Introducing the Corsair Carbide 500R

Corsair seems to have completed their case lineup with their latest addition, the Carbide 500R. Though currently made available in black, this enthusiast-geared enclosure was originally advertised in its attractive pearl white coloring, and that's the model we have on hand today. Does this powered up Carbide 400R have what it takes to make it as a compelling alternative to not just its cheaper sibling, but also to Corsair's Graphite 600T and 650D as well as the other enclosures around the $139 price point?

While the MSRPs of the 500R, 600T, and 650D show stratification (and a visit to NewEgg confirms this), things get a little muddy when you start bargain hunting. While you can get the 500R for $139 ($125 after rebate as of the time of this writing), the cheapest I could find the 600T for was about the same price and usually around $160, hanging out in the same neighborhood as the Obsidian. That clusters these three enclosures against each other and while it's not as goofy as the sub-$100 graphics card market, it does make you wonder a little bit about why Corsair shot so high with the 500R.

That said, there are definitely differences. The Graphite 600T is a fine case but an odd bird in Corsair's lineup with no siblings, while the 650D is essentially the love child of the 600T and Obsidian 700D/800D enclosures. And while the 600T on up are all designed largely with acoustics in mind (and all use negative air pressure designs), the Carbide enclosures are a bit more open, with more fans, more fan mounts, and positive air pressure. Theoretically, acoustics suffer while thermal performance should improve. It's a trade-off end users often have to make in the sub-$200 case market.

The fan controls are going to be familiar to people who've seen the Obsidian 650D, but the internals are all Carbide series, with a tremendous amount of cooling expansion available. End users willing to put in the time to fine tune the cooling are probably going to be well rewarded, but the configuration Corsair ships the 500R with isn't half bad either.

In and Around the Corsair Carbide 500R

If Corsair's white special edition Graphite 600T and the Carbide 400R got a little too drunk one night in the factory and engaged in some improprieties, their offspring might look an awful lot like the 500R. The trends of companies a bit newer to the enclosure market like BitFenix, Fractal Design, and Corsair towards producing reasonably understated, stylish designs can't be appreciated enough. However you may feel about how the Carbide 500R looks, you're probably at least a little thankful it's an aesthetic that doesn't scream "GAMERZ!!!one!"

Corsair opts for black plastic accents in the form of a "stripe" that runs along the front and top to the back of the enclosure while using white-painted steel for the side panels and some of the internal framework (specifically the top fan mounts). The grilles on the front and the mesh bay shields allow for plenty of air to come in through the front, and Corsair wisely places the reasonably modern I/O and controls near the top. This is a trend I'm happy to see continuing and spreading. Finally, the top of the case has a removable mesh that reveals two 120mm fan mounts that can be used for a 240mm watercooling radiator. I took NZXT to task for this in their Phantom and I'm going to do it again here: having these mounts openly cut out like this is bad for noise if you're not using watercooling. No amount of fan control can make up for a case with poor sound dampening qualities.

Chances are, if you're looking at the side panels, though, you weren't expecting the quietest case anyhow. The Carbide 500R sports a large mesh on the left side capable of supporting either the included 200mm intake fan or a pair of 120mm/140mm fans. I'm personally a big fan of these side intakes in cases, although more exotic designs like SilverStone's much more expensive FT02 can usually happily eschew them while providing stellar cooling and acoustic performance. I'm not sure how I feel about the flexibility of the fan mounts here, though; the included 200mm leaves a lot of open, "dead" ventilation. This is probably one area where your mileage may vary.

Of course, once you unscrew the side panels (with handy thumbscrews that are affixed to the panel itself so you never lose them) you'll find yourself firmly entrenched in the one place where Corsair's engineers are the absolute masters of their domain: the internal design. The guts of the 500R are, just like its siblings, a masterpiece of convenience. Motherboard standoffs are already mounted in the tray, the grommets that line the cutouts around the tray are firmly affixed, and Corsair's tool-less mounts for optical drives remain among the best in the business.

If there's one place where Corsair dropped the ball a bit, it's the drive cages and drive sleds. The sleds are the same ones from the Carbide 400R and they're a bit of an improvement on the old ones, but still feel a bit flimsy. For most use they'll probably be alright, but I do long for the metal sleds Fractal Design opts to employ in their enclosures. As for the cages, while it's awesome that you can actually remove both of them, they both require at least four thumbscrews to be removed, with the second's thumbscrews mounted under the bottom of the case. This is a far cry from the 600T, whose drive cages required half as many. It's a minor complaint, but still at least a little irritating.

Finally, while space behind the motherboard tray seems narrow, looks can be deceiving. However you feel about the bowed side panels, the rear one does provide a substantial amount of space to stash cabling. It's not the most elegant solution in the world and I still found Fractal Design's Arc Midi to have a healthier amount of overall room to hide cables, but it's a great start.

Assembling the Corsair Carbide 500R

The night I started working on the Corsair Carbide 500R, I knew I wanted something simple. Some of the cases on my backlog are going to require more work than others, but seeing that Corsair logo on the box gave me a sense of comfort and ease. I've already built computers in the 600T, 650D, and 400R, and every assembly was an absolute joy. And just as I expected, putting the 500R together was just like taking a vacation while still on the job.

Ease of installation with the 500R starts from the very beginning. Once you remove the thumbscrewed side panels, the pre-installed motherboard standoffs make popping in the I/O shield and mounting the motherboard a very simple affair. Installing the drives was just as easy: pop out a bay shield for the optical drive, gingerly apply a bit of force, and the optical drive locks into Corsair's tool-less system; these tool-less mounts are, by the way, the firmest ones I've seen. When you get that drive locked into place in the 500R, it's not going anywhere. You can still screw it in on both sides if you want, but I honestly found that isn't necessary.

The drive sleds are business as usual for Corsair. While they seem flimsy, that also makes it easier to flex them and snap a hard drive into place, and from there they use the bulk of the drive to maintain their shape. 2.5" drives and SSDs require snapping out the pins from one side and then screwing them into the drive tray manually, which does affect the tray's rigidity. Still, it's a good enough system and overall storage installation is very easy.

Corsair once again employs thumbscrews for the expansion slot covers, and I'm always happy to see eight instead of seven. What I noticed was that while some of the other enclosures required me to stretch and bend our GeForce GTX 580 a little bit to mount it properly, the card was able to align and mount perfectly in the 500R.

Getting the power supply and cabling in was also fairly simple, although there are the usual hiccups. The accursed AUX 12V line rears its head again, as the space above the motherboard tray feels just a touch narrow. Corsair also opts to use a molex connector to power the fans and fan controller instead of a SATA power connector; honestly I almost never use/need molex connectors anymore and desperately wish the standard would just fall by the wayside already. Note that the two front fans are pre-connected to the fan controller while the side intake fan needs to have its line run into the case before you close up. The rear exhaust fan doesn't work with the fan controller at all, either; the fan controller is only good for three fans.

Ultimately I think the 500R's hiccup is really the fan controller, but I can also sort of understand why it's designed the way it is. In addition to offering three fan speeds, you can also toggle the LEDs in the fans on and off. I'm assuming Corsair took criticism of the 600T's white LED fans to heart, because the 400R offered the same toggle. I personally like how the fans look, but if you're trying to sleep in the same room while the tower is running, I can see wanting to turn them off.

Everything else is a breeze, though, and as I mentioned on my work Facebook, the only way Corsair could realistically make assembling systems in their cases any easier would be to actually ship a technician with them to just do it for you. If you're prone to tinkering with your system, you'll want to give Corsair enclosures serious consideration for this reason alone.

Testing Methodology

For testing ATX cases, we use the following standardized testbed in stock and overclocked configurations to get a feel for how well the case handles heat and noise.

A refresher on how we test:

Acoustic testing is standardized on a foot from the front of the case, using the Extech SL10 with an ambient noise floor of ~32dB. For reference, that's what my silent apartment measures with nothing running, testing acoustics in the dead of night (usually between 1am and 3am). A lot of us sit about a foot away from our computers, so this should be a fairly accurate representation of the kind of noise the case generates, and it's close enough to get noise levels that should register above ambient.

Thermal testing is run with the computer having idled at the desktop for fifteen minutes, and again with the computer running both Furmark (where applicable) and Prime95 (less one thread when a GPU is being used) for fifteen minutes. I've found that leaving one thread open in Prime95 allows the processor to heat up enough while making sure Furmark isn't CPU-limited. We're using the thermal diodes included with the hardware to keep everything standardized, and ambient testing temperature is always between 71F and 74F. Processor temperatures reported are the average of the CPU cores.

For more details on how we arrived at this testbed, you can check out our introductory passage in the review for the IN-WIN BUC.

Last but not least, we'd also like to thank the vendors who made our testbed possible:

Thank You!

We have some thanks in order before we press on:

• Thank you to Crucial for providing us with the Ballistix Smart Tracer memory we used to add memory thermals to our testing.
• Thank you to Zalman for providing us with the CNPS9900 MAX heatsink and fan unit we used.
• Thank you to Kingston for providing us with the SSDNow V+ 100 SSD.
• Thank you to CyberPower for providing us with the Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive, Intel Core i7-875K processor, ASUS P7P55D-E Pro motherboard, and Samsung BD-ROM/DVD+/-RW drive.
• And thank you to SilverStone for providing us with the power supply.

Noise and Thermal Testing, Stock

While Corsair's Carbide 400R performed fairly well thermally when we tested it, acoustics suffered a bit from the increased ventilation in the design compared to other enclosures. The 500R is very similar to the 400R, just a bit bigger and potentially more effective, so it'll be interesting to see how it performs both in comparison to Corsair's other enclosures as well as the rest of the field in this price range.

Thermals aren't stellar but they aren't exactly poor either. Most of the enclosures in this market are designed for overclocking and can handle this kind of load with aplomb, causing them to largely just bunch up. When looking at the raw numbers, the three settings of the fan controller on the 500R aren't exactly necessary either: Corsair would've been fine just tacking in a low fan speed toggle to keep noise down. The case seems fine at managing heat, so the extra fan speed just means more noise.

Idle noise is pretty good while load noise could stand to be a bit better, but this is the sacrifice you make when you opt for a case that's ventilated the way this one is. The 500R isn't awful, but it's just not bred for pure silence either. At least the inclusion of the fan controller allows it to make healthy gains on the less expensive 400R.

Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked

Enclosures in this price range are more apt to prove their worth when faced with a substantially increased thermal load, and our overclocked testbed provides exactly that. Note that again, the 500R seems to really be geared towards including a 240mm radiator (like, for example, Corsair's own H100). The side intake fan should help keep the GTX 580 running cool and is worth keeping in mind for dual-GPU configurations.

Thermal performance isn't perfect, but it's pretty solid. The 500R keeps the GTX 580 about as cool as any other enclosure, while processor temperatures are on the lower end of our testing spectrum. Once again, it's clear that toggling fan speeds just isn't the way to go to keep temperatures down, only noise. The 500R is already doing a fine job of moving air in its stock configuration.

Idle noise is way down compared to some of the other enclosures we've tested, too, though once again it goes up pretty substantially once stress is applied. It stands to reason that the 500R would do very well in a configuration with dual graphics cards and a 240mm radiator handling CPU cooling. Keep an eye on Fractal Design's Arc Midi, though: while it's louder under idle, it's also $40 cheaper than the 500R while providing mostly equivalent thermal performance.

Conclusion: Another Solid Enclosure from Corsair

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that you just can't really go wrong buying a Corsair enclosure. The issue with the Carbide 500R is that it has to compete with two other Corsair cases in the same price bracket, or for not much more money you can get Rosewill's Thor v2, a case that performs roughly as well acoustically and better thermally. There are a few tradeoffs to be made there, but I can definitely see someone making them. Likewise, if you go $40 south, you run smack into Fractal Design's Arc Midi, a case which is a bit louder but otherwise about as effective at keeping your system cool.

As far as competing against itself, Corsair's "evolution in reverse" continues. With the existence of the 500R, I have a hard time recommending end users spend up for the Graphite 600T or Obsidian 650D. Those are both fine cases, but honestly I feel like the 500R is simply a better performer. Your mileage may vary and you may find the aesthetics of the other two cases more your speed, but Corsair threatens to obsolete themselves with the 500R.

The other options on the market require a trade-off here and there, so I can see why someone would go for Fractal Design's Arc Midi or Rosewill's Thor v2 over the 500R, but I can also see why someone would opt for the 500R instead of either alternative. That's probably not the most useful conclusion, but thankfully in this price range there just aren't too many cases that are authentically bad performers, so you can start to "season to taste" and choose an enclosure that fits your needs best. If it were my call I'd probably save the forty bucks and go for the Arc Midi, but the 500R isn't a bad choice.

As weird as it sounds, what I think may be the weakest point about the 500R is actually its price tag. While the performance probably warrants the money, the materials used in the construction don't feel like a $40 improvement over the Carbide 400R. I think if Corsair chopped $20 off the MSRP of the 500R, it'd be the obvious choice in its market instead of stratifying things. At $119 it'd be an easy recommendation over any of Corsair's other enclosures, as well as the Arc Midi and Thor v2.

Still, $139 isn't bad, and right now there's a $15 rebate on the Corsair Carbide 500R if you're a gambler. As always, Corsair has produced a case that's reasonably attractive, idiotically easy to assemble, and a solid performer. In some ways it's really the high point of their enclosure business. There are alternatives, but if you like the way it looks and want something easy to build, the 500R is worth your hard earned money.