Performance
The Carbide Series Air 740 was tested on a particularly warm summer day, with ambient temperature measured as 23.3ºC, yet the dual intakes and single rear exhaust provided plenty of airflow for our overclocked Core i5-3570K processor.
The dual GeForce GTX 970 graphics cards pose a greater challenge. GPU core temperature did hit the 80ºC ceiling during testing, yet the delta temperature - core temperature minus the ambient - paints the Air 740 in a favourable light.
The chassis' cooling potential isn't really in question - the out-the-box setup is sufficient for most builds and there's massive scope for customisation - however noise is an issue. We experienced similar results with the original Air 540, and this year's revision presents similar attributes. With so many mesh openings and no sound-dampening linings to speak of, the case does little to contain noise. The same hardware in rival cases results in near-silent operation; in the Air 740 it's audible when idle and quite loud under load.
