Product Showcase

Product Showcase

As always we begin with packaging. It's a simple yet informative thing to show as when you purchase a chassis, you honestly do not want any defects and scratches on it. The Carbide Air 540 is packaged in cardboard.

Once you take the unit out of the cardboard box you'll notice two layers of polystyrene protecting the unit, which on its end is covered in a cloth bag. Packaging was done carefully and the chances of damage and risk are minimal thanks to that.

Whoooooop there  it is, haaaauler. And hopefully you'll agree with me, that is a striking sexy chassis to look at. The design is once again kept simple, no bright lights and screaming logos, so that is subtlety in full effect. The dark black design is easy on the eyes. Less is better is the trend these days, and that works out well here. The chassis is made out of a molded ABS plastic accent pieces for the shell and a black coated metaal body. As you can see at the front side, it supports (x2) 5.25", and internally it comes with 3.5”/2.5” tool-free Drive Caddies (Hot Swap) and has a (x4) 2.5” tool-free SSD cage.

When we flip around the unit we can see the side panel and a black booty a little better. The fantastic big see through panel can be removed with two thumbscrews. I say fantastic as that is what I call a window ! It displays it all alright. The size of the chassis by the way is 415mm x 332mm x 458mm (H x W x L). The Air 540 has multiple fan mounting points.

the fan mount locations (or FML as is my lingo) are Front: 2 x 140mm (included), 3 x 120mm (pre-spaced for radiators), Top: 2 x 140mm or 2 x 120mm (pre-spaced for radiators) and the rear: 1 x 140mm (included) or 1 x 120mm. In combination with the big meshes everywhere there is plenty of airflow really. The backside reveals that it has 8 expansion card slots and a rather unusual power supply location to the far left side of that black booty, we'll look at that later though (the PSU mount I mean!).