Corsair 5000D Airflow vs. Solid Case Review: Thermals, Noise, Build Quality

it genuinely seems like corsair is finally back to making cases that aren't bad corsair had a number of years in a row where the case releases word at best uh well they left a lot to be desired and at worst there were some bad ones in there now though the 4000d back in about october of 2020 was a turning point for courser it was a return to form where the company finally looked like it was starting to listen and get back to the core principles of case design and stop just trying to put a bunch of glass and leds into a blender and hitting in maximum settings seeing what comes out cause that's what they were doing for a few years with the things like the 680x so the 5000d is what we're reviewing today the 5000d is a very quick follow-up to the 4000d but it's not a replacement they're different cases in size and in focus but they take a lot of the same core principles the 5000d as we were looking through it point by point has resolved a lot of our individual complaints about the 4000d which is great news so we're going to look through that today and see what new complaints arise with this larger case uh that does also come with two different panels so we're viewing the airflow and the non-airflow versions today before that this video is brought to you by squarespace squarespace is what we've been using for years to manage our own gamer's nexus store and we've been incredibly happy with the choice squarespace makes e-commerce easy for those interested in starting stores but it also has powerful tools to build all types of websites photo galleries for photographers resume and portfolio sites and small business sites are all easily done through squarespace having built a lot of client websites the old way before running gn full-time we can easily recommend squarespace as a powerful fast solution go to squarespace.com gamersnexus to get 10 off your first purchase with squarespace in terms of target the 4000d is priced at around 95 to 100 depending and this is about 150 so it's a different price target entirely but our first immediate complaint about it when we looked at it was today it's really just the same two fans so this is a downside immediately where it's just one front fan one back fan and that means you're going to be splitting airflow between the cpu and the gp one of them will run warmer than the other and at 150 that does feel kind of cheap because it's it's either you commit to a philosophy of the user will provide their own fans and you give them zero or you provide an adequate amount and quantity of fans for your 150 case that was a bit of a downside but overall the case has made several improvements to key features we've complained about in the 4000d and if you look at the front panel too it's a lot different than previous cases corsair's done and it's uncommon for other manufacturers too where they've got these deeper cutouts on the side that sort of chamfer inwards in the trapezoidal pattern and so this ends up making it so that the solid panel cases are actually not necessarily completely terrible unlike a lot of other solid panel cases where you're basically just incinerating your components and it's it's an interesting attempt to having that solid panel while still allowing some reasonable amount of air to get into the sides and we'll be testing that the thermals later just like we said with the 4000d one of corsair's strong points despite some of its weak points we've talked about is attention to detail specifically really fine detail so corsair's got someone with a sharp eye working on these cases because there are small features like having any surface where metal contacts metal corsair has color matched stickers overlapping the point of contact so that the abrasion from any kind of movement doesn't just rub the paint off of the panels another small thing that we noticed is that just like with the 4000d the dust filters have painted over magnets so this is the bottom obviously it's just black but they've painted over the top to color match the case on the black case these magnets on the top side are black on the white case they're an off-white and it's a small attention to detail thing where just painting them white instead of leaving them the default black color helps to blend in with the rest of the case another small attention to detail thing we noticed is you'll see here that the mesh actually extends past the magnet and in fact extends past the usable area of intake on the top panel so there's there's no functional benefit to extending out past the point of the magnet except it looks a lot better and there's some more surface area to provide a distribution of the weight of the uh the filter so that it doesn't quite sag as much over time but when you put it back in there the magnets are also arranged in a way they're off center when you look at the filter itself but when you look at the top of the case that's intentional so that the magnets don't overlap the screws and obviously be kind of useless there because there's just a hole in that spot and a divot as for other small attention to detail the side panel of the case over here has a key dust filter that can only be inserted right side up and this also helps with carefully aligning the diagonal reinforcements on the filter to line up exactly with the row of triangular holes that are punched in the side panel and also too the holes in the filters are punched in the same panel or pattern as the holes in the panel so there are two cases 5000 d5000d airflow you can probably assume which one will review better with us given our approach to things but we're going to look at both of them and uh we'll start with patrick's build notes he's extremely critical and has a sharp eye as well so he's got a couple comments we'll go through those and go through the thermals and conclusions the 5000d has a lot of unique features there's a massive hinged cable cover behind the side panel of the case for example similar to the ones found in the gigantic obsidian 1000d it does certainly make the motherboard side of the case look really clean in the transparent 1000d and the 5000x but it doesn't matter with the 5000d or the 5000d airflow both of which have a non-transparent steel panel over the side of the case covers can also be helpful when they can be fastened down with screws to keep magnetic side panels from popping open but in the 5000d the inverse is true the cable cover is magnetic and the side panel uses screws so the cable cover can be pushed open by cables and the side panel doesn't need reinforcement there's a small hole in the cable cover directly over an internal case screw so if this case screw were a little bit longer it could actually be used to fasten down the cover the cable bar inside the case is also a unique feature and is removable and it must be removed in order to use the side fan mounts at all even though they're both installed by default the side radiator mount and the cable bar are mutually exclusive and users should remove one if they intend to use the other removing the plastic cable channels isn't necessary but removing the straps is so any configuration changes should be done before you start building in the case figure out how you want to lay it out we see the cable bar as an optional cosmetic feature that users may find easier to remove than to work around its main purpose is to hide the big cable cutouts next to the motherboard tray and the rubber grommets within these are one of the few elements that aren't color matched in the white version of the case so that's part of the hiding snaking a 24 pin atx power cable underneath the bar and then angling it back around into the motherboard is difficult unless the motherboard's power connector is mounted at a right angle the same goes for any of the other thicker cables that must reach this side of the motherboard primarily usb 3.0 sata and pcie power cables corsair is clearly aware of this difficulty since a right angle usb 3.0 adapter is shipped in the accessory kit which is a good thing but they're aware of it we left the cable bar in place for testing except when using side intake fans but if we were to use this case for an office build it's likely we'd take the cable bar out entirely there's approximately three and a half centimeters between the hinge cable cover and the motherboard tray with even more space behind the cable bar if it's installed although the bar doesn't have many points at which to tie down cables and it suffers from other issues like we've just discussed corsair includes a huge bundle of 15 velcro straps in this case enough to fully populate the plastic cable channels with eight left over we had previously noted in the 4000 d review that it only had three points which were specifically intended to use with these straps so the 5000 d is a huge improvement here it seems like corsair is listening the psu shroud is cut down to a length which gives the space for fans and radiators on both the normal front mount and the side mount the case ships with a plastic shroud extension that reduces clearance but still gives space to both mounts this can be swapped with a power supply optional cover plate in the accessory kit that ultimately just caps off the end of the power supply shroud keeping the interior of the case looking neat while also still allowing the most possible room for cooling hardware at the front of the case this is another cosmetic choice with the power supply mounted in the standard fan down orientation power supply cooling's a closed loop and capping or uncapping the end of the psu shroud would have no real impact on the power supply itself if anything blocking the end of the shroud is just another obstacle to airflow depending on where your front fans are oriented the hard drive cage underneath the power supply shroud may be mounted in three locations but the rear most position gives barely any wiggle room from an atx power supply and the other two positions are incompatible with the power supply cover plate in other words using the cover plate basically eliminates support for three and a half inch drives one negative aspect of the 4000d which hasn't been improved in the 5000d is that one of the thumb screws on the hard drive cage is difficult to access when a power supply is installed in the case so there's still a few things they can clean up corsair's manual claims compatibility with eatx motherboards up to 305 by 277 millimeters eatx isn't a thing but the millimeter sizing is helpful we wouldn't recommend installing anything larger than a standard atx board in this case though because installing a board of the maximum size specified by corsair would require removing the cable bar and the board would block multiple cable cutouts and come uncomfortably close to the side panel fans the front fan mount is subtly different than the one in the 4000d but in entirely positive ways one feature of the 4000d that we criticized was the set of cutouts on the front fan mount that were three 120 millimeter circles clearly intended for three 120 millimeter fans in specific placements so that 140 ml fans would be misaligned and partially blocked off the cutouts in the 5000 d are still positioned around 3120 ml mounds but the cutouts are slightly wider now making it more practical to use up to two 140mm front intake fans the metal of the tray is thicker on the 5000d at approximately 1.25 millimeters versus approximately 0.85 on the 4000d including paint and this helps prevent another issue that we had with the 4000d which was the delicate metal of the fan bracket bending inwards and clipping the fan blades the tray is also removable now making radiator installation easier so once again lots of things cleaned up radiator compatibility is also improved over the 4000 d we noted in that review that 360 mil radiators wouldn't fit in the front of the case even though there are three 120mm fan mounts that would because the radiators overhang would directly conflict with the front i o the 5000d can support 360mm radiators on the side the front or the top mount and in a true fashion although there isn't enough space to use the side and front mounts simultaneously the i o unit is on top of the chassis rather than inside so there's minimal interference with internal components moreover the cutouts at the front of the power supply shroud are large enough with the shroud extension removed that is feasible to install 360 mil closely liquid coolers tubes down at the front and side of the case as long as the tubes are long enough the 5000ds front filter is similar to the 4000ds but it uses a thicker frame which stabilizes the mesh and prevents it from wrinkling or getting sucked into the fans over time interestingly corsair has chosen to reinforce the side filter so they clearly do consider the reinforcement to be beneficial the side filter locks into place in the side panel preventing it from sliding around during installation which can be an issue in other cases with side vents like the lee lee 011 dynamic distance between the surface of the front fans and the front panel itself has increased from two centimeters in the 4000 d to three centimeters in the 5000 d clearance for the top panel is also three centimeters this unusually large offset looks kind of cool but it should also give plenty of breathing room to any fans installed in the front or top of the case even in the non-airflow model the fans included with the 5000 dr almost exactly the same as the 2 120mm fans included with the 4000d and in exactly the same quantity the 5000d fans are 4 pin and accept pwm control and by default are connected to a 6 way pwm fan hub included in the case we'd like to see better fans included with this higher end case especially at the price delta versus the 4000 d but coarser has reserved that for the 5000 x as far as we can tell every individual component of the 5000 d or x is listed as a separate product sku on corsair's website this might just be for rma purposes because we weren't able to order them there's the front bezel the i o panel the shroud cover shroud extension right tempered glass side panel not the left the feet the front panel these are the only items that have add to cart buttons but they didn't work at the time of writing we'd appreciate seeing a different front and side panel available for sale separately although offering individual tempered glass panels would undermine the value of the 5000 x because we're covering two cases together here we ran an unusually high count of thermal tests for this review 18 including retests the standard suite of torture tests gpu stress tests blender cpu and gpu tests noise normalized torture tests standardized fan torture tests and just noise were run with both cases with the exception of the no front panel test which we only ran on the 5000d and not the airflow since it would have been almost entirely redundant we also ran an additional test in the 5000d with the single intake fan moved to the side intake event starting with just the 4000d and 5000 dcp results the combined torture workload planted baseline cpu temperature at 53 degrees celsius above ambience in the 5000d without a front panel that average dropped to 48 which was also the average with both the top and front airflow panels installed moving the intake fan to the side vent didn't help raising the average temperature to 56 degrees the fans corsair used are built with the intention of focusing the airflow into a narrow tightly directed funnel which is not helpful when they're mounted perpendicular to the pc components the temperature improvement with the front panel plate of the 5000d removed indicates that it does obstruct airflow so it's worth considering side mounting radiators rather than front mounting them when installing intake fans without a radiator though the direct airflow from front mounted fans is more beneficial than the less restricted airflow from a side mounted fan in the 5000d airflow front mounting is definitely better since the airflow plate has a negligible effect on temperatures despite the intake fan being more distant from the components to be cooled than in the 4000d the 5000d compares favorably to the smaller cases in both the airflow and non-airflow configurations with solid panels the 4000d averaged 59 degrees over ambient versus the 5000 ds 53 degrees and the ventilated panels in the 4000 d average 50 versus 48 and the 5000 d the tweaks to the front and top panels and the generally larger chassis size helps including the deep vents on the front flanks even without improvements to the stock fans comparatively 48 degrees is tied with the p400a digital a case that ships with three fans and is one of the better temperatures we've recorded for mesh fronted cases perhaps more impressively 53 degrees with the solid panel still only pushes the 5000d down to the middle of the chart a little cooler than the stock mesh of ic we rarely see closed front cases perform this well in the non-airflow 5000d gpu temperature during the torture test averaged 57 degrees above ambient and removing the front panel didn't change that the average with the airflow panels rounded to 58 degrees but the unrounded result is less than one degree warmer than the non-airflow result so all three of these numbers are effectively tied the 5000d comes with a single stock intake fan which is positioned in the middle slot in an attempt to split airflow between the cpu and the gpu it doesn't do much for the gpu allowing a dead zone to form at the bottom of the case hence the minimal change resulting from changing the front panel a more positive contributing factor is the design of the front panel which isn't overly restrictive even with the non-airflow plate installed moving the front intake to the side intake did slightly decrease the average gpu temperature down to 55 degrees but this was helped by the fact that the side fan mounts are slightly lower than the front mounts so even though we used the center mount in both instances the side intake fan was lower and focused more on the gpu the 4000 d averaged 56 degrees in solid configuration with 52 in airflow compared to the 5000 ds 57-58 degree average in all configurations the gpu cooling performance is the inverse of the cpu cooling that we just praised placing the 5000d at the hot end of the chart next to the sakira 500x as well as the stock meshfyc which has cooling issues closely related to the 5000ds both cases use two 120ml fans one intake and one exhaust and both have the intake fan placed in the middle of the case in a way that's intended to benefit both this gpu and the gpu but ends up favoring the cpu one potential fix would be to move the intake fan a little lower but the nature of corsair's front mounts means that the 120mm fans only have about two centimeters of wiggle room normally we'd have blender results here but we're just gonna put them in the article which will be linked in the description below and published about a day later than the video if you care about the single component load standardized fans is an opportunity to check thermals with what we would consider a more optimal fan configuration because of the poor gpu thermals and earlier tests we decided to populate the lower two slots but left the shroud extension in place to keep the case as stock as possible we suggest removing the shroud extension to get the most benefit from a fan installed in the bottom slot cpu temperature suffered with this new arrangement in the solid fronted 5000d increasing to 59 degrees above ambient on average conversely the 5000d airflow was unaffected remaining at 48 degrees average using the two large and fairly fast intake fans may overwhelm the ability of a solid panel to let air in and encourage recirculation through the empty top fan slot while the airflow panel simply allows cool air in 48 degrees isn't bad tied with the scion base 802 and close to the match by 2 xl but the 4000 d averaged 46 degrees here and is doing better no case except for the enso has gotten as hot as 59 degrees in this test so the 5000d doesn't look great here but this is at least partially because we chose a gpu focused fan configuration using the top two slots would fix cpu thermals at the risk of creating another gpu dead zone while populating all three slots would solve any recirculation problems gpu temperatures followed a more predictable pattern improving down to 52 degrees average in both the solid and airflow configurations with a standardized set of fans moving the fans lower in the case did effectively eliminate the dead zone here so that's sort of what we were expecting our normal practice would be to place the intake fans right above the level of the power supply shroud but because there are three designated mounting locations for fans at the front of the case this sort of fine adjustment just isn't possible 52 degrees is the middle of the chart again close to the mesh by 2xl and right between the 4000d airflows 50 degree and 4000d solids 56 degree averages the 5000d with the solid panel was measurably quieter than with the airflow panel although not audibly quieter it was 36.7 vs 38 dba getting levels down to the 36 dba threshold that we use for noise normalized testing required reducing the fan speeds to 93 with a solid panel and 85 with the airflow panel in comparison to each other's results the 5000d airflow is still better overall when noise normalized although the average db temperature was slightly higher than in the solid configuration in fact noise normalizing had practically no effect on cpu gb temperatures in either case configuration but the only significant difference from baseline being an increase in cpu temperature for the non-airflow case from 53 degrees baseline to 55. that's an extremely good result for the airflow configuration in terms of cpu temperature between the chart topping lanco 215 and the lancol2 mesh and uh poor in terms of gpu temperature worse than the 4000 d solid there are a lot of good cases on the market right now things like the lan cool 215 the lan lee lancole 2 mesh outside of well and we'll give them credit for the 011 dynamic as well which is one of the only older best cases that they have right now and outside lee and lee the be quiet silent base 802 offers a silence focused or a cooling focus which couldn't arguably be science-focused configuration the fractal meshfy 2 xl is interesting in the larger size of fractal cases at least and the mesh by 2 non-xl is also a good case overall and there's just there's a lot of competition in the space the phantek p400a p500a both very competitive cases so this market is probably the fiercest that i've personally ever seen the case market in the last 13 or 14 or so years that i've been doing this our biggest problems here were with gpu thermals especially with the solid panel case where because corsair has chosen to run just two fans with the 150 case uh instead of committing to either no fans or adequate fans the gpu ends up getting sacrificed a bit in favor of cpu so that's a downside the solid panel version is entirely cosmetic choice the airflow version does in fact perform better but the solid version of this performs better than the solid version of the 4000d in most instances which is specifically because of the way that panel mounts and it has those two gaps on the sides to still allow a good amount of air in we like to the 4000d overall the 5000d it's almost seems like corsair went through line by line in the review that we wrote and fixed every single point whether they were already aware of it or not uh it doesn't particularly matter what matters is that the things most of them that we were complaining about have been fixed and hopefully we see this pattern continue it's actually a little bit exciting to see corsair as large of a company as it is now appear to actually care and make some changes in whatever it's doing in case whatever whether it's new staff or whatever uh to improve the product because it was it was years of case reviews from us about corsair cases where it just felt like every single time it was like well they've we thought they were at the bottom of the hill but turns out they could go further down the hill and now they're they're climbing their way back up uh up the hill so that's good at 150 there is a lot of competition for this uh the larger 5000 d has a few advantages over the 4000 d primarily those that's going to be radiator support a little bit of cooling but if you just want sort of this case look except cheaper the 4000d will get that for you with a few sacrifices along the way and we've gone over those if you want to look at then we would encourage you to some competing offerings before you pull the trigger on a case we'd suggest looking at the lan cool 215 the lan lee lancole 2 mesh the uh might as well look at the 011 dynamic if you're not familiar with it a little different though the fantax p 400 a p 500 are worth looking at the fractal mesh by 2 or the xl if you have some more money to spend and then the be quiet silent base 802. there's a couple others in there too that we've reviewed you can look at our case reviews playlist on youtube and or on the website and see more but it's a crowded market and all those cases that i just named are ones that we've been over uh past the average point in our conclusions where it's it's kind of positive to leaning positive and that's where this is too it's it's past the average mark and into the positive direction and um so yeah plenty of options to look at overall we don't have too many problems with this one they are mostly things that are resolvable with a little bit of user effort or some extra expenditure if you add a fan or two so that's it for this one thanks for watching subscribe for more as always go to store.gamersnexus.net it helps out directly and get something in return like one of our toolkits or a wireframe mouse mats you can also go to patreon.com gamersnexus to get bonus footage we shot a new behind the scenes video that is up there already and uh talked about this case actually before this review went up thanks for watching we'll see you all next time [Music]

Channel: Gamers Nexus

Views: 435,127

Keywords: gamersnexus, gamers nexus, computer hardware, cases, case reviews, pc cases, corsair 5000d review, corsair 5000d airflow review, corsair 5000x review, corsair 5000d benchmark, corsair 5000d vs 4000d

Id: lU_qa49gHzw

Length: 24min 45sec (1485 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Morley__Dotes]

Interesting, I wonder what makes the 5000D worth $165 vs the 4000D at $95. Pricey premium for what appear to be very similar cases.

I have the 4000D and really like it.

[u/unknown_nut]

Been disappointed with Corsair after the 540 air. Corsair floundered the successors to that case. They let Lian Li take over the dual chamber base with their O11D case.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/IceBeam92]

I have the older variant , 4000D Airflow and its a fantastic case , I’m loving it.

Steady temps and easy installation & maintenance , if you don’t care rgb I can recommend it.

[u/ReliantG]

I got this case this weekend because my Meshify 2 just could not keep me happy running 2 AIOs. So far, this is great. Loaded up the front with 3x fans, and then 1 AIO exhausting out the side, one out the top, and then another 120 in the rear. Temps are VERY cool, and the case feels solid.

[u/krista]

i really want silverstone to make a real successor to the tj-08e.

[u/DuranteA]

I like the extra space here above the mainboard.
Having the MB too close to the upper edge of the case always makes installation more of a hassle than it needs to be (for a non-portable system sitting under your desk where size is irrelevant).

That said, what I really want is a modern case with a non-glass side panel which can take one or even two side fans. If it's designed decently I would be that temps would beat everything else out there.

[u/pedros_2]

does anyone know ram clearance with 280 fan/rad at the top?

[u/ItsHighNoot_off]

Anyone with a 280mm aio on top?

Push/pull possible?