Corsair Carbide Air 540 Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on July 3, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- ATX
Assembling the Corsair Carbide Air 540
As it turns out, despite being a very unorthodox case design, the Corsair Carbide Air 540 is also ridiculously easy to build a system in. I never expect a Corsair case to be difficult, but as I've repeated over and over already, this isn't a typical Corsair case. Amusingly, outside of a larger footprint that makes the Air 540 more unwieldy to manipulate, it's actually in many ways even easier to build in than a garden variety ATX case.
For starters, installing the motherboard is a breeze. Corsair includes a mounting/alignment post for the center motherboard mount, and the standoffs for a standard ATX case all come preinstalled. The screws for the case are even sorted into separate baggies for each specific purpose. I'm not sure Corsair could've made mounting the motherboard any easier. Wiring in the motherboard headers is also simple; there are plenty of routing holes around the tray and they're all placed logically. And because the case is designed with enough headroom for radiators in the top and front, your hands never feel crunched. It's spacious but doesn't feel like an inefficient use of space.
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Installing drives wasn't without its hiccups, but was still pretty simple. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the 3.5" drive trays in the bottom of the primary chamber actually have SATA backplanes behind them; you don't have to wire up the drives installed in these trays, just the planes themselves. And the trays themselves are toolless and exactly flexible enough to wrap around and secure 3.5" drives.
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In the rear chamber, the toolless 2.5" drive cage looks a little chintzy but definitely gets the job done. Drives installed feel secure, but you're really going to want 9.5mm drives instead of slimmer ones as these cages seem to have been designed specifically for those exact dimensions. My only complaint as far as drive installation goes has to do with the 5.25" bays. Because of their orientation it's nigh impossible to screw them into place. The bay shields easily pop in and out and they're secure when in place, but you're relying on Corsair's toolless mechanism to keep the 5.25" drive secure. I found with our blu-ray drive that the drive itself would lock into place and couldn't be pushed too far into the Air 540, but was relatively easy to push back out of the case from behind. If you're using a hotswap bay that may require you to pull a drive out, there's a chance you'll have to push it back into the case and back into place.
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What really surprised me is that Corsair created an essentially toolless power supply installation. There's a bracket mounted to the bottom fo the 540 that will hold the back corner of the power supply in place; you install the drive between the 2.5" drive cage and the risers in the bottom of the enclosure, then place the bracket and thumbscrew it in. There's still a little bit of wiggle, but it's remarkably secure. If you don't want to go toolless, there are still holes in the rear of the chassis for you to manually screw in the power supply.
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Expansion cards, on the other hand, went in pretty easily, and wiring up the whole case proved to be simple as well. There's a copious amount of space in the Air 540 between the 5.25" drive bays and the power supply that allows you to stash cabling without too much fuss. Corsair even intelligently oriented the 5.25" bays and the 2.5" cages; you won't have to twist power leads to bridge between the two. It's a small touch but an appreciated one. Note that the three 140mm fans included all use three-pin connectors and Corsair does not include molex adapters for them.
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I feel like the only thing that could really keep someone from doing a speedy assembly of the Carbide Air 540 is just the slightly alien design itself. Corsair has done everything they can to make it as simple as possible, and while I'm not sold on the mounting system for the 5.25" drive bays, it at least gets the job done. I'm as happy with the case's ease of assembly as I am with its aesthetics: it's not just a good-looking case, it's an easy to use one as well.
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Tulatin - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
Out of curiosity, how deep is the back chamber from tray to panel? This case has a lot of potential as a little fileserver cube - it just needs some mods to do it.bobbozzo - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
Hi, it would be nice to know the total power draw (at the wall is fine) for the 'Full Fat' system.Thanks for the review!
bobbozzo - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
Also, it would be nice to know, in all case reviews, if the stock fans will work with a PWM motherboard fan controller.Grok42 - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
Excellent case and a great review. The case looks great and I'm I really like the design of separating the components. This case will certainly be in my list of cases to consider with my next build even though I can't imagine what build it would make sense for. I hope to see more cases pushing the design envelope like this one and I will try very hard to purchase such designs when I can.That said, who will use this case? It isn't a file server as much as the comments here want it to be. The drive bay isn't actively cooled and there aren't enough internal bays for it. It can certainly be a gaming system but it's a bit overkill for that given that 90% of the right bay would be empty.
This case seems perfect for a high end gaming show rig. The two separate bays makes the main bay very clean and gives plenty of room for doing about anything you want. All the extra space in the right bay could be used to hide everything that's needed to trick the visible side out. Unfortunately for me, I'm not into this but it's going to make some very nice rigs.
Grok42 - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
For all those wanting this to be a file server, think about this. This case is obviously for building a high-end show rig probably with water cooling and multiple graphics cards. It makes no sense to also press a $2k-$4k rig like this into menial file server as well. Sure, like Dustin, some of you have space challenges but for most it makes a *lot* more sense to build a separate file server.Aside from the space it takes up in a room, the "overhead" of building a separate file server is about $400. This gets you a Large Case, PSU, MB and RAM. Some of this extra cost can be recovered because you will need less costly components in your primary machine but if you're like me you won't save anything but your primary machine will be perfect for what it does rather than be a compromise between two major functions.
This machine will serve you well for years longer than you'll keep your main system. I keep everything on my server so when I get a new machine there is no backup to be done, just drop in the new box and tell steam to download the games I'm currently still playing. My kids watch their movies from this box, we watch our movies on our TV, our phones automatically upload pictures and video to it. This is the benefit of having a machine that is always running and dedicated to being stable and working 24/7 for years.
rchris - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
Thanks for the review. Interesting design, but not for me. You mentioned that you "feel like I'm looking at the next BitFenix Prodigy." Well, I've seen a few peeks at the upcoming Prodigy M and it looks much better than this (although not as versatile with MB sizes). That's the one I hope you can review soon.Impulses - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
I feel like they need to either go larger or smaller, it's current size leaves that side chamber in no man's land... You can't use it as a dual purpose server/enthusiast rig, but you end up with a lot of wasted space for the typical enthusiast rig. Side chamber should only be as wide as the PSU/external bays, shave off a couple inches and simplify the HDD/SSD caddy space.Twoboxer - Friday, July 5, 2013 - link
Shrunk to ITX specs and sans the space for the radiator, the side bay space would be well used and it might make a great single-vidcard gaming case. As is, there are some corner desk applications where the shorter length is an asset too.adamdz - Friday, July 5, 2013 - link
My biggest issue is that there are no fans on the right side. It needs at least one 120mm fan there. I like the looks otherwise, but with 4 SSDs and the PS there will be some heat there to be removed.Also, vertically oriented DVD/BD drives are a pain to use.
atragorn - Friday, July 5, 2013 - link
You know what all these comments really say ?“You can please some of the people some of the time all of the people some of the time some of the people all of the time but you can never please all of the people all of the time.”
You all want to make this thing into something it clearly is not. Personally i like it, i think im going to build my next water cooling rig in this box. It either works for you or it doesnt.