Building with Air 740
The Carbide Series Air 740 may not be blessed with high levels of finesse, yet Corsair's steel central frame and plastic accents are well knitted together and, when you start to disassemble the frame you begin to appreciate the amount of room available to work with.
Removing the windowed side door is as easy as pulling the latch and then lifting it off its hinges, while the panels on the other side and top are undone via a series of four thumb screws. Take them all off and the curved front fascia can then be pulled away, revealing a rectangular magnetic filter that covers the front intakes.
Out-the-box airflow is provided by a duo of front 140mm intakes and a single 140mm rear exhaust. The trio of bundles fans are all powered via a three-pin header and are identified as Corsair AF140L. Having no storage bays in this area helps ensure a direct airflow path over the system's hottest components, and there's plenty of scope for more exotic cooling configurations.
The front 140s can be swapped for a trio of 120s, and the bottom and top are mirrored, with each providing room for two 120s or two 140s. That means radiator mounting opportunities aplenty, with the Air 740 provisioning for a 280/360 up front, as well as a 240/280 up top or down below. There's plenty of space around the motherboard tray to allow for thick radiators, and with only the primary components on show, we imagine a liquid-cooled build would look pretty impressive.
A tidy front chamber is made possible by relegating some of the clutter to the secondary chamber. Back here, you'll find a rubber-padded PSU mount (with a removable filter attached to the side panel), as well as two storage cages. The first, clipped on top of the PSU bay, is home to four tool-free 2.5in SSD bays, while the second, in the top-left corner, is equipped with a trio of 3.5in drive trays. Both cages are removable, and once again, considering the amount of room that's available in this section, we're surprised that Corsair hasn't included at least one 5.25in bay.
What we do have is nine well-sized and rubber-grommeted cable-routing holes and a reasonable number of tie-down points. Separating the drives and the PSU from the main chamber is beneficial when it comes to cable management - all the clutter is simply, and tidily, tucked away in the back, leaving the motherboard side nice and neat.
Graphics cards can measure up to 370mm in length, while CPU heatsinks can stand up to 170mm tall, and the side window provides a great view of the rig. Building into the Air 740 is a doddle, and easy access bodes well for future upgrades, however Corsair does appear to have played it safe in terms of extra features. There's still no built-in fan controller, motherboards larger than ATX aren't supported, and there are no unexpected surprises to get excited about.
What the Air 740 does do, however, is deliver the dual-chamber format in a well-made and well-laid-out box that's easy to work with and ideally suited to ultra-high-end cooling. Let's now see how the direct airflow path fares in its default configuration.