The 500R features outrageous cooling potential. Four included fans (2 x 120mm in front, a 200mm on the side, and a rear 120mm exhaust) cool your components, and USB 3.0, native SSD support, and eight expansion slots make it easy to build a rock-solid system. A removable hard drive cage means you can get more direct airflow over GPUs up to 452mm in length, and internal 240mm radiator support gives you tons of cooling flexibility. Captive thumbscrews provide easy removal of the side panels and our innovative cable routing makes your system clean and tidy.
$ 118.98
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Best case I’ve owned,
This is a great case all around. I was rebuilding my gaming rig and didn’t want any of those corny gaming cases with the circus lights and the colored plastic moulding reminiscent of a nitro burning funny car at a redneck car show.
It’s plain black, with white lights that you can turn off if you want to. Build quality is excellent, no sharp edges to cut you. It has EIGHT fan slots, you can design your airflow around your parts rather than the other way around. Lots of ventilation holes so hot air won’t hang out in the corners and round your PCI cards. It’s super spacious with fantastic cable management. If you run your cabling neatly, you’ll have plenty of room to work in your case without scraping your knuckles or crowding your monster gaming GPU. I can work on almost any part of my system from the side panel without dismantling anything.
The stock fans that come with the system are the two front intakes and the large 200mm side fan, all of which are surprisingly quiet for stock fans. I bought high quality, quiet fans to use in the rest of the case, but kept the three stock fans. I have a closed loop CPU cooler and being able to mount the radiator on the top of the case, with a fan pulling frpom the outside saved a ton of room compared to my old case and the fan is dedicated to the CPU exclusively, rather than having it inline with the power supply ventilation or going out the back where it would crowd the water pump.
The removable drive cages were a must for me, I have solid state drives and I don’t need 15 drive bays blocking my airflow. I removed the middle drive cage which allows the fist front intake fan to blow air right into my GPU intake. The lower drive cages can mount two SSDs per slot! I wish more manufacturers would start doing this. I added a regular hard drive to the lower cage for weekly backups and mounted it right above the SSDs. The second front intake fan blows air right across this cage to keep your drives cool if you need it.
Getting in and out of the case is so nice compared to other cases I’ve had. There are two captive thumbscrews in the back that cannot fallout and get lost. There are no insanely annoying metal tabs all over the side panel that you have to line up. You just set the panel on the bottom lip of the case opening and slide it in, tighten your thumbscrews and you’re done.
As many people have mentioned in reviews around the net, you WILL need an extension cable for your power supply. The PSU is on the bottom and most boards are configured with the power plugs on what will be the top of your board once you mount it. The extension cables are cheap and good ones come pre-wrapped so that you can keep your case neat and looking nice.
Also, some little tricks to make your install go smoother:
1. Use wrapped cables, it will make life much easier when you have to add or remove stuff.
2. When taking off and putting on the front fascia of the case that covers the buttons and fan intakes, make sure to line up the fan speed and LED control buttons by setting them all the way down. The little knob that will be attached to it won’t line up and click in place otherwise.
3. Clean the fan filter on the bottom of the case OFTEN or your power supply fan will struggle. The mesh is very small and clogs quickly.
4. If you aren’t using one of both of the top fan slots, cover them with a thin piece of cardboard. Otherwise your exhaust fan will spend all it’s time pulling cool air from the holes (which are closer) than pulling your hot air from the case. I prefer slighty positive air pressure though, so..up to you.
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|Big Mid-tower / Smart design,
This case was a lot bigger than I anticipated so make sure you have ample room to accomodate it. However if you do, then you will certainly be very happy with this case.
Pros: *Standoffs are already installed – So don’t worry that they gave you 4 extra standoffs in a packet, you don’t need them.
*Lots of room for Video Cards / Cables – If you are worried about big video cards then this case should take all your worry away. I bought a GTX 560ti and it literally looks miniature inside the case. A good 5-6 inches of space remaining; you can fit any card in this case.
Tons of holes for cables to run through and each side panel of the case has curved sides that protrude out so you can fit extra cables behind the case easily and on the front panel you can easily fit aftermarket coolers. I installed a Hyper 212 plus and it doesn’t come close to touching the side panel even with the giant 200mm fan attached to the inside panel.
*Just looks good. The white LEDS really shine against the White and Black color scheme. If you want different colors or more fans then you’re fine because this case has tons of places for fan mounts of any size. If you want Watercooling, the top of the case has a rectangular cut out that can fit a monster radiator or 2 120/140mm fans.
Cons: The cutout plate for my motherboard that matches up with all the inputs in the back of the case didn’t fit right at first and there is a small gap between the plate and where the inputs are on the Mobo. Not a big issue but something you might have to play around with.
Could also be a pro, but it’s huge. This isn’t an ordinary mid-tower so just keep that in mind. The 8 pin supplemental power connector that needed to go from my power supply to the top of my motherboard would only reach if I went directly over the video card. It wasn’t long enough if I used to holes and tried to run it behind my case and over the top hole behind the mootherboard. I have a Corsair TX Enthusiast PSU that has long cables so keep in mind, cable length could be an issue if you buy a PSU with shorter ones.
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|Great Case but listing my cons so far,
Case is great but there are some cons with the total experience.
1. The packaging, the packaging is really not enough for those soccer players at UPS. The front/back/sides have no padding or protection. When I got my case I saw some dents in the edges of the box but thought it would be okay, I was wrong. The little plastic protrusion on the top filter part which allows the clicking in past was broken off (stuck it with epoxy and is now all better), there was a crack in the top plastic bezel under the mesh portion and there was a dent almost perfectly halfway along the side panel with the fan (it seems this is the weakest part of the side panel, I did fix it but you can still see it if you are really looking for it).
2. Integrated fan controller, it works as it should but you can barely tell the difference in the speeds. It would have been better if it was off/50{b81fbfd19e1fca5890798868c0714c408bbd5ec471654b6f9630c0fffa6e7eb3}/100{b81fbfd19e1fca5890798868c0714c408bbd5ec471654b6f9630c0fffa6e7eb3}. The airflow between mid and high in totally indistinguishable. I only notice a 1 degree Celsius difference in CPU and chipset and no change in HDD temp between low and high setting on the controller.
3. The fan LED switch, great idea horrible choice for switch, it has so much travel before it contacts that I am unable to press it without using my pinky’s nail. The problem is further compounded by the shape used (if it was circular it would be easy to depress).
4. Inclusion of 1394 and not 2 extra USB 2.0 ports. I have never used 1394 over the years and every board that supports an internal header usually has a port on the I/O panel. Why did Corsair go this route is beyond me.
5. Power supply mounting, I’m really not sure who did the measurements for the ATX PSU mounting holes but 1 doesn’t line up no matter the orientation (fan up/ fan down) of my PSU (a Corsair TX750 mind you). Why wouldn’t a Corsair PSU line up with a Corsair case is beyond me. Poor QC maybe but still really?. Also if you have your psu drawing air from the inside be prepared to get creative when connecting the 8pin Cpu connector, I have to route mine through the hole above the PSU (one without a grommet) just to make it reach and even then it was a stretch.
5. No side dust filter and proprietary fan wiring, really Corsair? Demciflex is perfect for the side
6. Stupid side panel thumbscrews, I know all the reviews rave how its great but it just makes the whole process more difficult because you can’t see the hole to line it up properly and to make my situation worse it seems one screw was screwed at an angle in the factory thus making it impossible to screw in without babying it.
7. Not that much room to store cables even with the bowed out side panels (well with my Tx750 V1 anyway). It was tight when getting the panel back on and its not like I just tossed the wires back there. I tried my best to tie it down neatly, which raises another gripe not enough tie down spots on the MB tray.
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