With the spread of M.2 SSDs, 10TB-plus hard drives, and the death of optical drives, PC cases (even ATX towers) are trending smaller these days. Then there’s Corsair’s iCue 7000D Airflow, which did not get the memo: It’s one of the largest mainstream PC cases we have reviewed in some years. The massive size has its pros and cons, but it ultimately means you can fit a lot of high-end hardware inside, including multiple 360mm or even 480mm water coolers and all the drives most mortals can afford. The case’s weight makes it difficult to move, especially once it is built out with a slate of high-end, full-ATX hardware. But apart from the mass, we found little to complain about, and the case is well worth considering if it’s in your price range. (That said, it might not be, as it’s priced at the luxury end of the scale, at $259.99 MSRP.)
The Design: Living Large
This case’s physical characteristics are impossible to ignore. (Think monolith.) The 7000D Airflow weighs in at 43.6 pounds empty and hulks up your desk with measurements of 23.6 by 9.8 by 21.7 inches (HWD).
This is quite large compared with most other cases, but mere numbers don’t quite do justice to explain how cumbersome this case is to move around in person. Nothing on the chassis can serve as a handle to help you get a grip, and the sheer depth makes it tricky to situate on any but the biggest desks or workbenches. Ask a family member or friend to help move it around.
After you get the case set up somewhere stable, your relationship with it will be a lot less strained. Both the left and right side panels are attached with rear-mounted hinges, but they lack any sort of handle or notch to grasp. You will need to wedge your fingers in the gap between the doors and the chassis to pop them open, and we’d like to see a clear grip point. Having the doors on hinges does make the case easy to open up and work on, though, especially given the left side and its giant glass panel. With many chassis, every removal of a loose glass side panel is a potential crack-up waiting to happen. Not so much here.
To that end, there’s a screw on the top hinge of each door that keeps the panel from accidentally coming off. You can easily remove the screw if you want to fully detach either side panel. This is helpful especially when you are working to build out your system inside and may have to flip the case on its side. (Well, less “flip” than tip with care.)
The front and top panels are both built similarly, with large fan vents, removable covers, and dust filters. The front I/O panel is set on the top of the case and is one of the better arrangements that I’ve seen in recent years. It has a total of five USB ports, four of which are classic USB 3.1 Type-A ports and the last a Type-C port (which connects via the newer USB 3.2-style motherboard header). The only thing missing up here that I might like to see is a flash-card reader, but those are getting scarce in any aftermarket PC cases these days.
Internal Design: As Big as All Indoors
Inside the case, you have an abundance of room to work with behind both side panels. The motherboard mounting tray can hold boards up to Extended ATX (E-ATX) in size, and you can fit in graphics cards up to 450mm (17.7 inches) long, in either vertical or horizontal orientation. (You’ll need to supply the GPU riser cable for a vertical card mounting, though.) No graphics cards on the market ought to come even within several inches of that maximum length, so this chassis should be able to host basically any modern GPU with room to spare.
Many case vendors may be sizing down the number of 2.5- and 3.5-inch storage bays, given the rise of ultracompact M.2 storage, but no one told the iCue 7000D Airflow. It can hold more storage devices than most cases on the market, and indeed more than most folks can afford. Behind the motherboard tray, you can add three 2.5-inch drives, with room for a fourth positioned over the PSU.
At the bottom of the case is space for six 3.5-inch platter hard drives, though easy access to the three of them on the left (see the image above) is blocked by a metal bracket. This forces you to either remove the bracket or pull out the drive cages to get to all six.
When I reviewed Corsair’s iCue 5000X RGB, I criticized that case at length for having a similar drive-bay design, but I’m not going to do that here with the 7000D Airflow. It rates a pass in this area for two reasons. First, the case has three 3.5-inch drive mounts that aren’t obstructed. Most modern cases have only two or three mounts for this size of drives, period, so I consider the three extra 3.5-inch drive mounts a bonus, even if they aren’t convenient to access.
The second reason: The implementation has also been improved. The 5000X RGB didn’t just block you from accessing the 3.5-inch drive mounts, it also caused problems with mounting a power supply. The only way to add a 3.5-inch drive to that case was to move the hard drive cage over, which would then block certain designs of power supply from being inserted into the case. This issue doesn’t recur here, and I’m able to get a power supply mounted in the case without the drive cages getting in the way.
Cooling any components in this case should be a very literal breeze, as the case comes with three 140mm fans pre-installed. The case also has room for several more fans to be added. On the top of the case, you can mount up to three 140mm fans or a single radiator (up to a 480mm whopper) for a liquid cooler. If you remove a metal plate, there’s also 480mm worth of mounting bracket next to the motherboard, on the motherboard tray, to add fans or other water-cooling apparatus, such as a tall reservoir. Airflow for this fan location is enabled by the vents cut into the solid right-side panel. The cut-throughs on this panel are also covered by a dust filter.
Sometimes Less Makes a Better Case
Corsair is also launching a higher-end chassis alongside the iCue 7000D Airflow, the iCue 7000X RGB. There are two key differences between the 7000D Airflow and the 7000X RGB. The RGB model has (surprise!) four RGB fans in place of the Airflow’s three non-RGB fans. It also has an extra piece of hardware, called the Commander Core XT, that controls the lights and can support additional LED strips and LED fans. Both cases ship with a separate fan controller, which serves to simply regulate fan speeds.
The 7000X RGB’s price factors in the cost of the Commander component, and it’s a good deal more: $329.99. I’m semi-happy the Commander is not here, though. The reason for that: The iCue 7000X RGB’s design calls for the Commander Core XT to be installed directly behind the CPU, which is an awkward spot for anything to be.
Anyone building a PC in a case this expensive is likely going to use a quality air or liquid CPU cooler instead of a stock cooler, and that means they may well need to use an aftermarket mounting bracket. This needs to be applied to the motherboard from the underside, if so, and it’s often easiest to do this before putting the board in the case. But well-designed cases will leave a big enough cutout in the motherboard tray so you can swap out a cooler bracket from under the motherboard after the board has been mounted in place.
Most cases are designed this way, but on the iCue 7000 (both models) a plastic cover goes over this cutout. That’s not particularly problematic, as it can be removed by untwisting a single screw. At least that’s how it works on the 7000D Airflow. Corsair’s 7000X RGB design calls for the Commander Core XT to be bolted onto this plastic cover and for wires to then be connected to the module. This forces you to have to unplug and rewire all of your RGB LED cabling, and unplug power to the device itself if you need to change or add a CPU cooler bracket.
Given that I see a bunch of other less intrusive locations where this device could have been installed behind the right side panel, this is a design misfire on the 7000X RGB, and I’m glad not to face it with the 7000D Airflow. This is another design decision I took issue with in the iCue 5000X RGB, and I’m sorry to see it repeated on the 7000X RGB. There’s plenty of unused space on the back of the motherboard tray where this module could have gone instead.
As it stands, this design feature, in my opinion, makes the iCue 7000D Airflow a better case than an iCue 7000X RGB for buyers who aren’t RGB hounds. Of course, if you want to have consummate control of the RGB lighting in this chassis (and that is part of the reason most buyers will shell out extra for the 7000X RGB), not having the extra controller would be a deal breaker. But I’m fine without it.
The Verdict: Arriving Right on iCue
The iCue 7000D Airflow is going to have a limited audience by nature, due to its behemoth size and $200-plus price. The few design flaws don’t amount to much, though, and this brute will please shoppers who know what they are getting into with a cavern-like chassis like this one.
The case feels well built, and it looks like a premium PC case should. We’re also happy to see the solid right-side panel; the trend toward tempered-glass excess has invaded the side panels behind the motherboards on plenty of modern cases, and keeping things looking neat on that side of a big PC is a thankless, punishing task. The 7000D Airflow’s huge size has its merits when it comes to fitting in lots of components, and it makes building inside easy, but moving the case around is going to be a two-person or power-lifter’s job. It’s not going to fit inside of many desks, either. Indeed, it’s too long to fit on our testing desk without setting it sideways, which will be the situation for many people. Definitely measure twice, before buying once.
Corsair’s list price of $259.99 puts the iCue 7000D Airflow in the upper strata of the chassis market. For price-sensitive PC builders, spending half that and funneling the saved cash into a faster CPU or GPU might be more prudent, even if GPU money doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to. If you need all those drive bays, though, and are also seeking out all that fan flow or long-radiator clearance, this high-end case can scratch a number of niche, rarified itches all in one shot.
