Review: Corsair Carbide Series Air 240

by Parm Mann on 15 August 2014, 14:00

Conclusion

Retaining almost everything that was good about the original, the smaller and consequently better-looking Air 240 is a good option for a high-end Micro-ATX build.

The Carbide Series Air 240 is going to prove popular among enthusiast users looking to put together a powerful Micro-ATX build.

For £70, it offers the well-received aesthetic design of the original Air 540 in a smaller form factor that's easier to manage and deploy. Making use of the same dual-chamber design, the Air 240 remains simple to build into, with good cable management and useful separation between hot-running components and the power supply/storage drives.

Being able to choose a preferred orientation is a key selling point, and is one that works well: we actually prefer the case sat on its side, and with a bit of added lighting, the top window could be made to look very slick.

There's a lot to like, and we're thrilled to see manufacturers such as Corsair beginning to take small-form-factor seriously, but the Air 240 hasn't ticked every available box. We reckon the case still needs to be a tad smaller in order to live inconspicuously on top of a desk, and as there are no external drive bays, we'd like to have seen a fan controller included as standard.

Bottom line: Corsair has answered the call for a smaller version of the popular Air 540. Retaining almost everything that was good about the original, the smaller and consequently better-looking Air 240 is a good option for a high-end Micro-ATX build.

The Good

All the charm of the original in a smaller frame
Still fun and easy to build into
Good cable management
Available in black or white
Great at showing off your hardware
Designed with a choice of orientations
Room for dual GPUs and liquid cooling
Hinged side panels are easy to attach
Six tool-free storage bays

The Bad

Lacks the premium feel of a Graphite or Obsidian
Could do with a fan controller as standard
Only one easily-removable dust filter

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Corsair Carbide Series Air 240

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The Corsair Carbide Series Air 240 chassis is available to pre-order from Overclockers UK.

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I do like a good Corsair case these days. Been using them for my customers ever since I bought a Graphite 600

Could do with a fan controller as standard

Why? Most people can more than make do with their motherboard headers, and they don't have to manually fiddle with switches and dials to boot.

aidanjt
Why? Most people can more than make do with their motherboard headers, and they don't have to manually fiddle with switches and dials to boot.

Yeah, that used to be my default position, until Asus decided to ignore the issues with their fanxpert software, and I found that most others are a bit, well, meh.

I will say that the Air 240 should have at least one 5.25" bay, if not to accommodate an optical drive then at least allow the option to fit an externally accessible fan controller/Aquaero device.

It looks like Corsair have decided to push people toward their own AIOs and Link software than offer the opportunity to easily use other liquid cooling and control options. I own a H100i myself and I quite like the Link software, but the apparent decision to restrict our options is a bit shoddy in my opinion.

I still like it and it's likely the best option I'll find but I can't help but feel that they didn't quite hit the nail on the head because the review confirmed the issue I had when it was announced.

If they'd have made it literally 20mm bigger (on side of motherboard) so they could fit a rad in 2/3 sides rather than the 1/2 sides it has now.

It just seems too big for a mitx and I doubt many mitx users will use 2x120mm rads and it's too small to do 2x120mm rads with matx which is more likely to use them.

Not bothered about a fan controller but pretty sure they're trying to get you to use their corsair link software….which requires more corsair products

I hope they improved on the issues with the 540, which should be the dream case to build into, but if you've not got a full-length 5.25" device (such as many fan controllers, card readers, etc) then you have to completely remove the front, which is a huge faff (6 of those horrible old spring-clips with screws I'd not seen in years, two of which are in very awkward places) in order to remove the bay and screwless mounting system to manually screw your device in… but then you can't actually install it as the front facia won't go beyond the facia of the device, and the bay section has to be mounted from the inside, so there's no way to mount shortened devices at all, but you only find that out after 30 minutes of shouting.

They should be dream cases to build into, and the form factor does have some advantages, but go beyond the very basics and they quickly become an awful lot more work than they need to be.

It's like they designed a case, but didn't bother actually using it before releasing it, as if they'd tested in a few basic combinations they'd have realised these issues.

The 540 is probably the most frustrating case I've worked with since an old £20 plastic thing I bought for work 10-12 years back which tried to remove fingers segment by segment. I hope this 240 improves on that.

Edit: Oh, this doesn't have 5.25" bays, so much of the above isn't relevant. That's one way of solving that particular problem I guess!