Corsair 4000D Airflow
Obsidian meets 2020
A COUPLE OF ISSUES back we waxed lyrical about Corsair’s first foray into the world of “gaming” office chairs. It’s not exactly a complex formula designing a chair. In fact there are ergonomic truths that mean inevitably you’re going to have a metal frame, five legs, a hydraulic riser, and generally the same design as practically almost every company out there. If you’ve built one chair from one brand, it’s likely you’ll be able to build any from all of the others. You’ll recognize the same bolts, the same fixtures, the same process. It’s all very similar. That’s a good thing, as it means you’re always going to end up with a quality product, as it’s a tried and true design. Don’t fix what ain’t broke, as the old saying goes.
The thing that made that Corsair chair stand out in particular, however, was the little extra touches the company added onto the product—the rubber Corsair caps to plug the screw holes, the padded side-walls on the seat, the comfortable “carbon fiber-finished” arm-wrests, the super-slick wheels. These tiny things made a big impact.
Now what the heck does that have to do with this latest case you’re looking at here? Well, this is Corsair’s 4000D Airflow chassis. It’s the first in a new line of refined and redesigned products from the company, featuring a whole new naming scheme. The aim is to get rid of some of that number confusion that it currently has with its products. The first number (in this example, 4) denotes the size of the chassis, with the following numbers and letters signifying class and design style.
The 4000D Airflow is something quite different from what we’ve seen from Corsair in the past few years. It’s a sort of symbiotic merging between the impressive performance of Corsair’s somewhat eccentric iCUE 220T Airflow series, and the smooth and subtle lines of its now-ancient Obsidian lineup from way back in the early 2010s. There’s a hint of NZXT and Phanteks about it all. It’s a formulaic entry incorporating some of the best design choices out there on the market today, for anyone looking to build a solid and dependable gaming PC.
That said, in a similar manner to its T-series gaming chairs, the 4000D has these small, subtle touches that really amplify its potency. The retainable thumb-screws on the panels are solid items to help with grip. There’s a yellow rubber Corsair label attached to the removable top magnetic dust filter. There are cable channels in the back of the chassis to help with cable management, with pre-installed, Corsair-branded Velcro straps. The front airflow panel sits a good inch away from the fans and intake dust filter. You’ve got a full-size PSU cover, complete with support for vertically mounted dual-slot GPUs. There are ample cable cut-outs internally, and a cable bar lining the interior with Corsair’s subtle new logo and branding imprinted on its side, and perhaps most impressive of all is the inclusion of two static pressure-optimized fans as well. Even the paint used has a soft-touch, fingerprint-resistant, matt finish.
Couple all that with support for multiple radiators, USB type C on the front I/O, two color skus ( black and white), and a solid front panel variant as well, all for one single price of $80, and it’s stupidly difficult to try and criticize this case. If we had any concerns it’d simply come down to the fact that the twin-slot vertical GPU mount might be a bit too skinny if you’re looking at the new 3000 series from Nvidia, and support for hard-drives amounts to two 3.5-inch drives, and two 2.5-inch drives (simultaneously). But aside from that? Well heck, this might be the new budget king chassis. If we could give it a 10, we would.
VERDICT 9 Corsair 4000D Airflow
OBSCENE Impeccable design; small touches; super price point; 4 skus.
OBSOLETE Vertical GPU mount might be too skinny.
$ 80 www.corsair.com