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Review: Corsair Carbide Series Air 540

by Parm Mann on 19 June 2013, 16:00

Tags: Corsair

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabxtz

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Specification and Test Methodology

Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 Specification

Materials Steel and plastic
Available Colours Black
Motherboard Support E-ATX / ATX / Micro-ATX / Mini-ITX
Optical Bays 5.25in x 2
Storage Bays Main Chamber 3.5/2.5in x 2 (hot-swap)
Second Chamber 2.5in x 4
Supplied Fans AF140L 140mm intake x2
AF140L 140mm exhaust x1
Fan Mounts Front: 2 x 140mm or 3 x 120mm (pre-spaced for radiators)
Top: 2 x 140mm or 2 x 120mm (pre-spaced for radiators)
Rear: 1 x 140mm or 1 x 120mm
Expansion Slots 8
I/O Panel USB 3.0 x 2
Mic x 1, Audio x 1
Power x 1, Reset x 1
Power Supply Mount ATX (PSU not included)
Dimensions (H) 458mm x (W) 332mm x (D) 415mm

Test System Configuration

Motherboard ASUS Sabertooth Z77
CPU Intel Core i5-3570K @ 4.4GHz
CPU Cooler Arctic Cooling Freezer 13
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws-X 8GB (F3-12800CL7D-8GBXH)
Memory Speed and Timings 1,600MHz, 7-8-7-24-2N
Graphics Cards 2x Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC in CrossFireX
Storage 120GB SanDisk Extreme SSD
Optical Drive Pioneer DVR-S19LBK DVD Writer
Power Supply Corsair HX1050W

Our Z77 test platform consists of an ASUS Sabertooth motherboard, an Intel Core i5-3570K processor overclocked to a modest 4.4GHz, an Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 cooler, 8GB of high-performance G.Skill Ripjaws-X memory and two factory-overclocked Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC graphics cards in a CrossFireX configuration.

To find out how well the chassis can cool this particular setup, we record the CPU temperature after a 15-minute stint of the intensive Prime95 stress test is applied to all cores. To get an idea of GPU cooling performance, we record GPU temperature after 15 minutes of running Aliens vs. Predator. Last but not least, we also record chassis noise by using a PCE-318 noise meter to take readings when idle and while running Aliens vs. Predator.

All chassis are tested only with the standard manufacturer-supplied fans (any/all of which are set to 'silent' in the ASUS BIOS or low-speed using a fan controller if present), and to take into account the fluctuating ambient temperature, our graphs depict both actual and delta temperature - the latter is the actual CPU/GPU temperature minus the ambient. For the record, room temperature while testing today's chassis was recorded as 21.4ºC.