Corsair Carbide Air 540 review - Article

Corsair Air 540 cube case gets reviewed

We review the new Air 540 chassis in the Carbide series of PC cases from Corsair. It has to be the most unusual product we have seen in a long time being cube shaped. But working our way through it we learned one thing, it is an absolutely innovative and impressive chassis. It is something different, and we like that very much. Corsair has been going strong in the chassis market. Very few of their PC cases left us with mixed feelings. It started with that Obsidian 800D and more recently 900D which to date are amongst the most well knwon and reputable chassis. With the Graphite series they pursued a somewhat more mainstream to gamers level of PC cases. And then came the Carbide series for which Corsair pursued the mainstream market, and as we all know that means a cheaper product often resulting in stripped away features, style and functionality that we know and learned to love, from say the Obsidian or Graphite series. Admittedly what Corsair has been doing with the Carbide series works well, as it did convince me in a positive way when they launched the initial series. These chassis remain good looking and really are feature rich products. So yes, I was a little surprices to see the Air 540 launch in the Carbide series, but it makes sense as you'll learn throughout this article.

So the latest blast of magic in the Carbide series of PC cases from Corsair is the Air 540 and it probably is the most unusual chassis you have seen in a quite while. The Carbide Series Air 540 is designed with a wider outer shell, and the innovation can be found in the fact that it has two side-by-side chambers (internally) with optimized Airflow. This design helps the case deliver good cooling whilst remaining at low noise levels. The main chamber of the Carbide Series Air 540 houses the motherboard and hot-swap 3.5” drives for drive cooling and quick swapping. The second chamber holds the power supply, SSDs, and 5.25” drives behind the motherboard tray. The separate compartments make building aquite easy and provides excellent cable routing.  The layout in each chamber is optimized to limit obstructions and streamline airflow from the intake fans to the hottest PC components, resulting in lower temperatures and noise levels.

So did I get your tastebugs going already ?, the Air 540 certainly comes with an unusual ... but unusually tempting design and a decent feature set. But let's have a look and go more in-depth buddy, next page please.