Corsair Carbide Spec-04 Mid Tower Review

TECH X TEST BENCH

Were going to be jumping into the build with a few upgrades from our last review.

BUILD

Our build of the Corsair Carbide Spec-04 was borderline simplistic with a few small issues along the way.

As we described before, we removed the HDD tray for more space. This was a good idea to free up some headroom for our GPU radiator, although, we didn’t have anywhere to put our 3.5” drive. This was solved by some simple velcro on the bottom of our 3.5” in addition to getting attached between our PSU and radiator. Corsairs AIO H60 CPU cooler fit well and just like our GPU radiator, equipped itself to the Spec-04’s front fan wall. We really enjoyed the space available for our air cooling system.Two Corsair 120mm fans settled in perfectly on our top exhaust vent and were a very good fit on our Spec-04. We switched the position of Corsair’s stock white light 120mm fan to the rear for exhaust as well. Like the fans our motherboard fit snugly. Our motherboard is an ATX and slid into place very nicely. The GPU was next which fit very well into its slot, however, we experienced a slight sag in our card. As today’s GPU’s get bigger and faster, something as small as a bracket could work wonders to prevent sag. Our cables running to and from our motherboard had plenty of room. It was surprising to see no rubber grommets. Our power supply aligned right up and all the cables ran neatly to the cable management area. Having zip ties to tie down cable in the rear is a great idea, nonetheless velcro straps would have been better. The cable management area houses the 2.5” drive bays. We were very impressed by the placement of these bays and the way our 2.5” screwed in. Our overall airflow was better than expected. Intake from the front with exhaust out the top and rear was great and components stayed frosty!