Internal Design
Unlike the Carbide 600C, there aren't any hinged doors with handles on the 400Q. Instead, you must remove the door the old fashioned way, though with just two thumb screws holding each door on, getting inside the 400Q isn't exactly a tricky task.
With the left side door removed we get our first good look inside the Carbide 400Q and what we find are the internals of what looks like a fairly typical mid-tower.
That said, there are no obvious storage bays and with the 5.25" drive bays removed there doesn't appear to be much in the Carbide 400Q at all.
In the bottom of the case are two plastic shrouds designed to hide the power supply and all its messy cabling along with the boring old 3.5" hard drives. These shrouds are easily removed for installation of components via a few thumb screws on the rear side of the motherboard tray.
Speaking of the motherboard tray, we found a nice big cut-out that provides rear access to the backside of a motherboards CPU socket, along with three cable management holes complete with rubberized grommets.
Removing the plastic shrouds reveals a small 3.5" drive cage which can house a pair of drives limiting the 400Q's 3.5" drive support to just two. The 3.5" bays do come complete with a tool-free drive caddy which makes installing the hard drives quick and easy.
Removing the right side case door gives us access to the rear side of the motherboard tray and here we find a smart little bracket that can house three 2.5" drives. Each bay is completely tool-less and has a spring for easily removing installed drives. The entire 2.5" drive mount can be removed via just two thumb screws.
Cooling-wise the Carbide 400Q comes loaded with an AF120L fan pre-installed in the rear for exhaust. There is also a slightly larger AF140L fan mounted in the front as an intake. It's possible to install another two 140mm fans in the front, while the 400Q will also accept a 360mm radiator or multiple 120mm and or 140mm radiators.
With nothing other than the motherboard tray dominating the top three quarters of the Carbide 400Q, you can bet on good airflow. We should also mentioned that it's possible to install another two 120mm or 140mm fans in the top of the case, but Corsair doesn't list this location for the Quiet models, which makes sense.
It's also worth mentioning that the 400Q doesn't come with a fan speed controller, so these pre-installed fans will need to be controlled via the motherboard.
Unfortunately we don't have any official specifications for the 400Q. Our sample arrived just after Christmas and with our Corsair contacts all on vacation till after the 400Q is released, we weren't able to find the answer to a few of our questions.
That being said, we have no idea what the official maximum height specifications are for the power supply, CPU cooler and graphics cards, but we have a tape measure of our own so we can tell you what will and won't fit.
There is 350mm of clearance for GPUs with the front-mounted intake fans installed but if you install a radiator you will have to deduct its width from that total. After market tower coolers as tall as 170mm will fit and that means pretty much any tower style cooler is compatible with the 400Q. Finally, there is a grand total of 210mm for the PSU, though you must include the cables in that measurement so we don't recommend going over 160mm for the PSU, 150mm if you can help it.