Corsair Carbide Series 200R Mid-Tower Comptact ATX Chassis Review

It’s fairly obvious at this point that the 200R has done well in terms of performance. Given that this is on average £15 cheaper than the 300R I was expecting something to be missing in terms of performance, but there simply isn’t anything missing, nor is there anything here that you simply don’t need. The 200R provides you with everything you need for a day to day system, but still enough features to house a high spec gaming system.

While many people really want the £100+ gaming chassis, full of LED lighting, half a dozen fans and gull wing side panels, it’s not really feasible on a tight budget. At the end of the day most of us end up putting more money into the components first and leave the chassis as an after thought. This is of course not the best way of doing thing and you should always start with a good chassis in mind. Fortunate then that the 200R caters nicely to both approaches to building a system.

Should you be the person that has spent all their budget on graphics cards and fast hard drives (nothing wrong with that of course), then the 200R offers you a cost effective solution that provides you with all the features you’ll need for your gaming system. Ample room for extra cooling fans, USB 3.0, some basic but very competent cable management and solid build quality.

If you’re the person who is looking to pick the chassis first, then the 200R offers you a solid starting point to build your system around. It’s got support for the majority of motherboards, room for an SLI/CrossFireX configuration, large power supplies, plenty of room for both the larger 3.5″ and smaller 2.5″ hard drives, optical drives and more.

While its styling is simple, it’s not without its charms and regardless of what you install inside it should sit discreetly by your desk. Not everyone likes big flashy lights and side panels on their system. Of course build quality and performance are in many ways more important than style and it’s on these two points that the 200R delivers. The only thing worth keeping in mind is that with so many fan mounting points, the chassis could get a little noisy, fortunately the chassis is pretty sturdy and shouldn’t rattle, just be sure to invest in good quality fans should you wish to install any extra cooling.

I’m happy to award the 200R with our eTeknix Bang for Buck award, it’s great to see another strong contender in this price range and I’m really impressed with the level of quality and thought that has gone into its design.