Installation
Given that the layout of the Corsair Carbide 400Q is fairly typical for that of a modern mid-tower, nothing should trip you up. In fact, with well thought-out design elements such as the tool-free drive bays, motherboard tray cut-out and plenty of cable routing options the 400Q is as easy as they come.
The first step was to pop in the motherboard's I/O shield and then the motherboard itself. For the photos we went with the Asrock Z97 Extreme9 which was pre-fitted with the Core i7-4790K and Noctua NH-D14 in passive mode. We also installed a pair of G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-2400 memory modules.
Even though we had pre-installed the NH-D14 we completely removed it once the motherboard was fitted just to see how easy the process was and I am happy to report that all went as expected.
Next we removed the plastic shrouds in the bottom of the case in preparation of the power supply and 3.5" hard drives.
In went the Silverstone Strider Gold S Series (ST85F-GS) power supply and it has to be said even though this is a full modular unit measuring just 150mm long, connecting up all the cables was a bit of a squeeze despite there being 60mm of clearance to the 3.5" drive bay.
With the power supply installed we proceeded to install all the storage devices, which included two 3.5" WD Red Pro 4TB hard drives and three Crucial BX200 960GB SSDs, RAID0 anyone?
Now all that remained was to throw in a little GPU power and we were done. Up for the task was a pair of HIS R9 380 graphics cards. These graphics cards might only measure 270mm long, but for a case of this class we feel they are the perfect fit. That said, monster graphics cards such as the Radeon R9 295X2 also fit.
Due to the fact that the Carbide 400Q has been stripped of 5.25" drive support entirely and is limited to just two 3.5" drives, we found that even with a massive CPU cooler and two R9 380 cards, there is plenty of room still available. Our build with the 400Q is just begging for a large front mounted radiator.
With the plastic power supply and hard drive shrouds reinstalled the Carbide 400Q makes for a clean build. It's a shame the hardware has to be hidden behind a solid door.