Building With The Corsair 300R
Corsair’s Carbide Series 300R has enough space for an oversized ATX motherboard up to 11.8” wide, with an empty space between upper and lower bays that allows graphics cards up to 16.3” long to fit into slots one through five.
While most standoffs are threaded to accept screws, Corsair places a stud in the center of the motherboard tray to positively locate the board. This simplifies pushing the board into position when the other screws are installed.
Limiting front-panel connectivity to a pair of USB 3.0 ports helps Corsair to reduce the number of cables. Ditching the old AC'97 audio header in favor of HD Audio connector further cleans up the installation. Anyone still using AC'97 should probably consider upgrading his or her motherboard before splurging on a new case.
Carbide Series 300R hardware includes a variety of screws and standoffs to mount the motherboard, SSDs, and optional fans.
Offset mounting of 2.5” drives is required to make a single tray work in cases that include backplanes (though the 300R has no backplane). A 3.5” drive locator pin must still be removed from its silicone noise dampener to make room for the smaller drive, which is screwed to the bottom of the tray.
Manipulating a latch on each 5.25” bay allows devices to be added and removed without tools. Each drive is secured on only one side, though a tab on the opposite side has a bump which centers on one of the drive’s screw holes.
Our P9X79 WS motherboard is about 0.9” wider than the ATX standard, yet Corsair's case swallows it with room to spare. That extra board width does, however, partially block certain cable holes, requiring the ATX and PCIe power cables to follow an alternative path.
The finished product is stylish yet plain, which are two words that should only be used together when describing an object (Ed.: What, as opposed to someone's significant other?).