Corsair Carbide Air 540 Builds

mjgr33n said:
For the water cooling side, yes some of the stuff I bought before hand thinking it would fit did not, so had to change plans, would be nice to have an Obsidian version of this case, all aluminium with a couple of extra inches length and hight.

As for air cooling, not sure what you could possibly have trouble with such, seems ideal for air cooling.
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SimonMaltby said:
I can't agree with this.
Any water cooled build will be challenging and with the 540 most of us are putting more than a single radiator in which will always make it harder.

I will accept that positioning a pump and res is not as easy as it should be and the lack of ability to use a bay Res is a serious flaw.

As for Air cooling... well what's awkward there... its very, very easy.
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WuMyster said:
Cant agree with GoogalyMoogaly. Transferred everything into the 540 and it was extremely easy. Couldnt have gone better tbh.
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I'm not saying that air cooling was hard, but I can't say it was that much easier than my HAF 932 or my TJ11. Probably was easier than my CM 690 II.

Water cooling, my big problem was mounting the pump/res, filling the pump/res (maybe shoulda done that the other way around) and getting the tubes into the 'business' side of the case.
In my opinion in my HAF 932 mounting the pump was easier (used a bay-res, I'll admit that was noisier), filling it was much easier and there wasn't any difficulty in the slightest and no requirement for angled fittings or anything like that to get the tubes from the pump to the CPU, to the rad and back to the pump.

The air cooling things I disliked/found awkward were:
  • I dislike the way you have to remove 2 thumbscrews and 2 'panels' to be able to clean the front dust filter.
  • I dislike that the optical drive bays actually prevent you from using the top grommets for any sizable cables (fan cables etc. seem fine).
  • I don't think it's particularly easy to cable manage the back compartment. Sure it's easy to throw all the cables in there, but in this case it's a section of the case rather than just being a gap behind the motherboard tray. Keeping the motherboard side neat and the other side messy seems like doing half a job and making excuses.
  • I think the SSD assembly could be improved. Just pushing and pulling them apart seems like it could lead to things breaking or becoming loose after repeated use.
  • The optical drives seem the wrong way up to me, I'd have rotated them 180º (not sure why though).
  • I feel it could've been a little bigger in each dimension.
  • Getting positive air pressure seems awkward. Taking the front as intake and top/rear as exhaust (due to no dust filters) you can have 3x120mm (or 2x140mm) intake and 3x140mm exhaust.
  • Not enough front-panel USB connectors
  • Front-panel USB3 connector could be longer!
Admittedly they're not really specific to air cooling, but I found them when I did my air cooling build.
With the exception of the cable management stuff I don't think many of them apply to the HAF 932 or TJ11. Just my opinions of course and since people were sharing opinions I thought I'd share mine. It seems to be the thread for discussing the 540 AIR.

With regards to the stock fans, I didn't find them noisey at all, running at around 800rpm. I am thinking of swapping the 2 x 140mms out for 3 x 120mm AF120 fans, but only in an attempt to add more intake air flow.
 
How are the sli/xfire users finding this case. It looks ideal due to it's unrestricted front airflow. Just upgraded to a slightly tighter spaced board from my previous Z77 system. Still using the rather poor for cooling shinobi xl.
 
Okay, I must agree with some points on your list. There are actually quite a few cons on this case. I apologise for disagreeing with your post so abruptly as you make quite a few good points. Building a system can be, lets say, different for some people, as I thought the CM 690 II was a breeze to fit a system as well.

While i still find it easy to build in, ill add my list of cons as well for new buyers and will copy some of the things Googaly Moogaly said as well:
1. Having to remove two thumbscrews for the top panel to then take off the front panel is silly. I can understand as to having to remove the top panel to get the front one off for keeping the sleekness, but having thumb screws is pointless. There shouldnt be enough force from anything to push the top panel off.
2. How people may think this case is easy to cable manage, differs from people. I personally find it extremely difficult to do it as i dont believe shoving all the cables back there but nicely pulling them through the grommet is cable management at all. The PSU being so close to the grommets makes it very difficult to keep it tidy due to all the remaining parts of each cable having to be at the back sitting in a awkward position.
3. HDD trays are absolutely horrible to use (including the hotswap feature). The drives stay in the bays firmly, however, the trays are too flimsy to withstand the pressure needed to get the drives out. The only solution to this is to use your palm and push out the HDDs.
4. The gaping holes under the HDDs baffle me as to why they are there. No fan mounts are present so the only thing they really do is create lower positive pressure.
5. While im not too bothered with not having a fan filter at the PSU location, I am extremely bothered with not having one at the top. I am having to clean out the rad every 2 days due to the amount of dust there is.

I could go on and on, but id keep this post short to not annoy other readers!
 
I would agree with most of Googaly's and WuMyster's lists and perhaps add; no alternate rad/fan mounting locations (shifted up or down) to accommodate a greater variety and mix of different sized radiators and outlet orientations. Front 140's in particular. Simple enough to mod yourself but I would rather not have that bother nowadays.
I had also hoped the front and top panels might designed and implemented to baffle internal sound considering the space but they appear to only be there to alleviate airflow generated sound.

It is almost there but the few oversights do let it down on some of its watercooling case potential. I am sure a v2 will set a lot right.
 
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Hey guys!

My stuff arrived yesterday:


Brilliant packaging from OC and brilliant delivery service from DPD.

So decided to go ahead and get the main components in!



Case is amazing lots of space to work with. Only problem I had was installing the cooler as the backplate felt loose and the instructions weren't that helpful either.

Still some work to do have to install the PSU, graphics card and SSD then some cable management then I'll update you again!

Any help is appreciated its my first build but found it pretty easy with this case, only problem was the cooler really.

Thanks!
 
foster grant said:
Nice build Markon :)


How did you get those fans ?...I'm asking cos I thought they were out of stock ? , and is that h100 one of the refurbished units ?
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Cheers bud :)

I ordered on friday so must have got one of the last ones haha, and yeah thats one of the refurbished units everything seems fine with it. Tested it in an old PC first to check for leaks etc was fine.
 
zMarkon said:
Cheers bud :)

I ordered on friday so must have got one of the last ones haha, and yeah thats one of the refurbished units everything seems fine with it. Tested it in an old PC first to check for leaks etc was fine.
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I'm so tempted to get one of those units ( even though I have said to a few on here watch out for leaks )...but i have two little voices in my head ..one saying ...dont buy..and the other saying...go for it buy it lol
 
foster grant said:
Is anyone using the stock fans that come with this case...and if so what are they like for noise please ?

Thanks :)

Steve
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At 12volt they are a little louder than I would like but ive got them down to 7v using the molex trick and now they are very quiet while still keeping my 4.6ghz 8320 and oc'ed 7950 at good temps, close to the temps I had i my raven rv02 and no louder.
 
Up and running with my 540 now, really impressed with it and can't believe how big it is!!

Fans aren't too bad although maybe worse when I sit the computer on my desk.

Definitely going to get a Corsair H100i cooler Only thing that would have been nice is if you could hide the 3.5" drives at the bottom!
 
Until one of them starts saying ...don't kill... and then the other saying ....go for it kill lol... I think he and society are safe for the time being.
 
I've recently finished a build with this case. By far the easiest case I've worked with and the airflow from all the fans being so close to the motherboard is very good.

I almost went with a Corsair H100i but I was too afraid of pump failure/leaks so I put a Phanteks PH-TC14PE in there. Keeps my I5-3570K nice and cool.

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