If you have to ask what it costs, so the saying goes, you can’t afford it. With this mammoth PC case from Corsair, consider a corollary to that: If you have to ask why, you probably don’t need it. This is the best advice, as seasoned reviewers, we can give for Corsair’s staggeringly over-the-top 9000D RGB Airflow. This $499.99 chassis, capable of hosting a full-size PC and a Mini-ITX system inside, supports up to four 480mm (!) radiators without even considering its 360mm and 240mm mounts. And of course you’ll want to fill it with two motherboards, two power supplies, and two graphics cards because…why not? Needless to say, this mega-chassis could be all about the bragging rights, but you’ll need plenty of space to spare and dough to blow to consider this titan your next case. Streamers with a need for both gameplay and game-capture machines in one chassis, or video editors who want to have their editing and rendering rigs in one enclosure might consider this beastly box. The 9000D is great for that niche and wins an Editors’ Choice award for being the ultimate twin-rig chassis, but is it ever imposing.
The Design: An Excess of Excess
To say that the 9000D is bigger than big should be descriptive enough for most folks, but if you’re sitting around imagining what you might do with practically unlimited mounting space, we’ll have your attention now. At 27.5 inches tall, the case is too tall to fit under any desk we’ve ever owned, and too heavy (66 pounds empty!) for some desks to support, too. Size alone differentiates its aesthetic from your typical glass-sided steel gaming case. This thing is simply a monster. (It’s almost exactly as deep as it is tall, too.) You can get it in white or black versions.
When you turn it on: More out-of-the-ordinary stuff. All of the ports are surrounded by light diffusers just like the power button, and the row of lights behind all those diffusers is nothing less than a Corsair iCUE Link-controlled ARGB strip. Not so obvious to the casual observer is that the entire collection of four Type-A and two Type-C ports, plus the headphone and microphone jack, are connected through a single dual-link cable. That’s right: The 9000D provides its own USB audio controller to connect those jacks, rather than tap into the motherboard’s front-panel audio header.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Two square dust filters that cover the 9000D’s power-supply air inlet on the underside slide out at an angle from the side of its bottom panel: These are part of a comprehensive dust-banning system that includes slide-out filters for both the top and bottom radiator mounts, as well as a magnetic sheet filter that rests over the vent at the top of its right panel.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
From the opposite direction, we can see the above-mentioned right-panel vent on the left, and the rear panel on the right. Highlights of the rear panel include a 140mm/120mm dual fan mount with enough room to fit a 240mm radiator (depending on the thickness of any top-panel cooler installed), eight expansion slots in the normal position, two vertical expansion slots that are half-covered by a removable panel that surrounds the power supply bay, and an unusual button group next to the upper fan mount. Speaking of odd, the dual fan mount appears to be around an eighth of an inch short of supporting two 140mm fans, and is thus limited to either two 120mm fans or one 140mm fan.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Peeling away the layers at the bottom of the rear panel, we find space to mount an SFX (or SFX-L) power supply to the left of the main power supply bay, a hole to accommodate the I/O panel of a Mini-ITX motherboard above the main power supply bay, and four standoffs for mounting a Mini-ITX motherboard atop the power supply cover. Yes, that means the two vertical slots we see here are meant to serve the Mini ITX motherboard…but the case’s accessory kit also includes a four-slot vertical panel that replaces its eight-slot panel.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
That brings us back to the top of the back panel, where you’ll find those odd buttons mentioned earlier: They are power and reset buttons for the Mini-ITX motherboard tray. In other words, if you indeed install a second system in the case, using a Mini-ITX board, you’d power it on from back here, separately from the “main” system.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
The overall size of this case is hard to visualize from a direct side shot, and I had no banana nearly big enough handy for scale, but the triple fan mount seen above the top of the motherboard tray can be your first clue. Designed to align with the upper vent of the right side panel, it’s long enough to hold a 360mm-format radiator. And that extra row of standoffs between the first and second column of cable passage grommets? It’s positioned to hold the front edge of 13-inch-deep motherboards (SSI-EEB sized EATX). The box at the bottom is the back side of a 3.5-inch drive rack, and users can fit an entire EATX board in the space between that and the upper fan mount. Big enough for you?
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Zooming in toward the center of the above space, we see a graphics-card support mounted to an adjustment slot via a screw on the opposite side. Above that is a standoff at a position marked “C,” which refers to SSI-CEB motherboards. Most users of “EATX”-labeled motherboards will need to remove all three of the SSI-CEB standoffs, as boards like the Asrock X670E Taichi lack the extra three mounting holes despite its SSI-CEB-matching 10.5-inch depth.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
We previously mentioned the slide-out dust filters that cover the front- and top-panel radiator mounts, but we should put a little more emphasis on the mounts themselves: Fastened to cabinet-grade drawer slides, each rack (which Corsair calls its “Infinirail” system) is designed to hold two rows of four 120mm fans for a total of eight fans on top and eight more on front. Each rack’s fan mounts and center brace can be moved around to support three 140mm or two 200mm fans each, but either of those options seems like a big step down from the eight 120mm fans that each is able to support. (The 21-fan max count we mention in the specs is with 16 fans on the racks, three on the side, and two in the back.)
Keeping in mind the 240mm width limit, builders are welcome to install up to two 480mm (side by side) or one 420mm-format radiator up top, and another two 480mm or one 420mm-format radiator up front.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Two doors located behind the right panel are designed to hold up to four 2.5-inch drive trays each, on the opposite side. These doors are secured at the center with nothing more than a pair of weak magnets, but the mounted side panel prevents them from swinging open once the system is assembled.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Only three of the four 2.5-inch drive-tray mounts are filled per door, but that’s still enough to hold six drives, and users of more than six 2.5-inch drives will find that the five 3.5-inch drive trays seen here are also drilled to accept 2.5-inch drives. Other features include a Corsair iCUE Link controller and a 3-pin adapter for the front-panel ARGB lighting, which includes the both the logo and the power button/port group.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
The iCUE Link controller and adapter both adhere to the case using magnets that are too weak to survive getting dislodged in shipping, hence the twist ties seen above. A closer look at the controller below reveals that it’s powered by a PCI Express supplemental power cable from your PSU, and it interfaces with the motherboard via a USB 2.0 internal header.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Additional details of the same controller (including screenshots of its software interface) can be found in our featured iCUE Link-based test build.
Building With the Corsair 9000D RGB Airflow
Packed inside one of its 3.5-inch drive bays, the 9000D RGB Airflow’s accessory box includes a whole hardware store. You get 42 “Quikturn” fan screws, 12 M3 screws for mounting three 2.5-inch drives, 18 #6-32 UNC screws for mounting the motherboard and any 3.5-inch drives, six spare motherboard standoffs, a dozen zip-style cable ties, and a combined nine-pin F-Panel-to-separated-front-panel-lead adapter.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Other accessories are included in a cardboard box, including several fan brackets for the front and top racks, a set of eight knurled screws and threaded nuts, a four-slot vertical graphics card adapter to replace the eight-slot horizontal expansion panel, two iCUE Link cables, and a fuzzy cleaning cloth.
The front-panel buttons and ports are served by only three cables: A 9-pin combo connector that features only power and reset buttons, a USB Gen 2×2 (Type-E) cable, and an SATA power input. The Type-E cable connects a USB 3.2 hub, which in turn breaks out into two Type-C and four Type-A ports, plus the internal USB audio controller we mentioned.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
You don’t have to worry about having two 19-pin USB header connectors for the four USB-A ports. Indeed, not connecting any 19-pin USB or HD Audio headers at all felt a little strange, even though it did simplify the process. We put our 240mm cooler above the motherboard to optimize airflow over its voltage regulator, and then noticed that a full ATX motherboard and 12-inch-long graphics card look ridiculously small in a case this large. But hey, those are our standard test parts!
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
On the other hand, turning the case at an angle at least helped us to conceal some of the empty space at the front of the motherboard tray.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Testing the Corsair 9000D RGB Airflow
We’re using our latest full ATX case testing configuration to compare the 9000D RGB Airflow to the five tallest review units to recently precede it. All stand more than 21 inches tall but still remain cowed before this Corsair monolith. Here’s a recap of our test parts…
The 9000D might be equipped to hold a bucket 21 of 120mm fans, but it’s delivered with none of those locations filled. Our CPU cooler’s fans still gave it enough airflow to score fourth place in CPU, voltage-regulator, and graphics-card temperatures. With temperatures this moderate at low airflow, we can only imagine how much improvement adding a few more fans might bring.
Its lack of fans meant that the 9000D didn’t produce its own noise, but it also did a so-so job of containing the noise of our component fans. It moves up to third place, overall.
Of course, being that it’s not designed to be limited to so small a selection of hardware and cooling gear, all the 9000D really had to do is pass our basic test. And it did that.
Verdict: Big as All Outdoors (and Indoors, Too)
The real test is what a builder might do with the 9000D, and those looking for a little build inspiration are welcomed to check out the various configurations displayed on Corsair’s web page for the 9000D. Our test used our standard test parts for comparability, but no right-thinking buyer would buy this case for a build short of needing to install an extra-large motherboard, more than one liquid cooling loop, or a custom big loop, and/or a second Mini-ITX PC being installed alongside. There’s simply not enough big single-PC hardware that most folks would install, or can afford, to justify this case.
Streamers or pro editors, though, who may want to capture or render on a secondary mini-PC while never slowing down on their main rig, will perk up at the 9000D. No, it’s probably not smaller by volume than two discrete systems built separately, but if you want your twin rig built out in one place, it’s one of the best such solutions you can find. Just know that it’s big enough that you’ll want to charge it rent.
Corsair 9000D RGB Airflow
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The Bottom Line
Extreme PC enthusiasts will thrill to the mammoth dimensions of Corsair’s 9000D RGB Airflow PC case. It can host staggering banks of fans, four XXL-size radiators, twin PSUs, and even a whole separate Mini-ITX PC inside, alongside your main mega-rig.
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About Thomas Soderstrom
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