After seeing how excited Tom is over the 540 I decided to retire my circa 2010 CM 690 II Advanced in hopes of building an epic rig in the 540. I do love the cube form factor and how neat the main chamber is. When I first took it out of the box I noticed the build quality is far inferior to the 690 with very thin sheet metal. I generally treat my cases gently so I was no too worried. As I began the build I immediately broke the tab on one of the hot swap drive sleds. I am not the hulk and didn't squeeze it that hard yet it snapped like a twig. I read on another forum a user having the same issue yet he snapped both tabs off. For being intended to hot swap this is poor design or poor materials or both. Some crazy glue had me back in business and the drives are my permanent ones so I won't be swapping them. The killer for me is the design of the optical bays. I have the Monsoon MMRS II dual bay reservoir for my D5 pump and I absolutely love it. I confirmed with the manufacturer that it can be run vertically and I expected the look to be fantastic. Unfortunately, Corsair chose to use very thick metal supports to divide the 2 bays and the res cannot fit into the bays. The CM case has them too but they are much more narrow and the res is notched to account for these sorts of supports but not for the width that corsair used.... why Corsair...WHY???!!!! I am thus far finding more frustration than enjoyment with my new toy. Any words of wisdom? Thanks
Corsair Carbide Air 540 - I want to love it but....
- Thread starter zmn668
- Start date
Busted out the dremel and tin snips but what a PITA. Metal supports removed quickly but because of the way you have to mount the res in the bay it has to be in place before reattaching the case's front bezel except the cut out is not large enough as it tapers to a more narrow opening from front to back. I assume they never considered mounting anything except sliding it in through the front. So then began the tedious process of removing plastic very slowly with the dremel and endless test fittings. As they don't give you alot of plastic you have to do this very carefully as to not take too much and break it. After a couple hours it finally fits. Will start on the actual build tomorrow now that I know I can proceed as I had hoped.
Agreed, I am going to use an Air 540 aswell. If it's not too much trouble this could be very helpful!
Grey_beard
New member
Sorry to hear about your drive cages zmn. If you'd like them to get them replaced, please feel to do so. Submit a ticket @ Corsair.force.com and we can send you some replacements and not settle with crazy glue.
As for the optical bay. I'm afraid it's simply a compatibility between the Monsoon MMRS II dual bay reservoir and the optical cage. Not all optical bay cages will have the same exact build configurations, It will always vary from one case to another. Plus, when designing optical cages, they would only make sure that optical drives are accommodated following standard spec and not res, fan controllers, etc. having in mind.
As for the optical bay. I'm afraid it's simply a compatibility between the Monsoon MMRS II dual bay reservoir and the optical cage. Not all optical bay cages will have the same exact build configurations, It will always vary from one case to another. Plus, when designing optical cages, they would only make sure that optical drives are accommodated following standard spec and not res, fan controllers, etc. having in mind.
