Reviews Corsair Crystal Series 280X RGB Review

I have the Air240 and I can't say I like this update to it.

It looks like trying to smoosh two different styles and I dont think it works

 

Tempered Glass and RGB... *sigh*

 

So they fixed zero of the flaws the 240 had?

No cooling for the 3.5" drives
Can't fit GPUs with custom PCBs that have extra width.
Only two normal USB ports and zero Type-c.

 

"As you can see below, there's enough space for 240mm and 280mm radiators, and these can slide forward and aft thanks to adjustable fan mounts."

WRONG! The only adjustment is for 140MM. Just spent the better part of the day yesterday switching from the 240 to this case. Hit a brick wall when I go to install the top fans. With P/P setup on rad in front your screwed if you want dual 120mm fans up top with an AIO cooler in the front. Custom you may get away with it or if your not running a gpu you can probably get away with it. It took me 30 minutes of staring at the mess I got myself into trying to decide if I wanted to go back to my Air 240 because of this design lapse.

Then I get to installing my 80mm fans after sorting out the cooling issue and BAM! That is no longer an 80mm fan mounting location as was also mentioned in this article. What on earth is that spot even for now with this case? What were the engineers thinking. Sure had I read the specs completely I suppose I would have noticed there was no longer 80mm fan mounting locations but being an Air 240 owner and seeing photos of the 280X you would think those are 80mm fan mounts the way it's designed. So I guess that's my bad for assuming they kept with it.

So even though they had a lapse in design judgement I still have dual Silenx 80mm fans mounted in this location just fastened with 2 screws each. I also carried over my 80mm fan I had on the outside of the 3.5 hd cage cover to this case again mounted with only 2 screws to keep sucking the heat off my servers storage drives.

Your also limited to the 120mm mounting on the bottom as also mentioned depending on your board config. With the Z270G and it's bottom usb 3.0 terminal it jacks up the 120mm fan mounting I'm partially using the fan mount locations and partially using the grill area to mount the 120mm fans in the bottom on mine. If I didn't already invest 1/2 the day swapping things over and messing with cable routing for so long I would have switched back.

This case needs some revisions already and needs more flexibility built into it. Crystal 280X v2. Also I don't know what Corsair is thinking with their "filters" they are far from filters and only good at catching stray floating pet hair. dust passes right into a case with these filters. They should be using a much finer material like what DEMCiflex uses. More like a pantyhose screening. Also I preferred the push tabs for the front cover over these push pins. The push pins force you to move lighting strips away from the edge of your case to allow room for the pins.

They also could have left a slot on the front and back of the top cross bar instead of making it meet the front and back of the case. This would allow a light strip to also be uniform on the edge of the case. Instead it has to be moved inward slightly at the top in front and back due to the bar that hangs down across the top. Which isn't at the bottom so I don't get why they have it up top.

If I had the chance to do it all over again I would have stuck it out with my Air240. Too much time was involved with swapping it out to have to change so much that was working great in my 240.

I highly preferred the P/P in front with my 240. Now my cpu temps fluctuate all over the place.
It was a tight fit for this setup as it was with the top 120mm fan's being adjustable.

Now that Corsair botched it with not allowing any adjustment up top. I have this.



Had I noticed prior to installing everything I would have drilled two holes in that giant void of blank metal up top in the rear so I could have shifted the 120mm fans back. Again those would have been mounted with only 2 screws thanks to the engineers lapse in design judgement.

Oh yea forgot to mention after nearly a full day of jacking around installing just to remove and reposition many things for clearance/routing reasons. I go to install the psu side panel and the 120mm fan hit my EVGA Supernova 750w G1 psu. I didn't compare 240/280 side panels after this but they must have the grilled area either smaller or decided to shove it backwards. I didn't have a single issue with my 240 and having a side panel intake fan. I had to shove on the fan and push the panel at the same time to get the fan to clear the front edge of my psu. For a case that grew inside dimensions I don't know what they were thinking with this area either.

For a $159 case I would have expected better from Corsair. Even the non RGB version at $109 is a more expensive case then the 240 released at. They really need to head back to the cad program and fix issues with this case. Thankfully I snagged mine on the Newegg Now deal and in the end after selling the LL fans I'll have paid right at $20 for my 280X so I guess I can't complain too much. It just has a lot of cons that weren't listed on this write up.

 

Of course not, that'd require effort... Much easier to fit an RGB fan or two, clad it in glass and call it a day.