Corsair Carbide 500R Gaming Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,888 words · ~9 min read
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so I want to get started unboxing the carbide 500R from Corsair right away
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this is what I would consider to be a bigger brother to the 400r which is also
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in the carbide family products remember Corsair's highest end is their obsidian
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line followed by the graphite line and
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then by the carbon or carbide line at
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the lowest end in their current lineup of gaming cases which isn't to say that
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even a lowest end Corsair case is not a
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good choice because it would be
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Corsair's Philosophy for the design of
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their gaming cases is all about functionality while maintaining a
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certain aesthetic appeal so when we saw
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the 800d come out with a ton of features
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that just hadn't been done before the expectation was that the rest of a
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Corsair case lineup would include a ton of features that haven't been done
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before at the price points that they're going to be arriving at and you
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technically can't end a sentence with the word
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at but I did it so here we are so there
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are some key differences already between
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sorry guys the 500 R and the 400 R but
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let's start with the overall look of the outside of the case and we'll go from
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there so the front of the case yeah let's do that we have dual 120 mm fan
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mounts here and here we've got a nice mesh finish and then we've got four 5
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and 1/4 in Bays a power button two USB
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3.0 ports a hard drive LED microphone and headphone ports fire wire looks like
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you're able to turn the LEDs on and off and a fan speed controller the fan speed
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controller is not included on the 400 finally a reset
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switch the sides of this case are very
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clean looking so we've got this bulge
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which exists for a reason that's to give you clearance for the side fans to blow
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down on the CPU area as well as the video card area in this case you can do
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dual 120s dual 140s and they all have
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rubber grommets for noise dampening H or you can do a single 200 mm and in this
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case it's a white LED fan that is included did okay on the other side we find lots
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of room for cable routing in the form of a bulge that comes out of the side but
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it's sort of a Sleek looking bulge it's very aerodynamic so if the case was like
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going really fast like it wouldn't actually cause that much of a
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disturbance in the airflow
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pattern okay you know it's hard for me to get away with
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with sort of stuff like that but it doesn't actually it actually looks pretty good things that are aerodynamic
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I personally find tend to look better than things that are not
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aerodynamic and I think when you look at car design you find that to be somewhat
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somewhat true you know more uh you know Sleek curvy angular type cars tend to
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look better than like a box on Wheels right all right so at the back we find
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as I mentioned before lots of cable routing space although it doesn't look
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like it based on that if there was a flush side p it would sit like this far
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above the motherboard tray but because of the way they've designed the side
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panel there will be plenty of room to run your EPS 4 pin any fan cables you
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want to run anything like that so say you wanted to you know put this under
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your motherboard and run it down the back then you would be able to do that
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without any difficulty these are plugged into the fan controller at this point in
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time so those are the front uh white LED
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120 mm fans that are also included and
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then I think that pretty much covers it for the back here there's not a whole
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lot that I want to say about that on the
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other side we open up the case and we
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find here we are hey check this out you can't lose your thumb screws they don't
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come out I have seen that feature before but I haven't seen it in a while so
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there you go there's your fan and there's your panel putting that
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away all right so inside here the first
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thing I want to try to figure out because right now I'm not really sure
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what's going on here aha here sorry come up to the front I oh no aha there we are
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I was trying to figure out this whole time how that comes out now I know so it
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clicks in here and you just kind of push it in from the back and click it like
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that and it comes up so there's your mesh okay which is going to cover up an
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area where you can mount your top
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mounted 120 mm water cooling unit so
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Corsair's done very smart work here with
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the spacing of their 120 or 140 mm
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mounting holes and they've put them as close together as possible so that
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regardless of which kind of a radiator you have you will be able to install it
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without any difficulty here's where you can route your fan wires and over here
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is where you will Mount the tubes that come out of the top of your rad down to
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your CPU socket so I'm going to go ahead and put this back on so that the case
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doesn't just look you know totally skeleton by the end of the video here
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and let's have a look at the inside layout it's very similar to the 400r
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except for I'd say at least one key
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thing and that is this so check this out you can actually completely
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remove the
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top set of three hard drive cages well
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hard drive or SSD cages whichever you prefer oh hold on I believe there are
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also screws on the back that are preventing me from removing it at this
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time okay so I'm going to go ahead and remove those so it's difficult to remove
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I'd say but this isn't the kind of thing that you would have to remove just for
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installing a hard drive you can still install a hard drive just by using the
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sliding plastic rails and that is compatible with both 3 and 1/2 in and 2
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and 1/2 in drives but when you're building Mach your machine initially and
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you go to install a Radon 69 990 that you happen
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to have lying around and you discover that okay it fits anyway so that's
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clearly not what they were thinking here remember this is the longest graphics card in existence at this time at least
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on the consumer side of things uh so if there are longer
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graphics cards in the future you can go ahead and pull this out I mean imagine
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what a graphics card that long would would look like but I mean I'm not here
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to judge right so uh so yeah you would
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be able to remove that and I believe the other one also comes out as well just by
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undoing the screws at the back so like I said this is how you actually install a
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drive that is only if you discover during your build that you you know
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maybe you want to have less restriction on the fan that's blowing over your graphics card maybe you have a longer
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graphics card I don't know what your reasoning is I don't really care it
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doesn't matter because it's your reasoning not mine you can remove the
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cage all right let's go and look at what
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in here here's their little hard drive sort of mimicker cardboard piece
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here we have something that won't be relevant until a minute from now when I
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explain why it's here so here's power for the fan controller and whatnot
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here's another uh oh another header for the fan controller so you can plug in
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the side panel fan all right the back fan doesn't run off that and I will tell
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you why it's because the expectation from Corsair is that if you're building
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an Ultimate machine and you know who Corsair is and you bought this case
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you're probably going to go with an h80 or an h100 to cool your CPU so if that's
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the case that's going to go ahead and take care of the control of that back
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fan for you you don't need your case to do it so there you go all right we've
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got our front USB 3 and we also have included an adapter which we can put on
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like this if you want to use front USB 2
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instead of front USB 3 because your case doesn't support front USB 3 or your
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motherboard doesn't support it your case does you have front 1394 fire wire front
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HD a and front switches and LEDs and whatnot
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all kinds of good stuff uh you've got lots of grommets so these are two
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filtered either 12140 mm fan mounts or
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uh power supply rubber grommets to supported and then ventilation holes to
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make sure that your 120 mil fan on your power supply is getting lots of air
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because there are rubber feet on the bottom of the case which is going to keep it raised off the table or carpet
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or wherever you happen to put it and make sure your power supply doesn't starve all right I already mentioned the
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rubber grommets here's the CPU uh cutout as well as the motherboard back plate or
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motherboard trade being very reinforced it does reinforce it to put these
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patterns in it so it's a very rigid motherboard back plate that's good
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especially if you are shipping the system I haven't forgotten the
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accessories but I am getting a prompt about I think that's it so uh 1 2 3 4 5
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6 78 PCI slot which is great because if
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you have a bottom PCI Express slot at the very bottom of your board you can
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still install a dual slot graphics card should you desire to do so last but not
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least the rest of the accessories uh which includes some zip ties some
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plastic clips for mounting cables or for routing cables we got some fan yeah some
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screws some more different screws some motherboard standoffs some other more
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different screws and finally the more different screws that we have seen yet
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so thank you for checking out my unboxing and overview of the Corsair
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500R don't forget to subscribe to line US tech tips for more unboxings reviews
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and other computer videos