Pros & Cons
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- Third airflow “chamber” perfectly divorces CPU cooling from rest of case
- Shrouds boost GPU and motherboard cooling
- Handy hinged side panels
- Includes three top-quality intake fans
- Supports ATX and MicroATX reverse-connector motherboards
- Three top-panel USB-C ports
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- A tad pricey
- Ideal functionality requires a 360mm-format cooler
Corsair Air 5400 RS-R Specs
| 120mm or 140mm Fan Positions | 10 |
| 120mm to 200mm Fans Included | 3 |
| Dimensions (HWD) | 18.6 by 13.4 by 18.6 inches |
| Front Panel Ports | HD Audio |
| Front Panel Ports | USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C (2) |
| Front Panel Ports | USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C |
| Included Fan Lighting Color | Addressable RGB |
| Internal 2.5-Inch Bays | 2 |
| Internal 3.5-Inch Bays | 1 |
| Internal Chassis Lighting Color | None |
| Maximum CPU Cooler Height | 180 |
| Maximum GPU Length | 430 |
| Motherboard Form Factors Supported | ATX |
| Motherboard Form Factors Supported | MicroATX |
| Motherboard Form Factors Supported | Mini-ITX |
| PCI Expansion Slot Positions | 7 |
| Power Supply Form Factor Supported | ATX |
| Power Supply Maximum Length | 200 |
| Power Supply Mounting Location | Side |
| Side Window(s)? | Yes (Tempered Glass) |
| Weight | 30.5 |
Meet a truly special case. Available in black or white, with either RGB fans (the Air 5400 RS-R, the $229.99 version we tested) or an integrated Corsair iCUE Link system (Air 5400 LX-R, $309.99), Corsair’s Air 5400 is a PC chassis stuffed with cooling innovations that actually deliver the goods. These include unusual features such clear plastic ducts to direct air over your motherboard, and a giant vertical gap in its right side panel. That gap is the outlet side of a third chamber that’s isolated from the case’s internal components, venting out heat from your CPU’s liquid-cooler radiator straight to the open air. (No more CPU heat to contaminate your graphics card’s cooling zone, and vice versa.) This arrangement worked exceptionally well in our tests, and earns the Air 5400 an emphatic Editors’ Choice award for its superior CPU cooling performance. You’ll have to spend a bit to get all the needed fans and radiators in place, but it’ll be hard to cool your chips better using an off-the-shelf PC case.
The Design: If It Looks Like a Duct, and Acts Like a Duct...
We mentioned the giant gap on the right side and its purpose, but a look inside that hole brings it home. A clear plastic air guide sweeps exhaust air through this hole from the front panel’s 360mm-format radiator mount. A set of tabs at the front of the duct and a single screw on its bottom edge keep the plastic works in place.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Above the top of that gap, we find a top-mounted port section with three USB Type-C connectors. Don’t be confused, as only one of these is wired as Gen 2x2: The other two are each wired to a single Gen 1 port via a traditional 19-pin motherboard USB header. There’s also a headset (headphone/microphone) combo jack and a light-up power button that uses an opaque sticker to appear as though it has a lighted ring surrounding it (when the system is powered up).
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)From the right/rear angle we get a far better view of the front radiator mount’s air path, as well as the hinges that enable the side panels to swing open. A square pattern of ventilation holes covers the area next to the rear panel’s power supply mount, and seven expansion slots are visible on the back of the motherboard chamber.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)We return to the front/left angle to view the location of the slide-out air filter before opening the case for more details. The three LX120-R fans use so-called “reverse” blades to draw air back-to-front rather than the traditional front-to-back, and are thus installed as bottom air intakes, blowing upward.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Inside, we find a motherboard tray with a bottom row of cutouts for reverse-facing motherboard connectors (Asus BTF and MSI Project Zero) hidden behind the bottom panel’s air guide. The tray also has a second, higher-up row of cutouts to match the bottom edge of MicroATX reverse-connector boards. Of course, traditional top-connector motherboards like the one we use for our case reviews also work just fine.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)We had to raise our camera to see the bottom row of reverse-connector motherboard holes, which are hidden by the bottom clear-plastic ductwork in the picture above. In the angle in the picture below, we can see that the inner lip of the duct is shortened to allow the installation of external-connector cables, as well.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)The top of the case is also visible from this angle, and we can see the single screw that holds the front of the top’s triple-120mm fan-mount bracket in place.
Zooming way in on the little peg that sits at the front of the motherboard tray lets us see that it has a screw on one end, a flat rubber insert on top, and a slide at its terminus. This is an adjustable graphics-card brace, and its screw tightens the part that clamps it to the slide. Corsair calls the Air 5400 an Extended ATX (EATX) case, but it certainly won’t hold all motherboards within the true 13-inch depth limit of EATX. Anything longer than 9.6 inches (i.e., standard ATX) will require the PC builder to remove the card brace’s adjustment bracket, which is hidden beneath some other brackets on the back side of the motherboard tray.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)The Air 5400 uses brush fibers, similar to those of a door sweep, to cover the front air guide’s cable passages. The one shown above (to the right of the protruding card brace) covers the passage between the power supply and the motherboard chambers at the front edge of the motherboard tray. The brush shown atop the removed air guide (in the image below) covers the coolant line passage between the front-panel radiator mount and the motherboard chamber. These brushes are a clever, closer-fitting alternative to the usual squishy-silicone liners that, on some cases, get dislodged easily when you’re pulling cables through them.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Also visible in the picture above of the removed air dam are the three slide tabs that attach the front of the air guide to the back of the front panel.
From the angle in the image below, we can see where the installed air guide attaches to the Air 5400’s front panel. The protruding bracket behind the air guide appears to be a cable guide, and the box behind the cable guide is a three-drive cage. Finally, the small shelf with little foam pads that sits above the drive cage provides added support for an installed power supply.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)You can get a better look at the power supply shelf in the lower right portion of the photo below.
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(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Meanwhile, the cage itself slides out after loosening two knurled screws from the back panel. Two 2.5-inch drives can fit inside the cage with their SATA data and power connectors facing the two rectangular holes at its bottom, after which a third drive (in the 3.5-inch form factor) may be fitted across the top. Users who aren’t installing a 3.5-inch drive will find a handy indentation in the same area that’s designed to discourage a magnetic-base Corsair Link controller from sliding off.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Building With the Corsair Air 5400
The Air 5400 installation kit includes a front-panel air filter, a dozen fan screws designed to engage plastic frames, eight M3 screws for installing 2.5-inch drives, and 22 #6-32 screws for motherboard standoffs and various other devices. Also in the packet is a magnetic filler strip for covering the gap between a motherboard and the front of a reverse-facing connector hole, a bundle of zip ties, a combined front-panel-lead breakout for nonstandard motherboards, a tenth motherboard standoff (nine come factory-installed), and an extender pad for the installed graphics-card brace.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Since the fans included with the RS-R variation of the Air 5400 use standard cables for ARGB and PWM fan headers and have pass-through connections, one each of these two plugs are all that’s required to connect the series of three bottom fans to our motherboard. Other case features connect via a nine-pin F_PANEL combined connector (that breakout adapter is included if your header doesn’t conform), an HD Audio cable for the headset combo jack, a 19-pin Gen 1 connector for the two Gen 1 USB ports, and a Gen 2x2 cable for the Gen 2 USB port. Remember that Corsair fits all three of those USB ports with Type-C connectors on the case top. The yellow one is the Gen 2x2.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Now, our standard set of test components for PC cases comprises hardware that we can use on most cases, and thus includes a smaller (240mm, not 360mm) CPU cooler. We mounted this cooler in a place that doesn’t set this case in its best light: up top, rather than in the front chamber. Its fans help to cool the top of our motherboard in this configuration, but the added thickness of our radiator prevented the top fan shroud from fitting.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)It looks good enough powered up, but you’ll always see the big gap on the right side and know that something’s missing. So, although our first build in this case used our standard test parts, we knew we weren’t done there.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Here’s a table of the above parts configuration…
The Nautilus Option: Installing the Proper CPU Cooling
That missing something is a 360mm cooler up front, and that might just be Corsair’s Nautilus 360 RS ARGB. The company provided one of these all-in-one (AIO) liquid-cooler kits with the Air 5400 in the hopes that we’d perform a retest to investigate the effectiveness of the Air 5400’s side-chute, isolated-radiator design.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Because our PC case testing gear comes in three sizes (ATX, MicroATX and Mini-ITX), I’ve been using a standardized thermal paste (Arctic’s MX-4) when transferring its cooler from one motherboard to another. However, since the Nautilus 360 RS ARGB has paste that’s pre-applied in a fancy pattern and fully supported by Corsair, I decided to try it.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)We can understand why everyone would want lighted fans on the front mount—for appearances’ sake. But in the case of the Air 5400, know that this front space is only useful for a radiator; fans alone mounted there would not blow into the case and be useless apart from decoration. We did note another visual bonus for this configuration with the 360mm Corsair cooler up front: It let us get rid of our stock configuration’s top-mounted radiator, and that gave the Air 5400 space to host its top-panel air-guiding shroud once again.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)Above is how the case looked with the Corsair Nautilus cooler in place...much better! Note that the only thing we did for the alternative configuration was to replace our 240mm top-mounted cooler with Corsair’s newer, larger front-mounted part. We’ll present test results for both configs.
Testing the Corsair Air 5400: Now That’s Cool
The Corsair Air 5400’s CPU cooling results go from third place (with our 240mm cooler up top) to a commanding first (using the front 360mm Corsair cooler), while beating the fan-packed APNX V1 by a full 10 degrees C. Note that removing the CPU cooler from the top panel and installing it up front increased our motherboard’s voltage-regulator temperature by 8 degrees C, so some builders will want to add a few top-panel fans to forestall that. Our testing with the 240mm cooler (in which the Air 5400 led in voltage-regulator temps) proved that a couple of fans up here will go a long way.
The Air 5400 isn’t the quietest case of our test lot, but it comported itself pretty well considering the addition of the Nautilus cooler (and its extra fan versus our standard 240mm kit) and the open-air gap design on the right panel, not to mention the three reverse-flow fans on the bottom. That’s particularly true when we added the radiator fans to the Air 5400’s front panel and cranked them up to full speed: a bit louder, but not ruinously so. All that exceptional cooling had to come from somewhere, right?