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.
.jpg)
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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
28 Comments
View All Comments
Icehawk - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
I'd love to see how these cases do with a more focused quiet build - I used a Fractal Define Mini on my last build (OC'd i7/670/SSDs only/AIO water/fanless PSU) and without too much effort or compromise have a near silent machine under any load. Would be interesting to see how such a build would work in the various cases.Not sure about the rest of you guys but the best thing I ever did from a sound standpoint was to move all my HDDs out of my box and get them remote.
Laststop311 - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
Good comment. Seems this is overlooked in many quiet pc articles. Get a NAS box or even just attach a drive to your wireless router via usb if you can't afford a nas box. Keep only SSD's local in your machine. This has 2 bonuses not only does it make your system quieter it also increases air flow and removes some of the heat generation in the case lowering temps and noise win win.Grok42 - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
Couldn't agree more. There isn't any downside to keeping your bulk storage in the closet other than a light bit of cost for the separate system, NAS system or External drive enclosure. This is so outweighed by the up sides. Just having a single local SSD means the sound and heat are less in your main system. You can run much smaller boxes or have better airflow through a normal size one. Most important of all is security. I build new systems all the time and reload my current ones. Having all my data on a separate box means that I am never taking chances with it or taking it offline for others that use it in my house.JDG1980 - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
I don't understand why the inverted motherboard design hasn't been more widely adopted. The "standard" ATX tower design seems pretty dumb: you've got the CPU cooler in a dead spot behind the optical drives (with no airflow from the intake fans), and one of the two front intakes is largely wasted by blowing at the back end of the PSU. If the motherboard is inverted, you've got both intakes blowing directly over the motherboard, providing extra cooling to the CPU and video card(s). This seems like a no-brainer, so why do most companies stick to the old ways?By the way, it looks like Newegg has the Nanoxia Deep Silence cases back in stock. Who knows how long that will last, though - last time it was about 2 weeks before they were marked "discontinued".
Grok42 - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
I think the trick is to build boxes without optical and that have the PSU at the bottom.JDG1980 - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
Or you could put the optical drives on the bottom, and the fans at the top, giving the motherboard direct airflow. But no one does that either.inighthawki - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
Hot air rises so you generally want intake fans at the bottom to blow cold air in and exhaust fans near the top/back to push hot air out.JDG1980 - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
That's largely a myth. Unless you are running case fans at a *very* low speed, they are going to overpower any convection effects. Having cool airflow directly over the motherboard is far more important than a strict bottom-to-top path.inighthawki - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
I've seen reports of people seeing noticeable reductions in temps by doing it. It's not really a myth. If your fans overpower the convection too much you just end up getting a more average overall case temp, and thus the exhaust does a worse job moving out hot air, just warm air. Effectively requires your fans to push more air to achieve the same goal.ShieTar - Monday, August 26, 2013 - link
I think it is a semi-myth. Inside of the case, once the air is heated up it should never slow down enough to be affected by convection, but rather the GPU/CPU fan should move directly to the closest exhaust fan.But outside of the case, the exhausted air still needs to be removed so it can't flow back to the intake. What works here depends on where you place your case. If it is under a table, top exhaust might be just reflected down. If it stand besides a table, with the back to a wall, top exhaust is the more efficient option, as convection will set in as soon as the hot air is hanging over the case.
Of course, there can be areas inside the case that are bypassed by the main airflow, e.g. RAM, SouthBridge, HDDs. For those parts, convection can play a role, but the better option here is to make sure that these parts can participate in the airflow rather then rely on convection.