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CORSAIR CARBIDE SPEC 01 Gaming Case Review

Cases & PSU/Cases by leeghoofd @ 2014-08-18

Corsair surprised friend and foe when they released the Carbide SPEC series: three affordable gaming enclosures would join the ranks of Corsairs elite enclosure lineup. With affordable Corsair really meant affordable; take for example the SPEC 01 which retails at just below the 50 dollar mark, thus similar priced as many OEM products. Usually the latter means low build quality, average hardware compatibility, a maximum trim down in functionality and features to keep the price as low as possible. In fact everything which a CORSAIR case is renowned for is missing in many OEM solutions. Time for the Fremont giant to show the world it can be done differently.

Test Setup and Measurements

For the test setup we have to thank Tones for supplying us with the Intel i7-4770K CPU. The installed hardware was comprised of following parts:

Intel i7-4770K cooled by boxed cooler
ASRock Z97 OC Formula
16GB of CORSAIR Vengeance Pro 2400C10 memory
ASUS AMD 7970HD video card
2 x Western Digital Green Caviar 1TB HDD
1 x Plextor M5 PRO SSD
CORSAIR RM650 PSU

Normally we always install one of Corsair's Hydro coolers inside the reviewed enclosure. Either for temperature or compatibility testing no matter how hard we tried it became clear that installing the H100i, an AIO 240 version was going to be a mission impossible. Too bad as these AIO units are really popular with assemblers and gamers; even though Corsair clearly defines this on their website that only single versions fit it still feels as a missed opportunity. Regular-sized tower coolers up to 150mm will fit, though any extreme air cooler will have clearance issues with the windowed side panel.

Secondly the strangely positioned top cutout in the motherboard tray to route the 8-pin power plugs is another debatable point for this good looking mid-tower case. Cable management is also not really aided by the lacking space between the motherboard tray and the side panel, which is under a cm. Luckily the side panel has a protrusion, yet this was not sufficient to easily tuck away the cables of the Corsair RM650 power supply. Easiest option was to install them in the right hand part of the case.

For the IDLE tests we allow the setup warm up during a 30 min period; the temperatures of the CPU cores are monitored by the Realtemp software. For the stress test we go flat out and test our the four cores of the non overclocked i7-4770K CPU (3900MHz) with the Prime95 64bit software with a custom 12-12K setting. The noise test is done via the Corsair specifications: measured at 1m from the case.

Looking at the temperature results, we can spot that the air flow created by the single front fan is not a miracle solution, still it manages to outperform the strategy of the Cougar MX300 with a single aft fan. Nevertheless these are still safe operating temperatures for your processor as the Prime95 test is stressing your processor harder than most games or even encoding software will ever do. Secondly we are using the boxed cooler to keep data aligned with other cases where installing a full tower air cooler was not possible. Last but not least the Carbide SPEC 01 is still fully upgradable to become a monster cooling device. Two extra Fans in the top and one in the aft position will create a far better air flow to make the SPEC 01 more competitive with other far more expensive solutions out there. Yet again based at its stock equipment this is acceptable performance. Since this enclosure is only equipped with a single front Fan nothing earth-shattering can be expected either for the noise measurement. A humble 30dBA was measured which is below living room noise levels.

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