Corsair iCUE 5000T RGB review

When you first lift the Corsair iCUE 5000T out of its large box, the immediate thing that strikes you is how imposing it is. There’s no weight-saving construction here. This thing is steel and tempered glass, and its build quality is excellent. At 530 x 251 x 560mm (20.87 x 9.88 x 22.05 inches), it’s a big case and you’ll need a large desk to accommodate it.

Corsair says the 5000T is a mid-tower. If you look at the positioning of the seven expansion slots and traditional power supply placement, that may be so, but when you add the extra height of the feet and the space at the top for a 360mm radiator and fans, it simply looks bigger than a mid-tower.

It features room for four 2.5-inch and two 3.5-inch storage drives, and it can fit motherboards up to E-ATX size. It will accept CPU coolers up to 170mm in height, a PSU up to 250mm long and GPUs up to 400mm long. That means it’s able to accommodate almost anything. The front ports consist of a USB 3.1 Type-C port, four USB 3.0 ports and a combo audio/microphone jack.

The 5000T is a case that puts a heavy emphasis on RGB lighting. The market is saturated with such cases, but Corsair has gone above and beyond with the 5000T. The case itself features 160 addressable LEDs that are arranged in six strips, made up of two along each side of the top, bottom and front of the case. You get an additional 16 per fan, meaning the 5000T comes with no less than 208 individually addressable LEDs, and that’s without considering those from any other component. Bling!

All of the LEDs are connected to the included iCUE Commander Core XT controller. It can control the RGB and speeds of six fans and it can be expanded further with an LED hub for control of up to 12 fans. It’s got an additional header for a three-pin RGB device and has ports for two temperature sensors. These are useful for ramping up the case fans if a component starts getting too hot. Attaching one to the backplate of a GPU would make sense. The Commander XT is a real highlight.

The 5000T isn’t all flashy good looks. It comes with three Corsair LL120 RGB PWM fans. They cost $130 at the Corsair USA store for a pack of three (about £95 / AU$181). Although that price includes an RGB controller, it goes some way to explaining the high cost of the 5000T. The fans operate at speeds of between 600 to 1500 RPM. They are essentially inaudible at low speed but, not unexpectedly, they do get quite noticeable at higher speeds.

System installation is fairly straightforward; however, the case does have its quirks, especially if you just dive into the install without a bit of planning. The power supply installation is likely to require the removal of the hard drive cage, especially if your PSU has stiff cables. There’s a lot of space available between the cage and the front of the case so we’re not sure why Corsair can’t simply shift it forward a few centimeters.

The 360mm fan-mounting plate behind the motherboard tray will need to be removed to install a hard drive. This plate and the cable-hiding plate on the motherboard side aren’t as easy to remove as they could be, as the cable routing can interfere. Luckily these kinds of things are one and done kinds of niggles. Once the build is done, that’s that.

For our build, we chose components that are deserving of such a case. A Core i9-12900K and MSI Z690 Unify are right at home. We also chose several other Corsair components for the build, including a H100i Elite LCD cooler and Dominator Platinum DDR5-5200 RAM. This gives us a good system for taking Corsair’s iCUE software through its paces.

Though it can be considered a fairly resource intensive piece of software, in our testing, iCUE works very well. The lighting presets worked flawlessly across all of the Corsair components, including a Corsair Glaive mouse that’s perhaps six years old. As someone who personally doesn’t place much value on RGB, I must admit that I enjoyed playing with the various effects and settings. The colours are bright and vibrant and the software had no trouble synchronizing the cooling of the H100I cooler with the three LL120 case fans.

A 240mm AIO is about the minimum for stress testing a 12900K, but we’re pleased to say that we saw no throttling at any time while looping Cinebench. The LL120 fans brought enough cool air into the system to keep the motherboard VRM cool. 

One concern we have is the lack of a rear case fan. Not every system needs one, particularly if you’re running fans at the top of the case but, nevertheless, it feels like an omission.

Now we get to the price. At $400 (£350 / AU$499) it faces stiff competition, not just in its price range, but from below it. The likes of Corsair’s own iCUE 5000X or Obsidian 500D SE may not have the RGB capabilities or the Commander XT controller of the 5000T, but they’re much cheaper, so you’ll need to decide if all that RGB goodness is worth it to you.

If you’re an RGB lover and especially have other Corsair components, chances are you’ll simply love this case. Its open mesh design can keep the hottest components cool and it’s built like a battleship. If you don’t mind paying extra for something that will house several builds over the coming years, then the iCUE 5000T will serve you well. Its imposing presence will keep visitors talking. But we do feel it needs to be a few dollars cheaper to give us more reason to love it.

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