Corsair Carbide Air 240 review

PC Cases and Modding 227 Page 9 of 9 Published by

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Final Words & Conclusion

The Verdict

We mention it time after time, small form factors have become hip and trendy things, as such it makes perfect sense for Corsair to pursue such chassis. The Carbide Air 240 resembles its bigger brother quite a bit, but is not in the same league alright. Missing are some LEDs as that would have spiced things up. White LED enabled front fans and perhaps a small white LED up top would have made this chassis 100% finished. Other than that there is little to complain about really, it definitely is a very good example of what a small chassis should look like. Next to that being a Corsair product is has been fitted with the hippest features. It comes with a near tool-free design, brushed aluminum front, can house a good amount of HDDs and SSDs. Then the Carbide Air 240 can even mount a large graphics card. If that isn't enough this small chassis will even allow for a Liquid Cooling Kit installation with a radiator up-to 240mm. Not bad, we think.


 

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Aesthetics

I must admit that when you look at a photo of the chassis, you could end up frowning a little about its aesthetics. The chassis looks a little too white. Overall the design is based on a white with matte dark finish, black from the inside - white on the outside. It's perfect for dark-colored high-end gear like motherboards and graphics cards. The side panel window will definitely show you all the Micro ATX and Mini ITX goods you install in a very tasteful manner. Tastefully done I guess is the better keyword here, as the chassis is not screaming with logos and flickering LEDs. Taste however is a difficult thing to objectively write about, we love it, you might hate it of course. I do again would like to mention that this chassis needs some sort of LED lighting. The overall looks I find to be OK, nothing out of the ordinary though.

Features

We can only acknowledge that the product is very feature rich for a chassis in this segment of the market. The removable HDD/SDD trays, decent cable management options inside the PC itself. Missing is a 5.25" drive bay. We like the three 2.5/3.5" bays + three 2.5" SSD slots and 4 PCI expansion slots. Up-to 3 HDDs and/or six SSDs can be mounted - you slide them in until you hear and feel a click, and your SSDs are locked and loaded to arm that PC of yours. For the liquid cooling afficonado's, you still can fit a radiator in the chassis including an up-to 240 mm one, that is pretty rare for a small form factor chassis we think.


Guru3d-recommended

Final Words

The Carbide Air 240 from Corsair is a lovely product. It looks nice and comes with features that you typically only find starting at the more high-end mid-towers. Next to that the build quality is rather good as well. You are of course restricted to a smaller form factor motherboard, but the end result can be a super-duper-hyper-fast PC if you choose your components well. There are Mini ITX and Micro-ATX motherboards based on the Z87 / Z97 chipset, read our MSI Z87I review here for example.That is a product we equipped with a Core i7 3770K, but could have easily been a 4790K. The chassis offers proper cooling to deal with that, that said the fans are not the most silent ones though. You will be able to hear some airflow, but nothing annoying.

Combined with the space and options available you could even install six SSDs whilst installing a nice R290X or GeForce GTX 780 Ti card inside the chassis connected to your kilowatt PSU as that one fits as well. So yeah, please do realize that the small form factors are really not a restriction any more. You can build a PC that is massive in performance whilst being nice and small in size. Combine that with plenty of airflow, the option for liquid cooling and a warranty of two years, well that's just golden in my book really. Pricing, you don't need to think 200 USD like price levels, no Sir, it’s give or take $89.99 for the version as tested and shown here today. EURO prices will be a notch lower and let me also state that these are suggested retail prices. Overall we are impressed with the Carbide Air 240, it offers a lot of space for such a small form factor, it has great features for the smallest form factor it looks lovely and was designed ina very intelligent way, making this an easy to use and install chassis. There is a wide varyity of colors available for this chassis, this white edition might be a little too white ? Other then that, nice job Corsair.

Very much recommended.

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