Corsair Carbide Air 240 Case Review
by E. Fylladitakis on August 15, 2014 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- ATX
- Case
- Carbide
Introduction
Corsair is a company originally known for their quality RAM modules, but they have expanded into many other areas of the PC market. Today, Corsair is one of the most important players in the computer hardware market, with the company offering dozens of products, designed to cater to as wide an array of people as possible. Looking just at their computer cases, Corsair offers five series with an ever-expanding number of products, ranging from super-large cases for enthusiasts to low-cost products for budget-driven users. In this review, we will look at one of their latest case designs, the Carbide Air 240.
Compact cases and small form factors are all the rage nowadays. Some companies, such as Silverstone, have focused many of their R&D resources on the development of such designs. The first compact case that we reviewed from Corsair was the Obsidian 250D, a cubic Mini-ITX case of not so compact proportions; instead, it was designed to fit fairly powerful combinations of hardware. This is also true of the Carbide Air 240 that we will be reviewing today. Although it is designed to fit up to Micro-ATX motherboards, the Carbide Air 240 can accommodate very powerful hardware, including two top-tier GPUs and dual liquid cooling radiators. We will look at its design, features, strengths, and weaknesses in this review.
| Corsair Carbide Air 240 Specifications | ||
| Motherboard Form Factor | Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX | |
| Drive Bays | External | - |
| Internal |
3 x 2.5" or 3.5" (rear cage) 3 x 2.5" (top cage) |
|
| Cooling | Front | 2 x 120 (2 x 120mm included) |
| Rear | 2 x 80mm (optional) | |
| Top | 2 x 120mm (one included) | |
| Right Side | 1 x 120mm (optional) | |
| Bottom | 2 x 120 (optional) | |
| I/O Port |
2 × USB 3.0 2 × USB 3.0 1 × Headphone 1 × Mic |
|
| Power Supply Size | ATX | |
| Clearances | HSF | 125mm |
| PSU | 200mm | |
| GPU | 360 mm | |
| Dimensions |
~315mm × 265mm × 400mm (H×W×D) ~12.4in × 10.43in × 15.75in (H×W×D) |
|
| Pricing | ~$90 online | |
Packaging and bundle
The Corsair Carbide Air 240 comes supplied in a simple, brown cardboard box. The artwork on the box is limited to schematics of the case and text. Inside the box, the lightweight case is protected by thick polystyrene foam slabs and is wrapped in a nylon bag.
Corsair kept the items bundled with the Carbide Air 240 down to a minimum but organized them well, supplying each type of screw inside a separate nylon bag. There are also four rubber feet for the case and a few short cable ties.
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know of fence - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link
Do you think that at some point in the future you could arrive at the conclusion, that coolers which consume several times the power, with their failure prone mechanical pumps and fans which also require manual speed adjustment maybe aren't worth the trouble?kyuu - Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - link
Nope, because those "failure prone" pumps and fans are a much more efficient means of cooling. We're talking about desktop systems here, so it consuming a couple extra watts of power isn't really meaningful.I don't particularly care if you prefer air cooling. There are air coolers that work very well; I currently have a Zalman air cooler on my CPU, which replaced the Zalman air cooler on my previous CPU. But CLCs have very real advantages (while not being perfect, as no technology is), so I do take issue with people railing against is though choosing CLCs is somehow wrong.
I have no idea what you're talking about with the requiring manual adjustment thing.
kyuu - Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - link
railing against it as though***Damn lack of an edit button...
StrangerGuy - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
IMO this case is terribly designed. If Corsair are going to make a cube case, why not just copy the 250D design, make it fit a mATX mobo and 2x120mm radiator on the left side then be done with. Made even worse without a single 5.25 bay despite all the space at the right side.kyuu - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
"Motherboards of up to Micro-ATX size can be installed in the Carbide Air 240, but there is a catch: if you do install a Micro-ATX motherboard, you cannot install a liquid cooling radiator at the bottom of the case. You also cannot really install one at the top panel either, since the fan alone is just a hair away from the top of the motherboard. Therefore, you basically need to choose between two GPUs and a Micro-ATX motherboard, or two large liquid cooling radiators and a Mini-ITX motherboard (presumably with one GPU)."I checked out Corsair's specs, and it says that radiators are intended to be used on the bottom mounts and the *front*. The mounts at the top of the case are not intended for radiators at all, whether you're using mATX or mini-ITX. So you can, in fact, mount a single 240mm rad with an mATX (or, presumably, two 120mm rads) on the front of the case. Which makes me interested in this case.
kyuu - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
Though the one thing that would give me pause is if there's room for a thick (~50mm) push/pull radiator on the bottom. Looks like one might not fit due to the GPU, though a thinner one or one with a single fan might.Etern205 - Friday, August 29, 2014 - link
Never like this Corsair case, they want to make it like a cube. A cube is suppose to be compact and yet this is way too large. One problem I still don't get is the back and forth bickering about 5.25" drive bays. I still have a optical drive that I use occasionally, because it's the fastest method for me to install games as I prefer physical media as my bandwidth is consider slow compare to all the others, and other have bandwidth caps, so downloading a 15GB game is out of the question. Also 5.25" drives aren't just only for optical drives. It's not like the computer won't boot up or literally spit out the optical drive. You can use it for many other things like, LCD fan controllers, HDD bays, and many other stuffs. It's useful if you know what to do with it.kenoh - Sunday, August 31, 2014 - link
You can install 3-3.5" HDD's, but how many SSD's can you install?kenoh - Sunday, August 31, 2014 - link
Is it possible for this case to hold 4 SSD's, with all three HDD's installed? BTW, what PSU is used in this review?mekpro - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
That's Abit Motherboard !