The Corsair Carbide 600Q Case Review: Upside Down But Right On
by E. Fylladitakis on September 12, 2016 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- ATX
- E-ATX
Conclusion
Corsair added the Carbide 600Q to their ranks as a case with a minimalistic appearance and similarly minimalistic noise. Aesthetics are a highly subjective matter, so the minimalistic design of the case will probably be a bit polarizing; some will love the minimalistic, plain design, whereas others will be comparing it to a refrigerator. In terms of quality, the Carbide 600Q is an excellent product, built from high quality materials and with a very well designed, mechanically strong chassis.
Under the hood, the system area of the Carbide 600Q is roomy, offering excellent hardware compatibility and maintenance comfort. Aside from its stock cooling fans, the Carbide 600Q also offers a plethora of options for liquid cooling support. The case can support a radiator up to 280 mm long at the front of the case, up to 360 mm long at the bottom of the case, and up to 140 mm long at the rear of the case. This allows for various combinations of multiple all-in-one liquid coolers as well, such as, for example, one for the CPU installed to the bottom of the case and one for the GPU installed to the rear of the case.
However it should be noted that the Carbide 600Q is limited in terms of drives support, as the maximum number of drives that can be installed is relatively low. The majority of system builders should be satisfied with the number of drives that this case can support - two 3.5" drives and a trio of 2.5" SSDs - but it clearly was not designed for systems that require a large number of drives. Considering the mediocre thermal performance within the 3.5” drive area, the 3.5” slots are probably bsed used with low RPM/low power disks, such as efficient consumer-grade drives that have been designed with simple data storage in mind.
Perhaps the best feature of the case and one that seems that is not getting enough attention in the company’s marketing is its exceptional thermal performance. The Carbide 600Q, with a size comparable to most typical ATX designs, outperformed much larger cases that have been designed with thermal performance as their primary focus. The Carbide 600Q also has excellent noise reduction capabilities but, of course, Corsair’s marketing quote that the Carbide 600Q will always be whisper-quiet “no matter what’s running inside” is an exaggeration. Even our 44.2 dB(A) dummy load would still be unnervingly loud for users that seek to build a silent setup. A truly quiet system requires the careful selection of every component - the Carbide 600Q will help, but it definitely is unable to make a loud build suddenly go quiet.
In summary, Corsair designed the Carbide 600Q to entice advanced users that want a high quality and versatile case with excellent thermal performance and sound dampening capabilities but, at the same time, prefer a subtle and elegant appearance over a fancy design that instantly stands out. The Carbide 600Q excellently combines all of these features but, unsurprisingly, the designer could not keep the cost of such a product very low. With a retail price of $140, the Carbide 600Q is a relatively expensive product, but one that we would wholeheartedly recommend to users that require both excellent quality and overall performance from a product that they plan on keeping for years to come.
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Ej24 - Monday, September 12, 2016 - link
Holy crap, I nearly forgot my first computer, an eMachines 633ids. Thank you for this nostalgic moment.justaviking - Monday, September 12, 2016 - link
Where is the panoramic window?In the table on page 1, the second Prominent Feature is "Full side panel window: A gorgeous, panoramic full side panel window shows off your components..."
I kept looking for a picture of that great feature.
Ryan Smith - Monday, September 12, 2016 - link
There are two versions of the case, an opaque version and a windowed version. We have the opaque version. The feature list comes from Corsair, so I've tweaked it just a bit to make it clear that there are multiple versions.Houdani - Monday, September 12, 2016 - link
Three cheers for the non-window version. Case Makers: More please.fmyhr - Monday, September 12, 2016 - link
Exposed top-panel ports: recipe for poor connections due to dust collection. I suppose some electrical tape over unused ports would fit right in with the "carbide" look. ;-)madwolfa - Monday, September 12, 2016 - link
Looks like a larger version of SilverStone TJ08-E, which is probably a good thing. And yeah, the interior design (PSU orientation, etc) is nothing new.DanNeely - Monday, September 12, 2016 - link
Are the thermal tests actually passive as captioned in the graphs, or are they with the case fans running as implied by the text? If the former, where are the actively cooled thermal graphs.Ryan Smith - Monday, September 12, 2016 - link
The case fans are running. It's the heat load itself that's passive.DanNeely - Monday, September 12, 2016 - link
Is that the same setup used for the Graphite 760 and Deep Silence 6 tests that this case is compared to; which don't have the word passive on their graphs.The lack of fans on E.Fyll's test heaters is a separate issue. It doesn't matter much with large enthusiast cases with several pre-installed fans. The problem is the other end of the market where his test methodology makes cases designed around smaller quieter setups whose lack of pre-installed fans indicates they were either designed to use the fans on the PSU, CPU heatsink, and optionally a blower style GPU cooler to dissipate heat look much worse than they would in a more realistic setup.
E.Fyll - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
It is the same setup. We just improved the graphs to provide more information and be aesthetically appealing.We are intentionally using a passive thermal load. This is not an issue at all; on the contrary, any form of active cooling would affect the results dissimilarly for each given design. With a fully passive load, we determine how the case performs unaffected by external parameters (as far as that is possible, of course). If we were using active cooling that would induce airflow to "assist" a case that cannot provide sufficient airflow over a certain area, we would be essentially fabricating the results. We are testing the case itself, not a predetermined system as a whole.
The cases that you mention do not "look" much worse than they would in a more realistic setup. They are much worse. In the scenarios that you describe, thermal energy will not disappear, it will move through the components that they have been designed to be cooling only themselves. When a case has been designed with its cooling depending on parts that are not supposed to be "assisting the case", the thermal performance of that specific part dives. For example, if a case has been designed so as to "depend on the PSU's fan", the PSU will have to extract the extra thermal energy that the case cannot. It will get hotter, louder and the thermal performance of the whole area will depend on the specific cooling capabilities of the PSU, just because the case cannot extract the heat by itself. Will it work? Yes (well, probably). Does it perform just as well as a case that can extract the thermal energy all by itself? Absolutely not.