Corsair 300R Value Gaming Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,335 words · ~11 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of the Corsair carbide series 300r I first had the
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pleasure of laying eyes on this case at CES 2012 and now I have one here in well
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I can't really call it the studio because it's just at home where I happen
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to have some light set up so that I can shoot some videos but here I have it
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somewhere where I can show it to you guys so let's see what Corsair has to
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say for themselves the carbide Series 300 R is a compact expression of the
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Corsair philosophy great systems begin with a great case um open the easy
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access side panel to find a builder friendly design with three toolfree optical drive bays and four toolfree
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hard drive Bays with integrated 2.5 in SSD compatibility there's room for extra
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long graphics cards and it keeps your Hardware cool with amazing air flow including 140 mm front fan 120 mm rear
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fan which should be compatible with the h8 as well okay and dust filters are
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removable for features much like this make the foundation of your next system okay interesting so let's go ahead and
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get it opened up you know what give me a sec here guys now that we've got it out
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of the box we can have a bit of a look at this particular chassis it does come
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packed in a hard foam I do prefer a more
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soft foam because it can be a little bit more robust during shipping especially
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once the system is fully loaded although as you can see by the way I'm
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manhandling it this case is not that heavy so it is far less of a concern
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than it is with heavy cases and they've gone with more than inch thick foam so
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99.99% of the time it's going to be fine
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and remembering that shipping is more of an issue in Canada than it is almost
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anywhere else just because of the size of this country and uh how sparsely
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populated it is so cases often travel very far before they eventually reach
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the intended recipient so what else we got included here bit of a quick start
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guide but that's about it so let's go ahead and buckle down here so the first
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thing we see is the front of the case which has and I'm a big fan of this
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actually it has that plastic brushed thing going on and I'm going to show you
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guys uh yeah I'm going to show you guys
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why I like that so much and it's going to involve me moving this computer which
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has my cat perched on it and then moving my backpack which is in the way of this
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door in here so no no you don't to follow me in here I'm just going to
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bring out a brushed aluminum side
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panel from my case so here ha you're
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going to need to get the light just right but you can see all along the back
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edge of this side panel are fingerprints can you see that can you see the
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blemishes in the Finish yeah you can kind of you could kind of see it there
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in that shot you can kind of see it here okay so why don't I just wipe them off
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and the answer is because I cannot you cannot
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completely clean brushed aluminum
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because what happens is the oils and acids in your fingers etch into that
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anodized brushed aluminum finish and you cannot completely clean it so I love
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this plastic brush thing it's the same as is on the back of the Samsung Galaxy
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Tab 10.1 because it looks good it's
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lighter than metal although not by much aluminum doesn't weigh much and as much
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as you touch it you can actually clean it off so sorry I've harped on not
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enough let's keep going I love the industrial look of this design of this
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case overall you can see these little I mean they're just for Aesthetics but
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they look like kind of you know yeah like kind of industrial with these uh
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these bolt things going on here we've got three 5 and 1/4 in Bays power and
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reset switches headphones and microphone two USB 3.0 ports and then we have a
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front thing which I'm not 100% sure how
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it works although I felt some kind of a something going on down there what's
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that I haven't actually taken this apart I've only seen it on demo at the uh at
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the Corsair Suite so pardon me for uh
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for my ignorance here guys yeah okay so
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what is this down here nothing apparently okay so we have a removable
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fan filter which is not that easy to remove
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frankly that's uh that's kind of a shame
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so you do have to peel back some tabs in order to get that to to come off
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although you'll be able to blow it out sort of 99% of the time time and then I
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guess if you really wanted to wash it you can take it off other than that the
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inside is pretty run-of-the-mill this is interesting though this is a nice touch
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instead of going with plastic security
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uh pieces for the panels Corsair has gone with these pronged metal pieces and
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I don't know if you guys noticed but in my unboxing of the Shinobi XL I actually
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when I took off the top panel without even realizing it immediately I broke
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off those plastic pieces so this this is
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the kind of thing that and answers a question or like addresses a concern
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that I sort of had about cases in general because I've never seen this
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before uh before I even had a chance to talk to anyone about it so that's really
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cool Kudos Corsair way to go so dual
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120s or 140s it comes with 140 mm fan
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you can throw another one in there to put cooling over your hard drives
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there's a fair bit of restriction on these fans but they've done a little bit to alleviate this problem by putting in
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some uh some perforations here in addition to the holes that you see on
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most cases right here so let's go ahead and work our way around the side we find
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a pretty standard looking side panel over there on the other side we find
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dual 120s or 140s on the other side so you can use that to cool your graphics
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card on the bottom we find a filter for
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the bottom intake power supply as well
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as nice grippy rubber feet and on the
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back of the case we find once again a pretty run-of-the-mill design um so
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we've got our 120 mm exhaust with oh this is interesting so they've bulged
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out the 120 mm grill a little bit to give you a bit more room between the
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back of the fan and the grill this not only reduces the turbulence and
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increases the air flow it's able to push through but it also reduces the noise
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just a little FYI for you guys some perforations here bottom mounted power
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supply and everything's looking pretty hunky dory in there here we have dual
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12s or dual 140s would have preferred to
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see the 20 centered and seen a couple more holes put in it just so that uh if
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you're running a radiator such as an h100 you would be able to have that
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radiator centered because you can see it and um hold on a second I just got to
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throw this mouse for my cat who is bothering my filming
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assistant all right there we go let's put the front back on before we get too
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much further here cuz I do want you to guys to uh I want you guys to appreciate
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the case the case is finished design rather than just you know with me having
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torn it apart already more ventilation here on the sides so that is how those
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front 140 mm fans are getting all their air flow not only from these sides but
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also the mesh in the front as well as this hole in the bottom so very very
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good access to Fresh Air for those
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fans all right here we go let's take off
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those thumb screws the side panels pull off the side panel so this is a more
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value oriented case but Corsair still managed to keep the side panel
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reasonably strong although it is nothing compared to you know something like the
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650d or the 800d which are obviously very very highgrade cases let go ahead
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and take off this other side panel as well give you guys a brief look at the
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other side here there you go that is a
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huge CPU cutout so no matter where your
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CPU socket is located on your board remember every time the uh every time
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the C CPU socket changes the the average sort of usual locations tend to shift
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around a little bit so they've planned for the future giving you as much space
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as they possibly can in terms of cable management room you can see we have a
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fair bit of space back there we've got an entire thumb width which is a pretty
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good indicator that we should be able to fit a 24 pin connector back here with no
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issues whatsoever we've also got cable management holes here here here and here
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allowing us to also here for the eight pin access the optical drives the hard
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drives uh any other kinds of drives we might install in the front of the case
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that's about it I wouldn't have minded seeing another cutout here maybe on a
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like a revision you know 1.1 or something like that because some
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motherboards these days do have the eight pin in the middle and unless you
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have a power supply with a very long cable you might not make it all the way
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sort of over here from that hole so just something to bear in mind although oh no
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look at this H they thought of that you can probably run it through here no
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problem because you can see where the motherboard mounts are so you should be
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able to squeeze squeeze it in there all right what else we got on the back this can uh this can serve as routing for
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your front panel audio cuz most motherboards have that located over
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there although you might have to cheat a little bit and push your push it through
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before you put the power supply in stuff like that and I think that covers it for
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this side of the case yes it does okay let's flip it
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around here so here's our tooless 5 and 1/4 in base here is the the enormous
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space that we have in this case accommodating up to 4 50 mm graphics
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card I mean imagine that it would be like this much longer than a motherboard
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so I don't think that's coming anytime soon but there you go Corsair will be
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ready for it regardless okay we've also
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got our 3 and 1/2 in or 2 and 1/2 in
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hard drive mounts so there are the 2 and 1/2 in mounting holes these don't look
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that strong but trust me once you put a drive in them they are significantly
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more robust here's how Corsair ships the
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accessories and doodads so let's have a look at what we got in here some zip
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ties for cable routing some screws we're not getting a whole lot of extras but
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there isn't a whole lot to supply I mean something like an 800d comes with cables
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for the hot Swap and stuff like that but this doesn't really have that uh does
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this come out no it doesn't I mean other
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than that I think we've pretty much covered it I mean you got your dual 140s
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in the front you got your dual 140s up here you got your 120 back here you got
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your 120 built into the power supply here this is a very very capable case
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and Corsair always does such a good job of these little details even on their
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value cases black interior all black
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cables down to the connectors on the very end front USB 3 is with an internal
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header which they all should have been from day one but no one could decide on a standard and I think that pretty much
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wraps it up this is going to just if you
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want my opinion these are just going to clean up in that sub1 case Market
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because it's it doesn't come down necessarily to like the materials that
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are used it's a steel case you know with a plastic front bezel but it comes down
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to the design and the engineering that goes into it because it looks really
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good and it's I've seen high-end builds
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done in this case already it does not look like a sub $100 case once you put
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some decent Hardware in it so that's uh kudos to Corsair on this one so thank
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you for checking out this unboxing and first look at the Corsair 300r don't
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