A Closer Look - Inside

The steel side panel comes with a thin, magnetic dust filter to keep grime out—you may easily remove this dust filter for cleaning.


To access the interior, simply remove the thumb screws and pull the panels off the case. Corsair included push pins on each side, so the panel holds in place nicely even without the screws detached, which is great if you need to quickly and repeatedly access the interior. Overall, this implementation is excellent and feels solid. On the interior, things look quite traditional for a modern chassis, with a metal shroud on the bottom that does come with a plastic extension in the front you may replace with the accessory mentioned at the beginning of the review. You may install two of your 2.5" HDD plates here to show off your SSDs, but those are installed behind the motherboard tray by default. I am not sure if Corsair sells these separately for those who want to add more storage. There are also two fairly large cable-routing openings in the shroud, which could have been cut much smaller to keep things as clean as possible.


Turning the case over, you won't have immediate access to all the functional element behind the motherboard tray. Corsair has chosen to place a secondary cover here, which hides everything and is held in place by magnets. While I get why the iCUE 5000X needs such a cover to hide any cable mess because of the glass side panel, the Airflow 5000D doesn't really need it as I do not expect cable management to be so limited as to require anything to keep the side panel from popping off. On top of that, this secondary panel won't really need much pressure from within to pop off the magnets.


Towards the front of the chassis is the mounting position for the side fans/radiator consisting of three 120 mm spots, so a 360 mm radiator will fit as well. A plate over the opening for the CPU cooler makes installing RGB hubs or additional controllers a breeze. A set of mounting holes for an SSD are also available. Along with the three separate trays, this brings the total possible SSD count for this area of the chassis to four.


Corsair includes a small PWM PCB for up to six fans to be connected to a single motherboard PWM signal. A SATA cable provides power straight from the PSU. This is a nice addition if decking the 5000D Airflow out with an elaborate liquid-cooling system. In comparison, the iCUE 5000X variant ships with an iCUE controller instead, so Corsair made sure you get the right type for your chassis.


In the front, underneath the shroud, is an HDD cage that holds two plastic trays for two 3.5" or 2.5" drives. By default, it is installed as far towards the back as possible to allow for unobstructed access even with fans or a radiator on this side of the 5000D. Above that, the whole area is intended for cooling purposes. Corsair has placed a retail-grade 120 mm PWM intake fan at mid-height, so the GPU will get some intake air as well.


Just like the 4000D, there is a metal shroud with the same subtle branding—it allows for very clean cable management. The one in the 5000D is much wider and also acts as a cover for the side intake mount if you aren't using active cooling here.


Underneath the shroud, the PSU bay is standard-fare with its foam bits for the PSU to rest upon. Above that are the expansion slots, each with its individual thumb screw holding the reusable cover in place. The retail-quality 120 mm PWM exhaust fan in the very top may be adjusted in height for proper alignment with your air cooler.


With the way the ceiling is shaped, there is still loads of space between it and the motherboard's top edge for even a thick push/pull radiator configuration because of the large dimensions of the Corsair 5000D. I can totally see some users going all out and installing fans on top of the ceiling, and finding aftermarket dust-filter solutions. This would enable them to easily install a push/pull configuration with a thick radiator as well.


All the cables within the Corsair 5000D Airflow are black and mostly what you would expect. The USB 3.0 cable is flat, which makes routing it so much easier. There is no HDD activity LED, though, which is rather unfortunate for those using solid-state drives, as it is usually a good indicator of whether your system is frozen or just working really hard.