Reviews - Corsair Carbide Series Air 540

[Kovoet]

Mini???

Yep compared to a Stacker 832, Cosmos S, CM Haf "X" then the cosmos II. For me it would be a mini

[Noli]

Cons not mentioned (but should be) in the summary:

Very fat
Only room for 2x 3.5" HDDs

Given that it is so voluminous, space for only 2x 3.5" HDDs seems even more daft. Disappointing.
Noise is king for me, not cooling, though I understand those who want lower temps for overclocking.

[Gareth - ASUS]

Just curious, but given that you can get 4TB hard disk drives, is two 3.5in bays really an issue? And you can always have a NAS box if you really need more.

[tekgun]

Really nice case, apart from the GAPING HOLE in the bottom and unfiltered PSU intake, seriously who at Corsair thought nah leave that it will be fine, and it will save us $1.99.

[jim]

Just curious, but given that you can get 4TB hard disk drives, is two 3.5in bays really an issue? And you can always have a NAS box if you really need more.

I agree with your reasoning, but given the size of the case, I'm also very surprised at how few disks it supports.

[Willzzz]

It's a gamer case isn't it? How much storage does a gamer need?

[Greybeard]

I guess what Blackbeard's point is, there are alternatives nowadays for a system to hold a huge amount of storage. NAS box is always an option or you can also get a 3.5" to 5.25" adapter if you really need more drives. Plus, HDD capacities are just getting bigger moving forward, so an average rig will probably use let's say 2 x 2TB HDD, which to an average build will be more than adequate.

I do understand that the case has the size and space to hold more than 2 drives, but looking at MB chamber of the case, you'll see that both trays has already taken up the whole bottom part of the case, adding/putting a drive tray somewhere in between the board and the front panel, would simply defeat the purpose of the idea of direct path airflow, which is the main theme of the case.

[aidanjt]

Eh, not everyone will be content with gigabit maximum throughput of NAS devices. And you could easily have a full complement of 3.5" hotswap drive planes all along the right there. Do people even use 5.25" drives any more? I might use the optical drive 1 day in a year on my desktop, and I have an external drive which really works better so I use it more times than not. So I'm not even going to bother wasting a SATA port on 'em in future builds.

[tumbledragon]

It's not the drive trays in MB chamber, but the 4x 2.5" drive cage in the PSU chamber that I find an odd choice.

The only use case that springs to mind is RAID 10/5 which for SSDs seems pretty niche (especially as TRIM's still not supported on anything but RAID 0?).

I guess they didn't want to block off too much of the back of the board to make cabling/aftermarket heatsinks more accessible, but it seems a pretty large sacrifice being that the drive cage is removable anyway.

[aidanjt]

It's not the drive trays in MB chamber, but the 4x 2.5" drive cage in the PSU chamber that I find an odd choice.

The only use case that springs to mind is RAID 10/5 which for SSDs seems pretty niche

Or multiple operating systems? The 2.5" drive cage doesn't really waste any space and it can be handy, so it doesn't bother me at all.

[chuckskull]

So, nobody else just uses white-tac once they run out drive cages then?

[Willzzz]

No, I just look at the stuff I haven't touched for 2-3 years and say I guess I don't need this any more.

[Primum Agmen]

I do understand that the case has the size and space to hold more than 2 drives, but looking at MB chamber of the case, you'll see that both trays has already taken up the whole bottom part of the case, adding/putting a drive tray somewhere in between the board and the front panel, would simply defeat the purpose of the idea of direct path airflow, which is the main theme of the case.

Not quite. If you're happy to accept holes on the bottom of the case, why not just copy the Lian Li PC-90 mounting system (also used by Cubitek minicube on the back of the motherboard tray) on the bottom of the motherboard section? It's still toolless - you just screw in thumbscrews with rubber washers - and looking at the space you should be able to fit two comfortably under the motherboard and then a third slide under the last ~4cm of the motherboard and under the grommets. It's one of the weirdest places I've ever seen your hard drive sleds, I have to say. Less holes in the floor, minimal impact on structural integrity (possibly positive, given the shrink in holes on the case floor), and a bump up to three hard drives in the case.

Given that from Google's research hard drives don't fail from excessive temperatures so much as lack of use and quality control factors (or "vintage"), you could probably get away with stacking three hard drives on top of the PSU without increasing their risk of failure.

(I haven't been here long enough to post urls, but a quick trip to google images should be sufficient)

[mojothejester]

i like it, looks nice and clean and no one can say your cable routing is poop

[LowMoralFibre]

I love the style and the room at the back would be welcome for someone as messy as me.

My gf wants me to get shot of my HAF 932 as it's 'huge and ugly' so not sure how she'd feel about this though..

[shamus21]

Well I don`t know about other rig builders but I find my self always doing a rejig with my rig changing bits around swapping out etc. and it can be a pain with a lot of the tower cases but this case just makes it so easy. Just Love it.