Corsair iCUE LINK 3500X RGB Mid-Tower PC Case

A Closer Look – Interior

The interior of the case is fantastic, with a design that matches the outward portions, with clean lines, and lots of ventilation throughout. The case will support up to an E-ATX motherboard, and as you can see, there’s a wealth of cut-outs behind and around the motherboard. Plus since every panel, top, front, and sides are tool-free, it’s easy to get into.

These are to allow for easy cable routing using traditional methods, aka, poking a wire through a hole.

However, these ones on the flat side are for the growing range of BTF motherboards, which have their power connectors on the back for completely hidden cables, and I see no reason why that trend won’t continue to grow in popularity.

Now, let’s get back to cooling, as I said, there are no fan mounts on the front, but the 3500X more than makes up for that. There are three fan mounts on the right-side panel here, perfect for bringing cool air in.

Then there are three fan mounts up in the top of the case, best suited to exhausting heat.

As is the rear fan mount here.

But there’s also room for three more fans in the bottom of the case, with a single fan at the front here, allowing you to pull cool air up from the bottom ventilation.

But also two more on the PSU shroud, which is also ventilated, and will allow you to pull more airflow in from the bottom of the case, but it’ll also help direct the air that’s coming in at the bottom and side, pulling it towards the back of the case, and pushing it up past your GPU and CPU, and towards the exhausts at the top and rear of the case.

Behind the motherboard, you’ll find a massive amount of cable routing space, which makes sense since if you’re using a BTF motherboard, all of the connectors and cables will need to be back here, so a little extra room will certainly go a long way!

There are a lot of cable-tie loops allowing you to use cable ties (some are included in the box) to strap down cables to ensure things stay neat and tidy. Surprisingly no cable channels or Velcro straps though, but I think this might be so they don’t conflict with the BTF stuff.

There’s a removable metal plate, which allows you to mount a couple of SSDs behind the motherboard.

There are no 3.5″ bays below the PSU shroud though, albeit they’re less commonly used now in gaming builds given the focus on M.2 storage and even 2.5″ drives are becoming surprisingly uncommon now too.

Overall though, there’s a lot of space back here, and by the time you wire in all your hardware, 10 fans, and all the hubs and RGB control stuff that is required, you’ll be glad there is.