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for a truly Enthusiast class experience welcome folks to my unboxing of the
Corsair air 540 this is part of their
carbide series go ahead and open this bad boy up
and let's see what Corsair has to say for themselves first and foremost
outstanding Cooling and quieter operation I don't know about the quieter
operation cuz it's quite meshy but definitely outstanding cooling more on
that in a moment included af140 L fans
low restriction fan covers and dust filters ideal for Advanced Air cooling
with support for 280 or 240 mm in the top 280 or up to 360 mm front RADS and
built for Brewers so that either means that it's built for people who make
their own beer at home or it's built for fans of the Milwaukee Brewers I'm not
sure which of those things is the case but what I think we can be sure about is
that if any of those people happen to be PC enthusiasts then this case was built
for them regardless of what baseball team
they follow all right so there goes the box and wo look at that the Statics
making the hair on my ARM stand up see check that out that's why you should
discharge a case before you uh ow oh that got me really good okay before you
can uh build a system in it so it uses a close cell hard foam not my favorite as
you guys probably know but I understand why manufactur ERS do it from a
cost-saving standpoint uh the good news about this case is it does come in a
nice double thick corrugated box so hopefully you won't have any trouble I
know Corsair has been pretty good about their packaging in the past in fact with
their ax 1200i power supply we threw it out of a moving car to simulate what
will likely happen to it in shipping and it did not break so there was that all
right so now time for the case itself we've got a manual which I of course
won't look at and then we've got the 540
I like Cube cases but not when they're over the top I I thought about getting a
mountain mods case at one point I ended up not doing it but uh basically the
point I'm trying to make with all this is I like about them that they're
shorter but I don't necessarily like about them that the footprint is wider
and that's been the thing that has made me not get them um sort of time and time
again when I've considered them so the front of this case has a very unique
sort of layout to it it has two vertically mounted 5 and 1/4 in Bays it
also has your reset power hard drive indicator LED microphone headphone and
two USB 3.0 Jacks other than that it's
completely clean on the right side and there's a reason for that there's not really much back there then here we've
got up to a two two 140 mil fans or
three 120 mil fans behind a nice open
grill with fan filters as well as a nice little corser emblem kind of a soft it's
not soft touch but it's a matte plastic finish that actually looks quite sharp
in person and seems to be reasonably fingerprint resistant which is
definitely a positive thing for a computer case because even building in
one the first time there are ones that you can stain to the point where you
can't even use them anymore well you could use them but it would bother you if you have obsessive compulsive
disorder like me um self diagnosed I'm not actually obsessive compulsive or
maybe I am either way I have to finish this sentence in a way that will be
satisfying Okay so we've got an air intake right here next to oh what's that
that's where the power supply mounts that's kind of funny and we can look at the case from the back because this
gives us a better idea of what's actually going on inside so lots of ventilation holes here here here and
here as well as our I/O and 1 2 3 4 5 6
78 PCI slots so those will give us
support for ATX motherboards but not necessarily XL ATX um but it could if
it's an XL ATX eight slot board up here in the top we are have support for two
120 or 2 140 mm fans and then we also
have the ability using these thumb screws on the
top there we go to pull this off so go ahead take a step back Mr camera
operator Boll sir and we can pull that off just like that so that gives us a
better look at the way that the mounting mechanism works for those fans Andor
radiators that you want to mount up there on the top and check this out you
can also pull off the front just like that so that's
where we get access to our fan filters as well as you can actually bolt this
down if you want so normally it's just secured by the top piece but there's two
spots for thumb screws right here and right here that will allow you to secure
that in transit or whatever else now we also get access to our front removable
fan filter which I have no idea how to actually remove but I'm sure there's a
way oh look at that that was easy it's magnetic very
nice and it goes on a little oh yeah that gives us uh a closer view at what's
going on in there so there's those af140 L fans those are the low speed variant
of their AF fans compared to the retail versions you do not get the rubber
isolating mounts as as well as the color rings that let you change the look of
them so they will look just like that forever and ever and ever uh we got a
nice big side panel window and there's a good reason for this because you can see
pretty much all of the important guts on the inside of your system through this
side panel it is basically enough room in here for a motherboard and that is
all because the motherboard goes here why don't I grab a motherboard we'll
make this simple on ourselves why am I pointing motherboards where they go
should just get one there you go so the motherboard goes right
there which leaves you room for a couple of drives down in the bottom so here I'm
going to point at those down here you can see all the accessories are included in this little box in one of the drive
cages so you can put either 3 and 1/2 or 2 and 1/2 in drives down there using the
included holes for 2 and 1/2 in drives okay those are oh that's cool those are
hot SWAT check that out so you can swap those in down there no problem you also
have room to install lots of thick radiators here and thick radiators here
and then that is pretty much it on this side look at all these Cable Management
holes though remember these debuted with the 800d and we are still seeing the use
for them today because everything else needs to go on the other side of the
case which means it needs a way to get over to the motherboard so let's move
over to the other side I'm just going to pull off two more thumb screws here
which are all we need to do the whole case is coming apart without any tools a
lot of the time even cases with thumb scroll screws need a screwdriver to take
them apart because they Factory tighten
them too tight and I can't get them apart on my own so we've got tooless 2
and 1/2 in Drive mounts here oh that's kind of clever look at that they clipped
together I didn't even know that about these go ahead and look at that you can
pop on or off as many as you want in fact that would allow you to mount them
and then install them so there there's a stack of four of them and then the way
that they clip into place is just in here so you can they have a a tension
Mount at the back see right there that will pop them out as soon as you move
this away and allow you to easily install and uninstall 2 and 1/2 in
drives that's kind of cool as well as your two 5 and a/4 in Baye right here
and then that is pretty much it for drive installation options so you get
the two 3 and 1/2 in hot swap ones with the included black cables right here so
you run these to your power supply which happens to be located like right here
for very very short cable runs there we
go so power supply goes here you run these to the front of your motherboard
through through here and then that's it 4 2 and
1/2 two 3 and 1/2 but you've got a lot of empty space up here that you could
probably sort of mod something maybe you put your pump up here or like your
Reservoir or whatever else you put maybe a little res down here all the included
cables are black not quite down to the individual wi so you can see the HD
audio cable right there has a little bit of color to it but yeah you can have a
close look at that if you want but honestly it's not that bad there's the included USB 3 wire here's the tool list
5 and 1/4 in Bay mounting and I think that pretty much covers it so what does
it come down to with this guy if you already know that you need an air 540
then you already know you need an air 540 it does cool better there is a
direct path for airflow right from these fans to the graphics cards which are
going to be sitting like right here where my hand is that here I'm going to
show you I'm going to grab a graphics card too that my friends is where your
graphics card will be right next to the fans in fact longer graphics cards will
be even closer to the fans right there so if you want the best possible Cooling
and you want to get all that stuff all those Drive cages all that random junk
out of the way of your cooling this will work for you if you want something
that's super Compact and has a smaller footprint then maybe it won't thank you
for checking out my unboxing and first look at the air 540 carbide series case
from Corsair leave me a comment tell me if you prefer a narrower footprint or if
you prefer something that has more of a more of a cubish sort of shape to it if
there's a practical reason for doing so and as always guys don't forget to like
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