Joined on 11/14/05
Amazing Case!
Pros: Absolutely fantastic case! Quiet, spacious, plenty of room to route cables, and let's not forget that it looks great as well. Corsair has really done a great job with all of their products, the quality is truly top notch, and this case is no exception. There is sound dampening foam on both doors and a rubber trim covering the metal they rest on, rubber mounts or surfaces on any area that a fan or hard drive can connect, removable dust covers (you don't even need to open the case or remove fans to clean them), and optional spots for fans to accommodate any airflow configuration you devise. This is a fantastically quiet case. Also, that pretty front door swings either way or can be easily removed for when you need the extra airflow.
Cons: Only con I can think of is that when you remove the top or side fan covers you're left with a rough looking exposed fan cover. I'm surprised there's no blank insert to make it look a bit better.
Overall Review: Not a con, but I wish they had an accessory for easy SATA hard drive mounting/hot swapping like they do with some of their other cases. Also worth mentioning is that the cable to connect to the motherboard came snagged between two components, stripping the coating of one of the wires. I fixed this myself since I didn't want to RMA. If you order one it's probably a good idea to inspect the wires in case they're stripped before you get everything in.
Nice if it worked
Pros: Newegg got it out the door same day and fedex got it here a day early. Design is nice, compact and simple with flexible plates to keep the drive secure and in place (counter to another review that suggests it's just flapping around in there; you'd have to be whacking it good to get much movement from it). Nice and cheap. USB3 and eSATA both in the same package, exactly what I was looking for! eSATA for the dedicated bandwidth when working from home and USB3 so it will work with anyone else computer while on the road. Sounds great in theory...
Cons: eSATA, which was one of the main reasons to purchase this enclosure, did not work. I have the latest drivers, latest SSD firmware, and windows fully updated but the PC would reliably hard-lock during large file transfers (tested with 40 files totaling roughly 60GB). I've tested the same SSD both connected directly internally and with a different enclosure; everything worked fine. Put it back in this one and it hard-locked again.
Overall Review: USB3 worked fine. Latch mechanism is slightly finicky, which is no worry if the drive will reside permanently. The swing arm used to latch the drive in place is also used to eject it but the piece that juts out to eject it is a hair too small and failed to catch my 840 EVO. Luckily there is enough room to stick a tool in the side and pop it out manually. Anyone with one that works, make sure you are not plugging in both the blue USB and eSATA at the same time, this would cause the drive to either not appear/mount at all or be another reason for it to disappear aside from that mentioned in another review. The white USB is solely for power, either for the extra juice for spinning drives while using usb3 or to power the drive for eSATA. Plugging everything in at once will only cause problems for the OS since there is no toggle on the enclosure to let you choose which you would like to use. Nothing I've done but see many people do with other enclosures. I'm probably going to just return this and get a tried-and-true eSATA+USB2 drive with good reviews.