Corsair Carbide 275R

Clean, compact, and tempered glass to boot.

Today, we have the new Carbide 275R chassis in for a look over. Corsair is a company no stranger to the PC market, having been releasing products for over 20 years. The 200 series of cases from Corsair are marked (on Corsair's site, that is) as 'beginner friendly,' with them merited as being easy to work in. For a new builder, this is very important. Unless you like a challenge, no new system builder wants their first project to be a cramped, hard to work in, or poorly laid out affair. We reviewed the 275's 'predecessor' (quotes used purely because the 270R is, naturally, still available) here. We liked it a lot, and found that it certainly delivered on the claims of being easy to work in, spacious, whilst providing decent airflow (even with the 2016 trend of closed off front panels, one that - in 2017/18 started to recede). Is, therefore, the 275R just a re-skinned 270R with tempered glass panels? Well, we shall see. There is no doubt, however, that adding some glass paneling to any case seems to elevate the 'premium' factor. In fact, tempered glass has a habit of doing this on virtually any chassis, come to think of it.

Certainly, however, the 275R (and cases like it) aim to continue the more recent push toward more compact, less space heavy systems. That said, do you still want to cram a 1080Ti, high-end AM4/LGA 1151 CPU, and liquid cooling? Well, cases like these can do that. It's a trend in case design that - to someone who has been around since the old giant towers - never came around fast enough. Whilst certainly not as squat or compact as something like the Fractal Design Define C/Meshify C series, it's still a relatively small footprint given what you can fit in it. The 275R features the ATX standard of 7 expansion slots, and also room for 4x 2.5'' and 2x 3.5'' drives, of which the 3.5'' bays are 'tool-less'. I like this. This also increases the number of storage options when compared to the older 270R. Please also note that there are no spaces for 5.25'' inch bays. For you fans of vertical mounts, the chassis also allows upward mounting of your GPU. I should note that I didn't do this, as not only am I a bit of a traditionalist but doing so also hurts GPU temperatures. What about cooling? Is there space to cool that potential i7 8700k? Well, front options allow you to mount up to a 360mm radiator. 140mm fans and 140/280mm radiators are, however, also good to go up front. The top of the case allows for a 240mm radiator only, and even this comes with the caveat of using low profile DIMMs. That said, this is plenty of room for cooling, ranging from entirely air-cooled systems to ones with multiple radiators. That said, whilst I am sure you could do a custom loop in the 275R, it certainly isn't designed with them in mind. It is, after all, a 'beginners' chassis. MSRP for this chassis starts at $79.99 (USD), or $69.99 for the case with the acrylic window. Roughly translated, this puts the case at 66.00 EUR, or 59.00 GBP.

Both of the latter figures have, naturally, been rounded up or down. This puts the case firmly in the 'mid-tier' of price bracket. Way out of the way of a 'budget chassis,' but still a fair distance from the pricing we would typically expect of a 'premium' case.



