Corsair Air 5400 evaluate | PC Gamer

I’ve waited for over a decade for a real successor to the Corsair Carbide Air 540. With loads of room for storage, followers, and a disk drive in its dual-chamber design, the Air 540 was an amazing decide for my very own PC again in 2014. Although I’ve since moved on, and that case has been caught in storage for years. Now, lastly—lastly—we’ve got a real successor within the Corsair Air 5400.

The Air 5400 is not only a rerun of outdated concepts. It is nonetheless a stocky cuboid, however the place the Air 540 championed a dual-chamber design that has grow to be the norm for PC circumstances, the Air 5400 presents a triple-chamber design. Consider it like three distinct zones: there’s the primary one, for displaying off your construct; the rear one, with loads of room for cable administration; and a 3rd one, for mounting an all-in-one liquid cooler’s radiator inside.

The thought behind the third chamber is fairly easy. By mounting the radiator away from different parts, and with ample airflow, scorching air generated by the CPU will be effectively expelled from the case and never heat something round it. It additionally removes the necessity for the radiator to dam treasured fan mounting areas.

It is a slick answer. The radiator is mounted towards the entrance of the case, behind a detachable grill. There is a clear plastic duct sitting simply behind the radiator, which vents out of the case by way of a big opening from the highest to the underside of the case—the novelty of this has not but worn on for me and I nonetheless incessantly stick my hand in it.

Cooler set up is a little more concerned than regular, requiring feeding the liquid cooler pump and cooling via to the primary chamber whereas securing the radiator into place. A detachable mounting plate helps a bunch right here, as I will mount the followers and radiator to it, then match the remaining to the case with solely two screws.

The Air 5400 is a comparatively tool-free design. Moreover the odd screw used within the preliminary set up, entry to the within of this PC is comparatively unfettered. The panels will be pulled away along with your naked fingers, and the windowed facet panel swings open on a hinge. And I am but to say one among my favorite particulars: the smaller glass panel making up the front-left of the case can be on a hinge and swings open, exposing the whole principal chamber for straightforward tinkering. The rear panel, too, is hinged—as long as you permit cheap house across the Air 5400 for the so-called French doorways, it is extraordinarily simple to work on in a pinch.

Corsair calls these French doorways and I am surprisingly okay with this degree of pomposity right here.

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The three chambers are separated from one another by a novel brush design—no less than I’ve not used a case with something remotely comparable. The nylon bristles on this case work one thing like a letterbox right here within the UK, blocking out drafts and maintaining mud and lightweight from reaching inside. If this is not a factor in your nation, I invoke you to go looking ‘UK letterbox bristles’ for an actual thrill. It is a intelligent answer for a PC case, protecting the gaps left by cables higher than most grommets. I am stunned it isn’t used extra usually.

Between panoramic windowed panels and simple cable administration, it is simple to construct a great-looking gaming PC within the Air 5400. An enormous a part of that attraction is the simple structure. It is a chimney design, supposed for cool air to enter by way of the underside of the case and scorching air to be exhausted out from the highest, by way of the 3x 120 mm followers mounted at each areas.

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Moreover, in a barely uncommon try to assist airflow, the Air 5400 contains two ducts, as Corsair calls them, surrounding every set of followers. The thought behind these ducts is that, by containing the airflow generated by the followers, it is higher directed on the graphics card and motherboard, slightly than wasted out the edges. The ducts look surprisingly elegant; every incorporates a repeating Corsair ‘Y’ motif that disappears as they taper.

It is a clear look. Furthermore, I’ve no complaints relating to thermals.

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I take advantage of numerous combos of chips and coolers for testing circumstances—what I’ve at hand on the time, largely. On this case, I’ve put in the Corsair Nautilus 360 RS. Regardless of utilizing one of many extra power-hungry Ryzen processors on this machine, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, it ran at one of many lowest temperatures I’ve recorded of any construct previously yr. A most CPU temperature of simply 72 °C throughout our benchmarking suite, which incorporates a number of taxing runs of Cinebench 2024. The RTX 5090 FE I’ve used right here hit simply 73 °C—round 5 °C cooler than our open check bench in comparable checks.

I’ve added further followers to finish this construct that aren’t included with the case as normal, and anybody buying this case will want no less than three extra followers. There are 9 120 mm followers inside this machine: six in the primary chamber and three on the radiator. Solely three of these are included with the case. The opposite six are LX120 RGB followers that I’ve added individually.

For these three included followers, there are two choices accessible: LX-R RGB iCUE Hyperlink followers or RS-R ARGB followers. My choice being the non-iCUE fashions, as these are the cheaper of the 2 choices, do not require iCUE, and will be picked up individually for much less. Although I am glad to see reversed followers as normal in a case that completely requires them to look its greatest. For an concept of what I imply, the Hyte X50 seems worse than it ought to for an absence of reverse followers.

Corsair has included some upgrades behind-the-scenes, too. The rear chamber is hidden from sight by way of a hinged panel, for a begin. Corsair is utilizing what it calls RapidRoute 2.0 within the Air 5400. What it means by that is the motherboard tray has a sort-of pegboard design; it is a checkboard of holes for putting in zip-ties or shifting across the ratcheted straps included with the case. These come preinstalled on a cable tidy tray that juts out at an angle from the case and follows the angle of the duct for the radiator.

You are by no means removed from a spot to tie a cable down within the Air 5400. That stated, there’s no need for a lot cable administration in any respect. Every thing will be secured via the supplied straps on the cable tray, with ample room beneath the PSU that is virtually surplus to requirement in a standard PC construct.

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The facility provide is mounted excessive up within the case, which shortens the cable run to the CPU connectors however requires a little bit of a stretch for the 12V-2×6 cable. Nothing to fret about, nor do I really feel I am placing an excessive amount of strain on the graphics card’s energy connection, however I did should tinker round with the cable placement and straps to get it sitting in the best place with loads of slack.

As I discussed, there’s a great deal of room beneath the PSU. As normal, it is partially stuffed up with a storage tray, however it may be eliminated with two thumbscrews if surplus to requirement. This tray helps two 2.5-inch SSDs, a single 3.5-inch HDD, and/or an iCUE System Hub. I did not require the latter as I used to be utilizing Corsair’s new PSU, the HX1200i Shift, which incorporates an iCUE System Hub itself.

Aspect word: if you’re interested by utilizing iCUE to your system management, the HX1200i Shift saves on a few of the cable mess however is mighty costly.

There are a few issues I do not like concerning the Air 5400. It weighs lots, at 16.7 kg, and the entrance panel solely presents Sort-C ports: 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 and 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1. Whereas I do recognize Corsair driving common adoption of the Sort-C connector, I don’t personal strictly Sort-C units. I nonetheless have quite a lot of Sort-A units that I used to plug into the entrance panel, reminiscent of thumb drives. Alas, sometime quickly I will ditch Sort-A for good. That will probably be a very good day.

I recognize the inclusion of a built-in GPU bracket, too, although the restricted changes it presents imply it does not all the time play properly with some fashions of graphics card. It sorta simply stabs immediately into the fan on an RTX 50-series Founders Version.

However for largely minor complaints, I can discover rather more to go with on the Air 5400. It is spacious, stocky and has included inside it some real improvements. The separate chamber for a radiator is great for managing thermals and sustaining a clear aesthetic. Furthermore, small-scale improvements like RapidRoute 2.0, which saves time through the construct course of, or the nylon brushes to separate the chambers, are all very welcome additions I wish to see filter into extra circumstances.

That is Corsair’s case design at its greatest, bringing collectively quite a lot of concepts into one thing fairly extraordinary.

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