worded. Editors asleep over there?
vanilla_gorilla - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
" It is next to impossible to bent or twist the chassis, even if a lot of force is applied. "You mean bend?
retrospooty - Sunday, May 1, 2016 - link
Seriously, the world doesn't need another grammar Nazi. This is the internet not an official textbookrandom2 - Wednesday, May 11, 2016 - link
This is a journalistic article, by a paid contributor or editor, available for the world to view and is at least a semi permanent record so there is a certain level of professionalism expected. Proofing these articles before posting is not difficult or even that time consuming. Not proofing is just asking to be entered in a race to the bottom...speaking from a journalistic point of view.economymatthew - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
A pretty b itchy response to a free product reviewjardows2 - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
Apparently you haven't been reading the comments section of AnandTech articles for long. Always someone quick to point out typos and grammatical errors!Samus - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
Ignore the trolls. Odds are this site is older than they are.Valantar - Saturday, April 30, 2016 - link
Age is a poor differentiator when it comes to whether or not to ignore trolls. Fully grown trolls are just as undeserving of our attention as those still in their larval stages.More to the point: sure, pointing out typos and other error in a long article can be helpful (there's a reason why proof reading used to be a profession!), but as with everyone else on the internet, we could do with an extra dose of humility and politeness.
random2 - Tuesday, May 10, 2016 - link
Younger trolls care not about grammar.boozed - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
Occasionally the pedantic nonsense is necessary, such as when an error stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of words.Pointing out typos is tedious however. How hard can it be to implement a "send correction" form? Plenty of sites have them and it gives people somewhere to put their pedantic nonsense without drowning out the main comments.