Corsair Carbide Air 540 Case Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,016 words · ~10 min read
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this video is brought to you by the Intel Core i7 4770k unlocked processor
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if you're a speed freak add an Intel 3500 series SSD to your Haswell system
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for a truly Enthusiast class experience welcome folks to my unboxing of the
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Corsair air 540 this is part of their
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carbide series go ahead and open this bad boy up
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and let's see what Corsair has to say for themselves first and foremost
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outstanding Cooling and quieter operation I don't know about the quieter
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operation cuz it's quite meshy but definitely outstanding cooling more on
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that in a moment included af140 L fans
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low restriction fan covers and dust filters ideal for Advanced Air cooling
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with support for 280 or 240 mm in the top 280 or up to 360 mm front RADS and
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built for Brewers so that either means that it's built for people who make
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their own beer at home or it's built for fans of the Milwaukee Brewers I'm not
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sure which of those things is the case but what I think we can be sure about is
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that if any of those people happen to be PC enthusiasts then this case was built
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for them regardless of what baseball team
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they follow all right so there goes the box and wo look at that the Statics
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making the hair on my ARM stand up see check that out that's why you should
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discharge a case before you uh ow oh that got me really good okay before you
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can uh build a system in it so it uses a close cell hard foam not my favorite as
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you guys probably know but I understand why manufactur ERS do it from a
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cost-saving standpoint uh the good news about this case is it does come in a
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nice double thick corrugated box so hopefully you won't have any trouble I
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know Corsair has been pretty good about their packaging in the past in fact with
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their ax 1200i power supply we threw it out of a moving car to simulate what
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will likely happen to it in shipping and it did not break so there was that all
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right so now time for the case itself we've got a manual which I of course
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won't look at and then we've got the 540
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I like Cube cases but not when they're over the top I I thought about getting a
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mountain mods case at one point I ended up not doing it but uh basically the
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point I'm trying to make with all this is I like about them that they're
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shorter but I don't necessarily like about them that the footprint is wider
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and that's been the thing that has made me not get them um sort of time and time
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again when I've considered them so the front of this case has a very unique
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sort of layout to it it has two vertically mounted 5 and 1/4 in Bays it
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also has your reset power hard drive indicator LED microphone headphone and
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two USB 3.0 Jacks other than that it's
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completely clean on the right side and there's a reason for that there's not really much back there then here we've
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got up to a two two 140 mil fans or
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three 120 mil fans behind a nice open
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grill with fan filters as well as a nice little corser emblem kind of a soft it's
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not soft touch but it's a matte plastic finish that actually looks quite sharp
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in person and seems to be reasonably fingerprint resistant which is
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definitely a positive thing for a computer case because even building in
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one the first time there are ones that you can stain to the point where you
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can't even use them anymore well you could use them but it would bother you if you have obsessive compulsive
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disorder like me um self diagnosed I'm not actually obsessive compulsive or
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maybe I am either way I have to finish this sentence in a way that will be
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satisfying Okay so we've got an air intake right here next to oh what's that
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that's where the power supply mounts that's kind of funny and we can look at the case from the back because this
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gives us a better idea of what's actually going on inside so lots of ventilation holes here here here and
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here as well as our I/O and 1 2 3 4 5 6
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78 PCI slots so those will give us
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support for ATX motherboards but not necessarily XL ATX um but it could if
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it's an XL ATX eight slot board up here in the top we are have support for two
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120 or 2 140 mm fans and then we also
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have the ability using these thumb screws on the
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top there we go to pull this off so go ahead take a step back Mr camera
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operator Boll sir and we can pull that off just like that so that gives us a
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better look at the way that the mounting mechanism works for those fans Andor
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radiators that you want to mount up there on the top and check this out you
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can also pull off the front just like that so that's
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where we get access to our fan filters as well as you can actually bolt this
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down if you want so normally it's just secured by the top piece but there's two
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spots for thumb screws right here and right here that will allow you to secure
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that in transit or whatever else now we also get access to our front removable
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fan filter which I have no idea how to actually remove but I'm sure there's a
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way oh look at that that was easy it's magnetic very
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nice and it goes on a little oh yeah that gives us uh a closer view at what's
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going on in there so there's those af140 L fans those are the low speed variant
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of their AF fans compared to the retail versions you do not get the rubber
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isolating mounts as as well as the color rings that let you change the look of
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them so they will look just like that forever and ever and ever uh we got a
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nice big side panel window and there's a good reason for this because you can see
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pretty much all of the important guts on the inside of your system through this
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side panel it is basically enough room in here for a motherboard and that is
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all because the motherboard goes here why don't I grab a motherboard we'll
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make this simple on ourselves why am I pointing motherboards where they go
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should just get one there you go so the motherboard goes right
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there which leaves you room for a couple of drives down in the bottom so here I'm
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going to point at those down here you can see all the accessories are included in this little box in one of the drive
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cages so you can put either 3 and 1/2 or 2 and 1/2 in drives down there using the
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included holes for 2 and 1/2 in drives okay those are oh that's cool those are
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hot SWAT check that out so you can swap those in down there no problem you also
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have room to install lots of thick radiators here and thick radiators here
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and then that is pretty much it on this side look at all these Cable Management
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holes though remember these debuted with the 800d and we are still seeing the use
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for them today because everything else needs to go on the other side of the
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case which means it needs a way to get over to the motherboard so let's move
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over to the other side I'm just going to pull off two more thumb screws here
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which are all we need to do the whole case is coming apart without any tools a
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lot of the time even cases with thumb scroll screws need a screwdriver to take
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them apart because they Factory tighten
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them too tight and I can't get them apart on my own so we've got tooless 2
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and 1/2 in Drive mounts here oh that's kind of clever look at that they clipped
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together I didn't even know that about these go ahead and look at that you can
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pop on or off as many as you want in fact that would allow you to mount them
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and then install them so there there's a stack of four of them and then the way
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that they clip into place is just in here so you can they have a a tension
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Mount at the back see right there that will pop them out as soon as you move
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this away and allow you to easily install and uninstall 2 and 1/2 in
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drives that's kind of cool as well as your two 5 and a/4 in Baye right here
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and then that is pretty much it for drive installation options so you get
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the two 3 and 1/2 in hot swap ones with the included black cables right here so
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you run these to your power supply which happens to be located like right here
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for very very short cable runs there we
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go so power supply goes here you run these to the front of your motherboard
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through through here and then that's it 4 2 and
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1/2 two 3 and 1/2 but you've got a lot of empty space up here that you could
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probably sort of mod something maybe you put your pump up here or like your
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Reservoir or whatever else you put maybe a little res down here all the included
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cables are black not quite down to the individual wi so you can see the HD
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audio cable right there has a little bit of color to it but yeah you can have a
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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
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5 and 1/4 in Bay mounting and I think that pretty much covers it so what does
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it come down to with this guy if you already know that you need an air 540
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then you already know you need an air 540 it does cool better there is a
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direct path for airflow right from these fans to the graphics cards which are
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going to be sitting like right here where my hand is that here I'm going to
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show you I'm going to grab a graphics card too that my friends is where your
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graphics card will be right next to the fans in fact longer graphics cards will
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be even closer to the fans right there so if you want the best possible Cooling
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and you want to get all that stuff all those Drive cages all that random junk
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out of the way of your cooling this will work for you if you want something
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that's super Compact and has a smaller footprint then maybe it won't thank you
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for checking out my unboxing and first look at the air 540 carbide series case
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from Corsair leave me a comment tell me if you prefer a narrower footprint or if
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you prefer something that has more of a more of a cubish sort of shape to it if
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there's a practical reason for doing so and as always guys don't forget to like
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