Final Thoughts and Rating

...one of the best sub-£50 solutions on the market and, being both cheap and cheerful, it's certain to fly off the shelves.

We're on a slippery slope, folks. If the current-crop of sub-£50 chassis can get so much right, are the premium alternatives anything other than a lavish expense?

Granted, the Carbide Series 200R isn't as quiet as the Obsidian 550D, nor is it as attractive as the Graphite 600T, but it's less than half the price and still manages to get a lot of the basics right.

The design is simple-but-sleek, it's easy to build into with more than enough room for high-end hardware, a total of 11 drive bays are available, and eight fan mounts provide plenty of cooling/modding potential.

It's taken Corsair some time to venture into the budget category, but the Carbide 200R has been worth the wait. Sure, there's room for improvement - the plastic 2.5in SSD mounts aren't perfect and a mesh front panel may have further aided cooling performance - but this is still one of the best sub-£50 solutions on the market and, being both cheap and cheerful, it's certain to fly off the shelves.

The Good

Affordable price
Good build quality
11 tool-free storage bays
Lots of cooling potential
Really easy to build into

The Bad

Front intakes have limited air supply
Plastic SSD mounts could be improved

HEXUS Rating

Corsair Carbide Series 200R

HEXUS Awards

Corsair Carbide Series 200R

HEXUS Where2Buy

The Corsair Carbide Series 200R chassis is available to purchase from Scan Computers*.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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Me like :D Always on the lookout for a cheap case that ticks all the boxes and it looks like this one does.

This is the second review I see of this case, and it impresses me again. I'm seriously considering upgrading to it.

Tough choice between this and the 300R for a few pounds extra

Hmm this or the Antec One

marshalex
Tough choice between this and the 300R for a few pounds extra

Personally i barely seeing a difference between the two cases other than a front grille on the 300r, the 200r has more cutout holes for cables i think, or atleast the same, it can house the same number of harddrives, both are almost identical in dimensions. I really dont see the appeal for the 300r now that this is selling.

As for the antec one vs this, I think the 200r looks a lot better and has space for a bigger gpu, iirc the antec one can only house up to 260mm graphics cards.