Clean and Collected - Corsair 4000D Airflow Review

the corsair 4000d airflow it's the higher ventilated version of the corsair 4000d by way of a perforated front panel costs around 80 pounds dollars or euros and corsair sent it over to me for review so without further ado you know the drill let's get into it there's not much special in the packaging and unboxing department small amount of play in the polystyrene moulds but otherwise pretty standard apart from these lengths of tape that are ensuring the front panel and top filter don't detach during transit i most notably found this was a problem with the q300l previously and in a case that this price is worth having moving on to the exterior up front we've got a clean steel panel with a perforated geometric pattern which features four ball and socket connectors for super fast removal the ball and socket connection works really well here since the side intake slots also provide good clearance to grip the panel but somewhere they don't work so well are on the side panels one of the sides has a glass panel and the other has plain steel both with rear fixings to minimize visual clutter where it matters and both feature the same ball and socket connectors as the front panel only this time each having two to the rear why don't they work so well here well unlike the front panel which gives you plenty to grip on to thanks to the side intake slots the side panels have two rear tabs that are barely the width of my thumb yes i have chunky thumbs but even these beasts struggle to hold onto a four millimeter thick glass side panel by the size of these two tabs without hitting the deck when it pops off now before i get carried away the idea is that the front leading edge is supported by a variation of the standard slot and hook style connection and the rear is both supported and secured by the ball and socket connection like the front panel the side panels can actually be secured purely by these ball and socket connections without the need for the rear thumb screws which also means they're pretty tough cookies and by the time you've built up enough force to break the connection the panel is kind of out of control this doesn't work so well if like me initially you're trying to be gentle not to damage or drop it by yanking it off but actually being more aggressive works in your favor since you're controlling the wild movement and you're ready for it but just make sure you're keeping an eye on the front since it sits on thin ice long story short they're not great if you're gentle and precarious and they're good if you're more aggressive but there's not a lot to grip on to in the back so you're gonna get your greasy paws all over the glass at the front every time you take it off moving on up top we have our front i o which features reset and power buttons a combined mic and headphone jack and usb 3.1 type c and usb 3.0 type a ports a very up-to-date spread of connections and just behind is the top filter but we'll get onto more of that stuff in a second to the rear we've got a mostly standard layout with a bottom atx power supply in a position upper 120 millimeter fan and rear i o position and a central horizontal pcr express slot zone with an additional two vertical pcr express slots for those of you who are into water cooling or sexy air cooled graphics cards that run a little toasty rounding off the exterior the base has four 30 millimeter tall feet with grippy rubber pads and an early look at the underside of the drive slot mechanism drive cage slot mechanism that is and an eye full of the power to plane an intake filter which works very fluidly thanks to the tapered side rails and tall feet so that's the exterior dealt with how about we cover the insides let's kick off with the fans filters and radiator support it wouldn't be a proper av techie review without compatibility slides so starting with the fans we've got support for three 120s and two 140s up front up top you can go for a couple 120s or 140s and to the rear you've got a space for a single 120 millimeter fan with no support for fans in the base which wouldn't be particularly useful in this case anyway you get a couple of 120 millimeter fans with the case their basic three-pin fans so it's nothing to write home about but don't feel the need to swap these out for 12 8 000 rpm fans at the cost of 20 each since these things are reasonably quiet and will perform well enough for low and mid power systems without any issues even some high power systems depending on the coolers you have for those that typically ask if the manufacturer isn't bragging about the fans on their website they're basic fans that they don't sell individually so if you don't see a sticker in a video and it hasn't been specifically mentioned what fans they are that's how you find your answer check the website corsair are happy enough to highlight these on their website but a simple search indicates they don't sell them individually in terms of filters we've already covered the power supply in it but we only touched on the top filter which is your typical magnetic strip mesh secured filter only this one has a silicon tab to the rear to make the process of removing the filter easier yeah i don't think it's necessary from a usability standpoint so i'll have to put this one down to a visual design decision that looks okay but it's a little out of place on an otherwise clean exterior the front filter is different in a better way though after removing the front panel the filter can be removed by lightly pulling on the top tab it takes very little effort since it's only secured by four small magnets and a couple of lower tabs and combined with the two second front panel removal this is about as easy as it gets to clean out a front filter and access the front panels well unless you get a case with a front metal panel that is a filter that is how about radiators well it's pretty much a reflection of the fans so you've got support for a 360 or 280 millimeter radiator up front 240 to 280 up top and a 120 millimeter radiator to the rear but keep an eye on the clearance measurements for the front depth being dependent on the drive cage and depth clearance notes to the top which course i have at least provided a rough idea of what you can use relative to their own lineup of ram modules like fans there isn't support for radiators to the base of the case but swiftly moving onto drives there is support for a couple of those but you'll need to go round to the rear of the motherboard tray to grab the two and a half inch drive sleds to do so you get two drive sleds with the case and there are four positions for these sleds you can buy more if you want they're the obsidian 500d ssd brackets and costs four dollars five pounds or five euros each you can even buy in air quotes a motherboard accessory tray to go behind your motherboard tray which looks like it'll hold another couple of two and a half inch drives but i can't find anywhere that sells the thing let alone find a price so i'm discounting it kind of as an option at this stage i'll quickly say the same about the power supply unit cover plate which after going on the website turns into a power supply in its shroud cover plate which makes more sense but still isn't available anyway three and a half inch drive wise there are two three and a half inch drive sleds that can take two and a half inch drives as well the sleds themselves are the awkward plastic kind that require bending to accept a drive but it's a one-time operation so it's tough to be too irritated at all of this gives you a few options stock with a couple of three and a half inch drives and two and a half inch drives four two and a half inch drives or the upgrade option for less than ten dollars to give you an extra couple two and a half inch drive sleds which probably won't be required by most the three and a half inch drive cage itself has a couple of positions it can sit in front or back this gives you a little more space to the front or rear depending on the radiator or power supply unit choices you make check out these slides for all the clearance measurements you require you can also remove the drive cage entirely if you don't need it or to give you a little bit more space for installing the power supply unit power supply knit clearance is generous with a minimum of 202 millimeters of space measured from the rear to the tip of the drive cage screw tabs just bear in mind this is clearance we're talking about so give yourself a good 20 millimeters of space for cables more if you want an easier time of cable managing i've got a thing for cable management before installing the motherboard and graphics card basically getting everything ready while the case is clear of the big stuff that's harder to shift around this can be really important for cases with lacking cable management especially in areas like the cpu power connector where in some cases the motherboard will partially cover the provided holes but in this case there aren't any issues like that that particular issue is avoided by the fold in the top of the motherboard tray and the 3d cutout for the hole as a 3d cut because i can't think of a better way of describing it we've also got cable management loops all over the place which are just about big enough to take a 10 millimeter wide velcro strap and there's this plastic channel with a few installed thick velcro straps it can be removed with a couple of screws even the top curved piece can be individually removed and the velcro straps can be taken out flipped around or replaced with a few extra ones you get in the parts box which we'll cover more in a second it's quite robust and useful but for me i find using thinner velcro straps with cable management loops easier since they're simpler and faster to undo and re-strap and do just as good a job with less bulk but i'll grant they don't look as nice however i think not looking so tidy to the rear isn't that big of an issue thanks to this panel that covers the larger central holes in the main compartment by default it's in the atx position but can be moved slightly to the right or left if you're looking for the back to make way for an e8x board up to 305 by 277 millimeters anyway all of that is to say cable management on offer is excellent and i'd say it's above average at this price point quickly touching on the parts box and manual that never seems to be a smooth time to get into this you get a pile of resealable bags with all the various screws you'll need for the case as well as a load of zip ties some washers which i'm really not sure about and the additional velcro straps mentioned earlier which kind of confused me since i don't know where else to put them there's nothing mentioning the washers or straps in the manual speaking of which it's quite a thick document but it's 10 pages per language 10 languages in total for a total of 110 pages plus a bit to the front and back the diagrams are relatively clear and uncluttered but again there's no explanation for the extra velcro straps and washers they're just velcro straps and washers so i can only assume the straps are replacements and the washers have something to do with potential radiator installations or something anyway you know you're on something when you start boring yourself moving on to the motherboard stuff there's not a huge amount to comment on here there's nothing to get caught on so installing the motherboard is simple i'm using a micro atx board as it's part of my test system and has a socket in the same place as an atx board only it's compatible with more cases since the cutouts for the base for the cable management are into the shroud and not the wall they're well clear of becoming a contentious issue for atx or atx boards the extra large standoff post is even more effective than your standard one since it drops the screw in feature and opts to be an even better guide standing proud of the board i prefer this kind of standoff post as it makes installing motherboards even easier than standard standoff posts and there's no need to have an extra screw in here when there's eight surrounding it each with threading that will probably provide enough force to crush your hand with your little finger i'm getting off topic again the cpu cooler clearance sits at 170 millimeters the side movement 5 here standing at 155 millimeters tall and the graphics card installation can go in a couple of different directions as mentioned earlier you could vertically mount it if you're water cooling or like seeing numbers between 80 and 100 or 37 or for all you air coolers that like lower numbers which is most of us you can horizontally mount your card i've said it before and i'll say it again if a screw isn't intended to be used with your fingers don't make it a heavy knurled one once the card is in place you'll have to use a screwdriver and at that point a heavy nailed screw just becomes a pain in the ass when it falls off because it's too heavy for the magnetism of your screwdriver and even worse for unmagnetized screwdrivers so that's the gpu installation covered and everything this case has to offer so let's talk performance testing involves three setups stock max which will run the stock fans in this case one 120 millimeter intake to the front and one millimeter exhaust to the rear at full speed to determine the maximum cooling performance with this test system and the maximum noise output of the stock case the second setup called optimal acoustic replaces all the stock fans with my test fans and they're all limited to produce a total system noise output of 36.5 dba at 40 centimeters from the front of the case at a 45 degree angle it's also worth noting the cpu cooler and graphics card remain at the same speed throughout all testing it's 1350 rpm on the graphics card and it's 1080 rpm on the cpu cooler the memory serves me well for this case we're replacing those stock fans with three front intakes one top exhaust and one rear exhaust for a total of five fans this determines the noise normalized performance of the case itself outside of the performance determined by the stock fans and finally the third setup optimal max this takes all the fans from the second setup and ramps them up to full speed to see just how loud this case can be and how cool the test system could possibly run based on the case fan support available someone questioned why i run fans at full speed for stock testing and told me i should look into running them at a more realistic speed such as 50 percent it's worth clarifying to everyone looking to take these for test results seriously the running them at 50 percent 60 a hundred percent or any fixed percentage speed is arbitrary since we're talking relative performance between cases and fixed system settings whether the fan is running a more realistic speed doesn't impact the performance difference between the cases and nobody should be taking these results as thermal or acoustic performance guidance it's all relative to the results on the graphs and that this test system only the only thing you can determine from these results is which of these cases i've tested performs better than the others than the others in certain ways anyway with all that covered let's get into results and the analysis we've got a couple of tests to run through a high load test with primary five and firmark for 10 minutes and a gaming test with the fire strike combined test looping for 10 minutes the stock setup with primary five and firmark has the 4000d airflow performing in the lower half of the cases i've tested at least when sorting by gpu thermals in terms of cpu film performance it's pretty much tied best with the lan cool 2 mesh well just behind it it's also worth noting and i have mentioned this in the last few case reviews but most of these cases or all of these on this page actually are high for airflow cases so compared to a closed front case all of these should compare very favorably in terms of film performance at least anyway but the stock setup has two sides to it there's thermal performance which you've just seen and the acoustic performance so swapping over to the fan noise and case volume stats you can see the 4000d airflow is by a hair the third quietest of the bunch in the light blue bars which makes the 4000d airflow the third hottest by gpu thermals and third quietest which is at least poetic if not a fair explanation of the thermal performance but it starts to sound really good when considering it's the second coolest in the cpu thermals and third quietest moving on to the fire strike test there was a minor swap between the 4000d airflow and the td500 mesh but otherwise it's all the same the 4000d airflow is still performing extremely well regarding cpu thermals and good in gpu thermals as well as being a relatively quiet case at full speed on the stock case fans how about the case itself though how does it perform when all the stock fans are gone and they're replaced with the same fans in the same positions as all the other cases and the fans are tuned to output the same noise level well for priority 5 and fermark this is what we get and we can tell that the 4000d airflow has pretty low airflow resistance but it's nothing crazy compared to the td 500 mesh aero one without its filter and signum sg1 evo tg argb these are all high airflow cases after all i think the only major distinction between the 4000d airflow and the lancol2 mesh is the filter the lancol2 mesh opts for using the front steel panel with perforations across most of its width which would appear to have higher airflow than the smaller traditional mesh filter on the 4000d airflow but i'd hazard a guess that the 4000d airflow will be better at handling dust than the lancol2 mesh so i think we're looking at a classic trade-off between dust management and airflow here which would explain the result it's probably also worth noting the lancol2 mesh is a significantly larger case which speaks for the higher airflow but both it and the 4000d airflow have all the case fans set to 30 percent albeit the average fan speed was a little lower in the landcall 2 mesh but both were outputting 36.5 dba the fans at this speed are really at the edge of stalling some of these cases needed to drop the speed down to 27 which is as low as i can reliably drop them before they start stalling next test setup i think i'm gonna opt for a higher noise target or twelve thousand twelve twelve hundred rpm fans to give me more room to play with the current ones being 2200 rpm fans switching over to fire strike there's a bit of a shuffle around of the scores the 4000d airflow is still in the upper half of the pack but the no filter aero1 has jumped ahead which is kind of cheating since there's no attempt to filter the system in that setup or it makes the 4000d airflow look good considering it's just behind and has a good filter and last but not least it's the optimal max setup where we ramp all the case fans up to full speed with 25 and fermark the 4000d airflow doesn't improve drastically compared to the stock max testing it only dropped five degrees celsius on the gpu temperature and increased in noise level by 12 dba whereas the lancol 2 mesh dropped 5.5 degrees half a degree more that's within tolerance i guess and increases in noise level by only 10 dba not 12. out of all these cases the 4000d airflow deals with brute force airflow worse than most on this list but it isn't the worst of the bunch and bruce force brute bruce brute force airflow is likely only relevant to a handful of people for a minimal portion of the time so it's not a massive deal at least i don't think so and just to round off the testing the fire strike testing for the optimal max setup weirdly sees the 4000d airflow drop a fair few places regarding gpu thermals i say weirdly since it didn't do this in the stock max testing and hasn't behaved like this in any of the other tests but it's still doing a good job on the cpu front compared to all the other cases anyway so not so bad so that's the testing analysis covered now for the cost and value aspects based on pc part picker pricing you can generally pick up the 4000d airflow for 80 pounds euros or dollars so when we take that and combine it with the optimal acoustic firestrike performance data you can see the 4000d airflow is a better value option than the lancol 2 mesh and td 500 mesh but ultimately that's not very surprising considering the cost of both of those cases in reality price has a much higher driving force on the price versus performance formula and you'll only notice differences when either the prices are very different as they are here or the performance is very different when the prices are very similar depending on the price you can get it for you could also consider the mb311l or aerocool aero1 strictly speaking on the price versus performance front so let's form a conclusion to this if we're talking around the 80 pounds or euros price mark it's between this the mp311l and aero1 each having unique features so for a quality atx case that's visually clean i choose a 4000d airflow for a quality micro atx case with some argb elements you should look towards the mb311l argb and if you want the unique look of the aero 1 with some argb elements then that's an option but the build quality isn't as high on that one and you get proprietary fans so depending on what you have planned that could cause an issue otherwise from what i've worked with you can pay less for lesser build quality but good features which is a good way to go or pay more for higher build quality with different or more features the landcall 2 mesh being a great example of stellar build quality and excellent drive storage capacity but it'll cost you an extra 20 or 40 of your region's currency depending on where you buy it and what price you get it for but you could get close to that kind of storage capacity with the 4000 airflow if you get yourself the extra drive sleds and all that motherboard rear plate which may give you better value if you can get your hands on it i think the 4000 the airflow trades a little regarding the amount of fans provided for nicer construction quality but that doesn't appear to take away from it regarding film performance at least with a test system like i have here it's got everything i look for and would recommend in a case so it gets a recommendation from me if you like this review and want to check out more like the lion lee lankal 2 mesh td 500 mesh and mb311l argb look no further than the top right hand corner or to the side somewhere in a second consider subscribing for more if you really like the the content and if you really really want to go above and beyond you can support the channel on patreon which is a good opportunity to thank those who continue to support me on patreon and you can use the amazon associate link in the video description to pick up the 4000d airflow and anything else which will provide a small commission to the channel it's probably worth mentioning that we just reached 10 000 subscribers which has been a bit of a slug over the last year but it's 2021 and i'm all in to expand the channel faster than ever before so stay tuned thanks for the support and i'll see you next time

Channel: AV Techy

Views: 136,856

Keywords: Corsair 4000D Airflow review, Corsair 4000D review, 4000D Airflow review, Corsair 4000D Airflow build, Corsair 4000D build, 4000D Airflow build, Corsair 4000D Airflow unboxing, Corsair 4000D unboxing, 4000D Airflow unboxing, Corsair 4000D Airflow good, Corsair 4000D good, 4000D Airflow good, Corsair 4000D Airflow, Corsair 4000D, 4000D Airflow, Corsair 4000D Airflow vs Lancool 2 Mesh, Corsair 4000D vs Lancool 2 Mesh, 4000D Airflow vs Lancool 2 Mesh

Id: BP1qy-Sszlo

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021