Corsair Air 5400 overview | 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 awesome 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—now we have 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The Air 5400 is not only a rerun of outdated concepts.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 turn into the norm for PC instances, the Air 5400 provides a triple-chamber design. Consider it like three distinct zones: there’s the primary one, for exhibiting 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 may be effectively expelled from the case and never heat something round it. It additionally removes the necessity for the radiator to dam valuable fan mounting areas.

It is a slick resolution. 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 through 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 continuously stick my hand in it.

Cooler set up is a little more concerned than regular, requiring feeding the liquid cooler pump and cooling by means of 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 remainder 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 may be pulled away along with your naked palms, and the windowed facet panel swings open on a hinge. And I am but to say certainly one of my favorite particulars: the smaller glass panel making up the front-left of the case can also be on a hinge and swings open, exposing the whole primary chamber for straightforward tinkering. The rear panel, too, is hinged—as long as you allow cheap house across the Air 5400 for the so-called French doorways, it is extraordinarily straightforward to work on in a pinch.

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

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 related. 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 look ‘UK letterbox bristles’ for an actual thrill. It is a intelligent resolution for a PC case, overlaying the gaps left by cables higher than most grommets. I am stunned it is not used extra typically.

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

Moreover, in a barely uncommon try to assist airflow, the Air 5400 consists of 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, reasonably than wasted out the edges. The ducts look surprisingly elegant; every contains a repeating Corsair ‘Y’ motif that disappears as they taper.

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

I exploit varied mixtures of chips and coolers for testing instances—what I’ve handy 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 up to now 12 months. 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 take a look at bench in related checks.

I’ve added additional followers to finish this construct that aren’t included with the case as customary, 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 out there: 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 may be picked up individually for much less. Although I am glad to see reversed followers as customary in a case that completely requires them to look its finest. For an concept of what I imply, the Hyte X50 appears 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 through 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 mentioned, there’s no use for a lot cable administration in any respect. All the things may be secured by means of the offered straps on the cable tray, with ample room beneath the PSU that is virtually surplus to requirement in a standard PC construct.

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 stress on the graphics card’s energy connection, however I did need to tinker round with the cable placement and straps to get it sitting in the correct place with loads of slack.

As I discussed, there’s a great deal of room under the PSU. As customary, 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.

Facet be aware: if you’re involved in utilizing iCUE on your system management, the HX1200i Shift saves on a number of the cable mess however is mighty costly.

There are a few issues I do not like in regards to the Air 5400. It weighs quite a bit, at 16.7 kg, and the entrance panel solely provides 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 gadgets. I nonetheless have plenty of Sort-A gadgets that I used to plug into the entrance panel, comparable to thumb drives. Alas, sometime quickly I will ditch Sort-A for good. That can be a superb day.

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

However for largely minor complaints, I can discover way 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 superb for managing thermals and sustaining a clear aesthetic. Furthermore, small-scale improvements like RapidRoute 2.0, which saves time throughout the construct course of, or the nylon brushes to separate the chambers, are all very welcome additions I want to see filter into extra instances.

That is Corsair’s case design at its finest, bringing collectively plenty of concepts into one thing fairly extraordinary.