Corsair Carbide 330R Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on August 25, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- ATX
The viability of the Corsair Carbide 330R as a silent enclosure is really going to depend on what your needs are and what's available. More and more as I test, I find that cases engineered for quiet running are at a very clear disadvantage with our standardized testbed, but that's also part of the fundamental issue that bears repeating here: a dampened enclosure will make a quiet build silent, but will make a normal build loud.
In the 330R's favor, its primary competition in the marketplace consists of the Fractal Design Define R4, which it generally beats handily. That's really the target; I love the Nanoxia Deep Silence cases and would easily recommend one over the 330R, but Nanoxia doesn't have Corsair's American market presence and seems to be having trouble keeping vendors stocked. Meanwhile, the AZZA Silentium and BitFenix Ghost are both more or less dead on arrival. If you can get the 330R for the $89 Corsair asks for it on their website (out of stock as of the time of this review), then you'll have the start of a good silent system.
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Working against the 330R is the fact that it's not a hail mary, and it's pretty clear it can be beaten. Corsair is making good use of the existing 300R chassis and offering a compelling enough sister product, but the competition is hungry. Nanoxia's chief competitive issue is availability, but that's not something to rely on. Meanwhile, Fractal Design could very easily iterate the Define into an R5 that runs roughshod over the 330R.
I'm not over the moon for the Corsair Carbide 330R, but I don't really have to be. This is an iterative product that has a specific role and essentially succeeds at playing that role. The chief issue is that the 330R still doesn't fix the gap in Corsair's product line that the 550D was supposed to solve. The 550D is generally superior to the 330R where noise is concerned, but thermals are a bit of a toss-up, and ultimately Corsair still doesn't have a superior answer to the competition. Fractal Design's Define XL R2 beats on the 550D until candy comes out, and is cheaper to boot. This is a contested space and Corsair needs to bring their A game; the Carbide 330R gets the job done and for a good price, but it's a solid B when we needed something more.
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kmmatney - Tuesday, August 27, 2013 - link
I think what matters is getting the airflow going across the motherboard, and low-high fans do that.Penti - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
The traditional mid-tower even in the AT days actually has the PSU at the top and often the 5.25" drives above the motherboard, the negative about the drives in front of the board is actually that you need a very deep case, especially to fit say EATX and deep 5.25" drives such as optical drives or hot-swap drive bays, and even worse with SSI-EEB boards so to say. It's the same reason why there are removable hdd-cages in smaller cases, long cards – in these days graphics cards would not really fit in some cases otherwise. Traditionally you have the exhaust fan just behind the cooler in the back of the case rather than the failed BTX-design with air tunnels that didn't work for various reasons and tying up the use of the front of the case for air-tunnels was just one of the worst ideas ever. Even inverted cases don't have a clear air path for the cpu hsf. There is no going back to BTX and Prescott air-tunnel days. The important thing is to change the air in the case, a case fan isn't directly forcing air on the cpu cooler. I guess you love the good ol' days when cases had side fans above the cpu socket area too?Don't repeat past mistakes. Air flow is important to keep the case temp, and the ambient/case air inside the case cool. There is no need to have forced air or turbulent air everywhere and a front fan doesn't really do that either. And is quite far away from the cpu in modern cases to begin with.
JDG1980 - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
The test results don't bear out the statements you are making. The reviews of the Silverstone Raven RV04 and Corsair Air Series 540 demonstrate that having fans blowing straight onto the motherboard is far more effective than the indirect cooling favored by conventional ATX cases.JPForums - Monday, August 26, 2013 - link
Actually, the "standard" ATX tower had the PSU up top behind the optical drives. The dumb idea was to move the PSU down to the bottom while leaving the optical drives up top. The SilverStone Temjin TJ08 would be similarly effective with the board inverted or in a standard layout as the fan is large enough to provide airflow to a CPU cooler regardless of where it is located at on a microATX motherboard. Though to be fair, the Silverstone Fortress FT02 and FT04 (and Temjin TJ08) have largely proven that 90 degree rotation and inverted motherboard designs can be very effective.
OCedHrt - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
I don't get what the big deal is? How is this any better or different than my Antec P180 (and mini's).kmmatney - Tuesday, August 27, 2013 - link
I have a Antec P182, and it's basically dead silent once it's configured correctly.bobbozzo - Wednesday, August 28, 2013 - link
I really wish Anandtech would re-review some Antec cases so they could be compared with these others. The P183 V3 and the p280 are both still available.I'm still happy enough with my p182, but for friends building new systems, I don't know if I should still recommend Antec over the newer offerings.
bobbozzo - Wednesday, August 28, 2013 - link
Also the build quality of my p182 is extremely good, and I wonder how it compares to the Nanoxia, etc.Laststop311 - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
nanoxia deep silence still is the superior choice. Extremely low temps + extremely quiet. It's got it all. I'm big on silent computing and every article i read i never see a case beat the nanoxia cases. I've been waiting for years to see them beat but they still represent the best choice for silent + good tempsEnzoFX - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
I have my fair share of problems with the case reviews here, but measuring "silent" cases has to be the biggest. Can't imagine the noise floor being ideal. I also wouldn't call 30dba silent, if you want silent, it's pretty easy to go below that.