Sometimes an event turns your expectations and plans on their head. It’s like that moment in The Matrix when time slows down and then when you snap back to reality you think “What just happened…?” Yesterday that happened to me.
This is a story with 2 threads and don’t seem to converge but when they do they change all my plans for the better.
####Thread 1 I have two PCs, one for gaming and one for the office. The gaming PC is an overclocked AMD 760k with an EVGA GTX 760, all housed in a Corsair Air 540 enclosure. The office PC is an i5-760, is only required to run Chrome, Word and Remote Desktop, and that’s all housed in a case that cost me £6. Honestly, just £6. As you would expect, you don’t get much for £6 but you would be surprised at what you do get. I have a couple of nice quiet Artic Cooling fans in it so it’s quiet, it runs cool, looks ok and does what I need it to. At the end of the day though it’s a case worth £6 and it needs replacing.
My gaming PC used to be housed in an old Coolermaster enclosure which is currently sitting around doing nothing so I’d planned on junking the £6 case and using this 2007-era CM case. Before doing that though I was planning to have some fun and custom mod the CM case. Sleeving, lighting, cable management, watercooling, paint, case mods, all sorts of stuff were on the list. I’ve spent some time working on some of the details and I was beginning to get to the point where I knew what hardware was going in to it and this what mods I was going to make.
####Thread 2 As I mentioned before my gaming PC is housed in a Corsair Air 540 which is an excellent case. I chose it because it’s high quality, looks amazing, easy to build in to and has plenty of watercooling options for the future. Only problem with my particular case was that it came with a couple of issues:
- The USB3 header from the front-panel was nowhere near long enough to reach the port on the motherboard.
- There were scratches on the inside of the plexi panel.
- There was a scratch on the front/left-hand side of the case. On the corner trim.
So, it’s a great case but quality control clearly wasn’t functioning very well on the day mine was manufactured.
One of the reason I bought a Corsair product was that I’d heard their after-sales support was really good. Time to test that out.
I raised 2 RMAs with Corsair, one for the front-panel connectors and the other for the scratches. Over a period of a month I was sent a replacement set of front-panel leads which included the entire switch unit that sits behind the front panel. I was also sent a replacement plexi side panel. Thus far I’m impressed. The responses from the Corsair support staff have been professional, timely and they sorted out the issues. Apart from 1. The scratch on the corner trim of the case.
Here’s is The Matrix moment … Corsair couldn’t supply me with a replacement corner trim so they are sending me a new case instead. Yes, the whole case. A brand new Air 540 case. For a little scratch that they find hard to provide a replacement part for they are willing to supply me with a new case. To top that off (and this is the kicker), they don’t want the old, scratched case returned.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Yes. I end up with two Corsair Air 540s. One perfect. One slightly scratched.
So now plans change. Why mess about with a 2007-era case when I can use a brand new Air 540 case which has mounts for a 280 rad plus a 360 rad already in there. Case mods not required. I’d worked out that the most I could fit in the old CM case was a single 140mm rad. It’s a very restrictive case.
I’ve got lots of things to do to make these PCs as good as I want (lighting, sleeving, cable management, watercooling, etc) but the one thing I now won’t need to do is buy a Dremel and start hacking around my PC case.
Corsair are awesome. Their products are awesome. After-sales, awesome. Just awesome. Can’t rate them highly enough. Mistakes happen but I always judge companies (and people) by how they deal with those mistakes. I honestly cannot fault Corsair. Go buy their products. Do it now.
UPDATE: I actually penned this post a month or so ago as I wanted to wait until the case finally showed up. Corsair assured me that it would be with me by the end of March and they were as good as their word. Check this out:
