Assembly

Installing the motherboard within the Carbide Air 540 is done by traditional means, with the use of spacers and screws. There are cable-routing holes on the top and side of the board, which easily allows you to connect everything without revealing too much cabling.


Installing the 3.5" hard drives does not require any tools or screws. Simply insert the drive into the tray before sliding it into place. While these may primarily be for traditional drives, the holes in the tray also allow for the installation of 2.5" units.


Placing SSDs within the special cage is done without any additional tools or parts. Just push the drive past the plastic clip and let it snap into place. While this works flawlessly for drives of a traditional height, those using a thinner SSD should actually resort to screwing it down with a single screw.


The tool-less party continues with the optical drive bays--the covers can easily be pushed out from within the chassis to free the bay up. Once open, slide the drive in and let the lock do its job. The unit actually holds in place quite well.


The only other part that really requires tools besides the motherboard is the PSU. You need to use four screws to secure it in place.


With everything in place, the main side looks flawless without having invested a lot of work into cable management at all, as the other side holds all the nasty cables and unused PSU leads. The Corsair Carbide Air 540 is incredibly simple to use and assemble, consuming less time and effort than other traditional units out there.

Finished Looks

Once everything is in place and the unit is turned on, the Air makes a great impression. The white power LED embedded into the power button is a nice touch, and I made sure the optical drive is installed with the tray facing to the left as one will most likely place the case to the right of the working area for a look at its internals.


The window gives you an unobstructed view of all the parts that really count. Imagine having some LEDs in there with a multi-GPU configuration and two water-cooling loops--that would look pretty spiffy. The other side only gives way to the PSU behind the air vent.