Gadgetory

we called the Corsair 500d boring and safe and some of our post CES coverage remarking that it had all the cleaned up marks of a modern case but took no risks with the case it now launched it's time to see whether that opinion stands the test of a build and the Corsair 500 D is a $150 enclosure that repurposes parts of the five Sony AX tooling but introduces new paneling and styling to the enclosure a $250 glass variation of this case will ship one's front panel yield issues are resolved and other than some RGB LEDs and glass and fans it will use the same tooling and largely be the same enclosure but today we're focusing on the Corsair 500 d version that we have for thermals noise and build quality before that this video is brought to you by thermal grizzly makers of the conductor not liquid metal that we recently used to drop 20 degrees off of our temperatures thermal grizzly also makes traditional thermal compounds we use on top of the IHS like cryo knot and hydro knot pastes learn more at the link below as usual let's go over the whole case before getting into the build notes and thermals and noise discussion first of all it's obviously something of an artistically styled case they have the top panel that's got slight raises on the sides and comes down in the middle and it only has ventilation in the center which is not ideal for thermals but it looks kind of cool and that's what they're going for the front panel is aluminum out of this version there will be a glass version later for a lot more money but they also I think include more fans that are going to be RGB which further increases the cost and for the doors this is probably the best feature really these partly come off of the project slate case from Computex that was really more of a halo effect than anything so these doors are tinted tempered glass and they are able to look curved without actually being curved so courser does get credit for that of course I was basically glued on this aluminum front that's curved that way towards the front panel and in doing so they've saved themselves the trouble of glass yield issues where bending a glass panel increases your cost a lot because you have to throw away a lot of them or recycle them or whatever so they've resolved the issue of curved glass yield for the or for the sides rather and they've still managed to make it look like it's curved so they get credit there the panels are pretty easy to remove vertically there's a screw on the top right now to hold them in place you remove the screw you pop it up panel comes off internally the case is really pretty simple overall and that's part of the thing with this case is that it doesn't really take any risk it's it's kind of boring that's not necessarily bad but taking risks is always interesting for new products this panel doesn't fully grip so this is something they've done well and also not the panel attaches via magnet to the case which is pretty cool but also this magnet doesn't align perfectly in the bottom corner whereas if I tug at this one you'll see it doesn't move until I apply enough force to actually open the thing whereas this one flexes a bit and the same is true for the opposite side the top left so the magnets don't align perfectly on our samples maybe that's just a sampling thing but either way let's go to the panel I've taken the screw out so that comes out pretty easily and inside the case which is quite heavy with all the stuff in it pretty expected layout for the last year now there's a vertical GPU mount which you absolutely should not use with an open-face cooled card it's probably fine with a reference sized open-loop card but not open phase air so there's vertical GPU mount there there's a weird power supply shroud that feels more like taking a box than providing something because the thing with this is you can evilly easily have a power supply that comes out to here and there's very little space lapse for your cables at that point so you're going to be removing this front of it which is removable so that's good however if you're doing that you really might as well just get rid of the whole thing since it kind of interferes with lower PCIe slot utilization anyway and we've typically found that power supply shrouds do impact GPU thermals if you have especially fans in the lower position of the case not a big deal though it just seems like the power supply shroud is more of a taking a box than anything so because of how empty the rest of the enclosure is and because this doesn't go all the way across it doesn't really feel like it should be there but that's more subjective than objectively what I can show you is that the front can fit three 120 millimeter fans we currently have a weird configuration in there for testing the top can fit to 140 s the back has a 120 in it presently that can be adjusted vertically if you needed to and a feature that we like with the case is the fan cages for the top and for the front which we remove with two thumb screws just like that then you can pull it out and we've got the fan cables on there now but the idea is that you can really easily get the fans on to a separate sheet of metal and then attach that to the case just like that obviously no not really don't do that but you attach it like that so the reason they've done that is because the front panel is more or less not removable so to get this panel off it's two screws underneath one screw inside that's not particularly accessible with the power splice shroud and then two tiny screws up here they've put a lot of effort into making it difficult to take that front panel off you can do it and we did do it for testing but the point stands that because there's no real reason to take the front panel off there needed to be a good way to mount the fans to the front of the case so they thought that through and we give them credit for that because otherwise you'd have to take out one two three four five screws to get fans in and out of the case so this is good they've done a good job with this one other cool thing that we did like was the filter installation so the filters are attached by magnet they slide out of the side of the case this is something that we've been hitting case manufacturers over the head with for a few years now sliding out of the back of the case is kind of dumb I think they actually still do that with the power splash shroud to the credit of the manufacturers there's not a lot of other places you can put this thing but if it's coming out of the back of the case you can safely assume most cases are against a wall and now you're moving your case to get the dust filter out there are better ways to do that but perhaps not with the way the feet are positioned on this one or whatever or doing a lawn filter that goes all the way to the front of the cage point out the front but either way this one's good this is in the front and it means that because there's no real reason to remove the front panel you can still pop it out to clean the filter the tops the same way it's a little bit harder to remove but you basically just push on it from one side and then you pull it out and there's your top filter so they've done well with that speaking of the top panel however it's very strange so it's got this artistic arc to it if you like it cool that's not really up to me to decide they have a weird tessellated pattern in the top I'm sure you can do the math and show how much more efficient holes would be instead whatever that's clearly not the intention of a top panel what is a bit stranger though is that because the way this is positioned you can tell that this panel was somewhat designed around the 570 X because if you look at the 570 X the glass is boosted up and that's glass it's a it's a clean sheet of glass on the top so they've kind of had to design around those parameters and for whatever reason it comes down lower in the middle and it only has holes in the middle so if you're planning to put a radiator in the top you're seriously restricting the airflow of that radiator I mean obviously I would much prefer to see this boost at higher or changed completely because it's a strange setup for a radiator it's not gonna work that well but we can talk about thermals for the rest the case as well for the set up so the stock side up one 120 millimeter fan front and center right in the middle here it's splitting its air flow between the GP and the CPU that has traditionally never worked very well however they have fan slots for more fans you're probably buying this with an extra fan if you go by our recommendation or if you're going with liquid coolers anyway the downside is that it's $150 and you're buying an extra fan that kind of sucks it's got one 120 in the rear which is fine both the fans are acceptable they're not the worst fans we've worked with in cases and there are some really bad ones but they're decent it's just we wish there was another one or if there were another one then we'd really be getting close to the 570 X configuration in which case you're kind of wondering why does this exist but the sir is primarily because it does actually slightly boost the height of the case so that it can accommodate fatter radiators and it also changes the design completely so there is a reason for this case to exist the tooling is familiar that's fine it's pretty normal for tooling to get reused that's how you profit as long as there are significant changes elsewhere and clearly there are for the front panel the front panel actually does have significant spacing here we have more than what we typically recommend for spacing once you close the glass though it does chew through some of the extra space in the side of the front panel but as we'll show in testing the panel is not nearly as bad as a lot of the others we've seen in the past year it's still not great but because it's full top-to-bottom openness not even a mesh it's just completely open about an inch or so there's enough room for the fans to breathe reasonably you know again it's not like a red line o6 but it's okay going through some of Patrick's notes here for the build and appearance section of the review which he has written in the article links in the description below Patrick notes that the chassis of the 500d is only a slightly modified version of the 570 X the case that we gave a quality build award back in 2016 but that doesn't give this one free pass the exterior panels are often what make or break the performance of a case anyway we'll discuss that in the thermal section as for looks Corsair has successfully adapted old tool into a new model without obvious compromises other than some cutouts around the edges that were clearly intended for steel side panels on the left side of the case but those aren't visible with the case closed the side panels are completely identical and more or less interchangeable which probably benefits Corsair as much as it does consumers at the front there are rubber wrapped magnets that clamp firmly onto the case when they work they work well but the manufacturing tolerances are very fine and not all the magnets on our case made strong enough contact with the case metal that said once it's closed as long as you're not moving it around they're fine they closed securely enough when stationary the side panels complement the curved front panel which is brushed aluminum on the version we're reviewing here but is made of tempered glass in the upcoming special edition presumably contributing to a much higher cost there are intentional gaps all around the side panels but especially at the front where there's about a centimeter of empty space on either side of the front panel for airflow it's a no mesh front but it's better than some we've seen behind the motherboard tray the kale management channel has some excellent cable tie points with velcro straps pre-attached something we've always liked and there's also a gutter shaped piece of steel designed to clamp over and contain all the cables it's a good idea but it's a tight fit for everything to get in there and once it's installed every cable must go through this channel in order to get the cutouts usable we use the bare minimum of cables in our test bench but if we added any more they probably wouldn't fit we'd have to remove the kale management bar to better fit because otherwise it's blocking off the channeling this is all necessary because the side panels are both transparent so messy cables would be fully visible and because the side panel is just held on with magnets and doesn't really have the force to squash down the wad of cables there is extra need to manage everything cleanly get into the thermal section to fans is pretty underwhelming for $150 case the non LED courser sp1 20s look and feel decent but we've tested many cases by now with one intake and one exhaust configurations and they've never done especially well for additional tests we did the usual no front panel a vertical GPU and an additional Noctua NF a14 fan added to the front top of the case vertical GPU mounting was difficult as frequently as the case with this configuration because we've got a tower cooler for the CPU and an extra-wide GTX 1080 sometimes there's space but Corsairs at vertical PCIe slots were too high for the card to fit properly this time and we took a zip-tie approach just for thermal testing we obviously wouldn't recommend it for normal use this would be better suited to a reference size card and as we've stated it constantly for open-loop configurations we can still test it thermally though taking the front panel off was also one of our tests it's not the easiest thing to do but it's okay on this case for the additional fantast we chose to move the stock fan to the top slot in the front and put the nock to a fan in the middle simply because that was the easiest layout to use for the mountain hols looking at a chart first only with the 500 d before we getting into the comparative data cv temperature in our tortured test averaged fifty six point seven degrees celsius over ambient removing the front panel lowered to this thanks to the less obstructed airflow but only by five point six degrees to fifty one point one degrees we've seen much more dramatic shifts with the front panel removals before indicating that there is reasonable airflow through the side venting on this case but also that there's a limited intake anyway given that we're based on one fan the top panel is ventilated so it's possible that the cpu cooler could be drawing some cool air through it even without the front panel removed adding an extra 140 millimeter fan brought CBO temperature down to fifty one point seven degrees within margin of error of the panelists test vertically mounting the GPU resulted in a lower than stock fifty three point six degrees celsius cpu temperature but we've seen this behavior multiple times in the past airflow patterns change and the GPU isn't able to dump heat as efficiently which overall means that there's less warm air next to and below the CPU cooler the radiative heat off the backplate of the GPU is also now more distant from the CPU cooler thus reducing the cpu temperature comparatively for CPU tortured thermals fifty six point seven degrees can't quite compete with the five seventy X's fifty point two degrees but adding the one forty millimeter fan almost gets there the five seventy X has three intake fans but no exhaust and exhaust fans do benefit our CPU cooler a good deal with the stock configuration CB temperature is average to below average around the level of the KL zero seven or even the age 500 P and thus far there's really nothing spectacular about the cooling performance of this case baseline GPU torture temperature average fifty seven point three degrees Celsius taking off the front panel lowered this to fifty two point eight degrees which again isn't that drastic a reduction compared to something like the H five hundred P or some other case that more seriously restricts airflow mounting the GPU vertically raised it to sixty three point two degrees a surprising nobody this was also after accounting for throttling so our frequencies that were lower and our temperature was still higher mounting next to a side panel is never good for GPU air coolers and that goes double for this case there of course are instances where it's okay but those would require spacing between the panel and the GPU not something present in this particular enclosure adding the nock to a fan raise the GPU temperature to sixty point seven degrees which we found attributable to the change in air flow patterns by relocating the higher pressure 120 millimeter fans at the top and installing the nock to a fan more centered on the GPU thus pushing more air over the backplate than previously rather than straight into the face of the card so these numbers do in fact make sense despite the fact that it's slightly higher it's because we changed which fan was where comparatively GPU temperature isn't good there are cases on the chart with absolutely awful thermals that averaged more than 60 degrees but at 57 point three degrees the 500d is still in the company of the pure base 600 and the n1 805 eye both of which we criticized for poor cooling the best way to improve this with an air-cooled GPU would be to add a fan at the bottom of the front panel rather than the top or just fill all three fans lots at which point you've created a 570 X and that posted a GPU temperature of fifty one point three degrees this is practically on the opposite end of the chart at this point and shows that the 570 X which this one is based off of was still a reasonable case and it's really not that different in price either the looks are quite different though like the Mesha phi you'd have to add more fans to make this case better the fire strike extreme test got GPU temperature to about sixty point six degrees Celsius because our 3d mark chart is smaller and doesn't include the always awful vertical GPU numbers that means the 500 D is tied for worst score with an Tek p8 impressive one fan splitting airflow above and below the GPU backplate never works especially well and at least one additional intake fan correctly positioned is a good idea for the 500 D CPU rendering with blender resulted in a CPU temperature of 38 point one degrees Celsius over ambient that's right in the middle of the charge between the H 700 I and the C 700 P the two stock fans are positioned with a bias toward cooling the CPU so although there isn't much airflow through the whole case CV temperatures are acceptable in all of these tests rendering on the GPU the 500d did better comparatively than it did in the fire strike test thirty point five degrees over ambient is still on the warm end of the chart but it's just about equal to the stock match up I see and definitely cooler on the Antec p8 and Corsair spec for the blender test doesn't push the GPU to its complete limits and doesn't strain the CPU like our gaming stand in 3d mark does so it provides an example of temperatures to be expected with a normal production workload as opposed to a gaming workload moving on to noise now the relatively small fan diameter and the front panel air gaps that are pointed directly towards the user make the 500d a bit louder than it could be but there are still only two fans they don't make as much noise as something like the 570 X 37.4 DBA isn't again as loud as the 570 X was with three front intake fans at full speed and instead falls closer to the 270 R and the spec for both from Corsair which respectively had two and one 120 millimeter stock fans case manufacturers have to balance quality and quantity of stock fans of the final price of the product the best case scenario for enthusiasts is a case that includes a small number of high quality fans so that the stock fans don't need to be replaced and the user can shop for their own additional fans that's only good if it's reflected in the price though the 500d is $30 at less than the 570 X which has more or less the same chassis and an additional fan in a setup that's more beneficial to cooling for our particular case that we're testing today or our configuration anyway so the 500 d would probably look better in value without the reference point of Corsair zone 570 X but the looks are very different if you like all glass the 570 X obviously is a winner over this one if you don't like that look well there's plenty of other options so speaking of other options there are a lot of good cases at $150 this one although not really impressive isn't offensive either it's just it doesn't doesn't do anything really other than change the looks of things there's nothing new about the case they have a lot of good ideas that have been applied to the case but they're not new ideas there are also some kind of weird or nearly bad ideas that we've already gone through in the thermal section so it's it's okay it's just in the middle of everything and there are a lot of good cases at that price so to go over some of them this case is competing with things like the be quiet dark bass 700 the high airflow Silverstone cases like the PM oh one that we liked a lot or the PMO two that we didn't like as much and these examples are less than $150 all of them and they're all pretty good cases that we've liked but they're in the same ballpark the 500d looks nice and performs okay but for its price we'd expect something just better like something something to make it more desirable or to stand out more than its competition the special edition of this case which will be like $100 more or somewhere around there will provide that something specific to stand out for people and that will be done with its curved tempered glass and apparently some extra fans that I think are going to be RGB again though that's $250 so now you're competing with things like the dark Bass Pro 900 the weird cases like the Cougar conquer you're getting into kind of artisan territory or very near it so courses positioned in a fiercely competitive market right now the 100 plus dollar case market has not been this competitive in years and for that this case is going to have a hard time fighting again it's not bad just in terms of build quality it's quite good they've definitely gotten that down for the most part we only really had one build quality defect and that was the panel not quite closing which is minor you're not going to be picking the thing up and moving it a lot so quality wise it's fine they've done some really cool stuff we like like the detachable fan panel it's just that thermally you basically should buy better fans or more fans that we used to go with it and even though if there are more SP 120 so they're fine if you had more of them or run a liquid cooler or something like that that comes with fans which is probably what they're gearing towards but the price should at least reflect it I think their price is high because it's got aluminum brush panels and a lot of tempered glass so yeah you're paying for looks and if that's what you want it's okay but that's more or less what this case boils down to it doesn't excite us it doesn't offend us there are certainly cases that I've done both of those things in the last year this isn't one of them not a bad place to fall on the stack considering the extremes of the offending us category so they haven't gone to that extreme which is I suppose an upside but that's all for this one if you want to read more Patrick's thoughts on this case including more information on the build process Rina is article link to the description below it will contain some of the stuff I've already said and subscribe for more as always you go to patreon.com/scishow and access to helps that directly or go to store gamers Nexus dotnet to pick up one of our graph logo shirts which I think I'm wearing and the store like Aaron's Nexus Don I have slash mod mat to pre-order or backorder one of our next round of mod mats thanks for watching I'll see you all next time critically there's a screw in the top right now to hold them in place you remove the screw you pop it up panel comes off