I've recently purchased the Corsair Carbide Series 300R Windowed Version Case.



The specs of the case is as below:

Dimensions: 19.1" x 8.3" x 18.7"
Mobo Size: ATX, mATX
Expansion Slot: 7
Form Factor: Mid-Tower
Material: Steel Structure with molded plastic accent
Drive bays: 3 x 5.25" abd 4 3.5"/2.5" Drive Caddies
Cooling: 6 12/14cm fan mounts (2 at the front, 3 top, 1 rear). one 14cm front fan included and one 12 cm rear fan included
Front I/O: 2 x USB 3 Port, 1 x Headphone Jack, 1 x Mic Jack, Power, Reset

Review:

The case build quality is top notch. All the body parts are sturdy and the side panels doesnt easily bend. I personally like the simple, clean look. Actually I prefer the Obsidian series, but those are very expensive. A better alternative is the Corsair Carbide 200R case which doesnt have front fan grills. I took the 300R due to the front grill because i wanted adequate cooling for my case.

The space inside is spacious enough for me to easily route my cables and add my motherboard. One thing to note is that I've gone with the Cooler Master 212X heat sink fan. I assure you, that this is the tallest cooler you can fit in the case. I have roughly 0.5 cm of clearance from the top of the HSF to the side panel. Keep that in mind before buying a HSF. Also, one of the two side panel fan intake is no longer able to accomodate a fan due to the HSF. The one that is more towards the front should be fine with 14cm fans.

The drive bays are adequate. You have space for three 5.25" drives. which I guess is plenty for the normal user. The 3.5" bay can accomodate 4 drives. The bay employs tool-less design where you can just pull the drives out by pressing a clip. One thing to note is that this case doesnt have a 2.5" bay. The 3.5" bay will accomodate a 2.5" drive without needing an adapter, however you would need to screw the drive in. I was hoping it had atleast one or two 2.5" bay that can natively take the 2.5" drive. I have one SSD and its pretty much takes up the whole 3.5" drive bay slot. giving me option to only put 3 more 3.5" drive.

Cable management is reasonably good. There's hole for cable routing and some clips at the back for you to tie the cable to the case. however the front port IO's cable is very messy and i would have preffered them doing a nice cable routing for it. The cable routing holes do not have any rubber grommets like the higher end cases.

Cooling is great with 7 fan intake (6 now that the HSF blocks one of the side intake). I plan to place 2 140mm fans on the front and one 120 mm fan on the side. The top and rear would be exhausts. Sound wise, the fan sounds aren't really muffled by the case at all due to the side panel holes which lies directly above the CPU HSF.

The PCIe expansion slots are held in place by a thumb screw. Kudos to Corsair for designing the back metal cover that covers the PCIe expansion slot to be slotted out instead of being broken off (like some of the cheaper cases). This means you can reattached the covers to the PCIe expansion slot in the future if you remove a GPU for example.

The case readily accepts water cooling solution, however i have yet to test this.