Removing the glass side panel, we now have access to the main area of the 2500 chassis. This will be the same for all the variants all bearing the same layout with the traditional placements adorned with easily accessible cutout for cooling servicing.
A quick look at the box shows us the rear of the motherboard tray as well as the side fan mount. As a dual-chamber chassis, the PSU and drive area are pushed to this chamber with Corsair orienting the PSU and 3.5″ drive cage sideways to accommodate your components.
Everything is very simple and straight forward and lacks some of the intricacies that chassis’ like the older dual-chambers had, specifically the 280X. Speaking of the Corsair 280X, its literally the same layout but with some refinements so owners of that case that feel they’re due for a slight makeover may feel at home with the Corsair 2500.
The Corsair 2500 series is an airflow oriented case and even the 2500X variant isn’t really castrated much by the lack of a front mesh panel. The entire case is practically open save for the glass but otherwise, air freely flows from the bottom and rear so negative pressure is impossible in this case. Intake venting can be done via bottom or side with exhaust up-top.
This space allows for heavy support for watercooling options with flat respumps on the side allowing plenty of space for thick dual radiators on the top and bottom although I’d flow the loop towards the top rad first so I don’t get that hot of a rad at the bottom just in case, but that’s my personal layout for it.
Checking out the rear chamber we can see there’s plenty of space on the PSU side. The Corsair 2500 supports up a 220mm PSU which is a very big unit. There’s a pre-installed SFX PSU bracket for smaller PSUs if you want to go down that route.
Just above the PSU space is the drive cage supporting two drive caddies that can house 3.5″ and 2.5″ drives. Curiously, the drive trays pull towards the rear of the case and outside. A panel covers the trays and is locked with a thumb screw.
Out of the box, the accessory box is stored in this area. Once its out, you can see the pair of caddies. The accessory box includes screws for mounting 2.5″ drives on the caddies. But if you’re mounting 3.5″ drives, you just need to line-up the screwholes on the drive to the small poles to keep them in place.
Continuing with Corsair’s simple approach with this case, we get a simple array of front panel connectors comprising of a front panel USB-C header, a USB3.0 header, the audio header and the front panel connectors.
A bit more to the left are some 2.5″ drive trays that mount flush to the front case panel. These can be accessed be used regardless of where you place the side vent fan mount which can be placed forwards or backwards into its space.
