Corsair Carbide 330R, Carbide Air 540 Cases Available Now
Corsair has announced the Carbide 330R and the Carbide Air 540.
Corsair has announced two new chassis: the Carbide 330R and the Carbide Air 540. The two cases aim to have good cooling abilities while still maintaining low noise levels.
The Carbine 330R follows the traditional tower-design. It is an affordable tower that still carries some sound dampening features. The chassis can house up to E-ATX size motherboards, up to four 3.5" or 2.5" drives, and has room for up to five fans. Both the front and the top of the enclosure can hold up to two 140 mm fans; the rear of the case can hold a 120 mm fan. The interior of the case is fitted with sound dampening material in a number of locations. External connectivity is taken care of by a pair of USB 3.0 ports as well as a microphone and headphone jack.
"Corsair cases are known for being good looking, easy to build, and highly configurable," commented Thi La, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Memory and Enthusiast Component Products at Corsair. "The Carbide Air 540 and 330R cases build on this tradition with Direct Airflow Path layouts for even better cooling and quieter operation."
The Carbide Air 540 is a much more unique enclosure. Essentially, the chassis has two spaces: one main part and another part behind the motherboard tray. In the part where the motherboard is housed, the airflow is built to be as direct as possible. No hard drives, power supply, or optical drive bays are placed here -- only the motherboard, CPU, graphics card and any other possible expansion cards. The second compartment of the enclosure houses the power supply, hard drives or SSDs, as well as the optical drives and cable clutter. The case will support graphics cards up to 320 mm long as well as either six 120 mm fans or five 140 mm fans. There is also plenty of room for water cooling. External connectivity is handled by a pair of USB 3.0 ports as well as a microphone and headphone jack.
Corsair's Carbide 330R will retail with an MSRP of $89.99, while the Carbide Air 540 will cost $139.99. Both of the units are already available in select retail channels.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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Au_equus Would love to see some benchies on that 540! Any other intake on the psu side besides the psu?Reply -
edogawa I love the design of the Air 540(great for cable management, direct airflow, shows only what I want to show.) It seems to have a lot of plastic though, which is sort of disappointing, a more expensive model with less plastic would have been good.Reply
Pre-Ordered the Air 540 a few days and this morning got an email from Amazon: " Estimated arrival date: June 28, 2013 - July 12, 2013"
I think I am tired of full tower cases, unless I wanna do quad SLI, I will stick to smaller cases from now on. -
Au_equus Would love to see some benchies on that 540! Any other intake on the psu side besides the psu?Reply -
slomo4sho That is a very interesting design choice for the 540 (the layout is nearly identical to the HAF XB but rotated to stand vertically instead of horizontally). They should make another variety of this case where the case is basically placed on its side (moving the feet to be below the PSU/drive bays) and it would make a good test bench.Reply -
NightLight i was formerly a coolermaster fanboy untill i discovered corsair, and they keep improving. it has a real server case look :DReply -
Au_equus Would love to see some benchies on that 540! Any other intake on the psu side besides the psu?Reply