Gadgetory

Corsair today is launching two new cases the $180 570 X crystal with tempered glass paneling and RGB LED fans on a multi-function controller and the 270 R a mid tower for $70 or 60 without the window this review contains thermal benchmarking at various rpms DBA noise level testing and our new ambient case time metric alongside the usual use of insulation and quality review and as for both cases before I get into that this coverage is brought to you by a.m. these are X 470 video card which we've declared to be the best price performance value in the less than $200 video card market - the link in the description below lands to a couple of our x4 70s and speaking of AMD Corsair has adopted their naming scheme I know hi everyone's made that joke but seriously they have the 460 X that we spoke about at PAX now there's the 570 X and there's a 270 are those are the new cases and for the run-through we're starting with the Corsair Radeon 570 X which is a count that would probably confuse someone next year when the 570 exists in this custom animation that gamers Nexus made we're showing them explosion of the 570 X's tooling and paneling the left right and front center panels are all made of tempered glass measuring four millimeters thick all attached to the chassis structure with four thumb screws per panel gaps in the paneling make for an interesting visual decision exposing the underlying structure and relying on about a 0.6 inch gap on the sides of the front intake for breathing for the fans put that to the test in the thermal benchmark that small space is compensated for in theory with 3 120 millimeter RGB fans in the front which we tested and found to max out at around 1500 to 1600 rpm each fan has two cables one route to the rear side hub the other route to the motherboard directly the motherboard three pin connector provides the power for the motor while the four pin connector to the hub provides communication with yet another hub this one actually is more an SP RGB controller and then three more cables bridge this controller with the front panel buttons providing a handful of color speeds and modes that are manually toggle through three buttons on the front or on the back side of the case in this regard the RGB fans are weaker than some of the immediate competition thermal takes new rain fans although sort of playing to the clumsy software are more configurable than what you'll get with the coarser SP RGB fans and the same is true for n ZX T's fans the air fans they just have more options through software but we'd be shocked of course they weren't working on a similar solution already to Corsairs credits they are one of the only vendors shipping with the RGB fans installed in a case in this class anyway NZXT and thermal takes are both presently aftermarket solutions the 570 X's Corsairs effort to attack both current case trends in one go tempered glass and RGB lights and in some ways the LEDs feel a little bit unnecessary but I suppose they're what sells today the extra controllers and LEDs adds a cost obviously and the case would be perfectly suitable with just the glass at a price reduction regardless let's talk ease of installation the enclosure uses a split-level motherboard tray which is something I haven't talked about since probably the NZXT H series cases and this allows you to theoretically more easily route the 8 pin EPS power cables it's got a couple of cutouts on the top actually it's sort of one long cutout because the tray basically goes up and then over and in the sort of main spot where you find an EPS connector back left corner there's a large cutout the smaller parts don't really fit the cables that I had which consequently are actually from a Corsair power supply you could split the 8 pin and a half into two four pins and wiggle it through so it's it's an area where an extra 1 millimeter or even half a millimeter of extra depth in that hole would allow for the cable to fit through completely without issue and it is a small gripe but at this point it is one of the things that Corsair could improve on installation of the board is easy though it's a larger case with a lot of room and that means plenty of working area but the PSU shroud isn't removable the 270 arm does however have a front cover that prevents cables from sneaking into visibility and the 570 X doesn't really prevent the cables from slipping out into the case where you can see them the 570 X has a brilliant SSD installation system and it's actually my favorite feature of the case and the best SSD installation I've seen it yet no screws are required it's a spring-loaded trap door that locks the SSD into place quick and painless and impossible to screw the 270 are like v5 70 X also mounts its SSD slides to the rear side of the motherboard tray but uses a more traditional set of screws to hold it all in place and then the expansion slot screws are a little annoying to access in these cases they're not a straight shot and could be fixed by cutting out some of the material on the left side of the frame or by exposing the screws through the back of the case even Rosewell gets this right with the Cullinan or more appropriately their supplier Jones boat gets a right NZXT also gets this right both solutions unlike coursers make it easy to deal with larger video cards like Emma sized gaming X again not a huge deal but also it is these small things that count at this point because most of the big stuff was done right and has been done right on these sort of name-brand cases for quite some time now cable management on each case is pretty similar by which I mean largely unimaginative the five 70 X is the only one that's a bit different it has a cable management shroud on the back side of the case that would be the right side with the glass panel that trout is secured by two thumb screws it hides in theory the 24 pin and any other cables that snake up the middle channel of the case and out into the motherboard area and it's a huge pain in the ass to use that killed Hegeman shroud so I it's there's not quite enough depth there to accommodate a for example braided or sleeved set of cables like Corsair zone 24 pin sleeved cables that we have with the Corsair RM whatever power supply we use for case testing it just barely fits that so that is a bit of a problem I think that could be done better it took two people to screw that thing back down because the cables barely fit in there with the whole bundle all tied up and if I were working on it alone I would have just left the thing out because it was not perfect so NZXT I think has Corsair beat on this front and cable management you'll hear me talk about that again in a moment but at least it's an attempt Corsair starting to try and do something new with cable management I just don't think that was the right thing for this particular case something much simpler like the plastic cable clamps on NZXT s340 elite or velcro on the fantex cases would be more accommodating to thicker configurations when working with cables that sort of stack atop each other and it'd be a bit less intricate in terms of the manufacturing in this case that's a good thing besides the sleeves cables look good and you're probably going to have sleeves cables if you're building in a $180 enclosure with a glass panel on the right side of course there may have NZXT routinely defeated in cooling performance again we'll see that soon but NZXT does rank in with cable management from the s 340 onward that said we do like Corsairs added cable pass throughs on the 270 r4 it's PCIe headers this is something that we asked for on the 600 C and it does allow direct access to the GPU so good on them for adding that we finally updated our case testing platform from the ancient 35 70 K bench to the first bench that gamers axe is officially built as a standalone component bench solution so we have a new one it's detailed in the article link to the description below along with all the methodology if you want to read about what components were used coolers all that stuff it is down there in the link and the fact that we're moving to a new case bench does mean that all previous results are not comparable to these so you can't look at previous results and compare CPU or GPU thermals with the ones from this system because they are completely different parts in this case we've also slightly overclocked the 6700 K by about 10% in terms of the other methodology items that you should know if you haven't seen these videos before we measure ambient temperature in the test environment with two thermocouples one it both ours k-type thermocouple as they attach to a thermocouple reader they log every second that we use a 264 to monitor the CPU temperature every second and then we use a DES also for the GPU temperature with GPZ for validation and run some automated tests in the background that completely self executes so there's no chance for human error and then when all that data is collected we create a delta value so you get your delta T over ambient and that's what tells us because ambient can fluctuate from second second it gives us a good look at case performance when accounting for ambient one other thing to note our methodology is accurate to a point of plus or minus 0.5 Celsius and again complete testing method in the description below let's start with the CPU temperatures the 570 X at 1550 ish rpm is unsurprisingly the best cooled enclosure on the newly assembled KS bench and that's because we've only got the cases that you see here which are largely competitors in the tempered-glass arena or at least the large window side panel arena it's large and it's got three intake fans the 570 X and that positions at the top these charts with its max fan rpm 450 point two Celsius delta T over ambient or about 2.6 idle dropping the 570 axis fan speed to 1050 rpm increases our temperature by nearly 2 Celsius load but the noise benefit is mostly worth it here the temperature gain strictly looking at the CPU is not significant to the CPUs performance but it is a significant factor when considering GPU performance moving on to Corsair 60 to $70 case the 270 are at 1300 rpm max fan speed produces a fifty two point eight C load temperature for the CPU 270 are only has two fans one in the front one in the rear and uses the most basic intake exhaust setup that has existed for ages and rpm change to roughly 1050 increases our temperature by about to see again and on GX ESS 340 elites is considerably worse than the 570 X when both are at their max fan RPMs this isn't necessarily significant for the CPU but as I've said that will prove useful to look at when considering GP boosts performance look at that in a moment - regardless the CPU temperature is about 50 5.8 Celsius at load resultant of NZXT T's decision to use strictly exhaust fans in the top and the rear of the s 340 elite they're doing this for dust reasons but it's really not good for thermal reasons Roseville's Cullinan isn't much better and that's with for fans but not all fans are made equal obviously in rows wells are more suffocated in the front of the case than the others but then there's the in win 303 which we tested with its stock configuration that is to say 0 fans with our new test bench it's overclocked and our axial fan GPU rather than the radial blower fan the in wind 303 heats up rapidly and incinerates components without any of its intake fans present because it ships with none and that's what we tested the CPU is hitting 100 C GPU thermal throttles at 81 C and when looking at non Delta values the case is obviously best paired up with a fan or two if you purchase it so when considering the price seventy to seventy-five dollars you've got to count the price of two fans moving on to GPU temperatures we see at the top row as well as Cullinan leverages its rear exhaust fan to help dispense some of the heat that collects around the back plate of the game in Ex this brings the Cullen Enza temps down to 49.1 nine Celsius showing the advantage of a dual fan axial cooling solution in a standard ATX case our previous case bench used a blower fan and reference cooler which really suffered in some scenarios but it was also useful in others like small boxes we use firm mark for these burn ins which abuses the VRMs to generate significant heat this test approach means that it is important for cases to be able to dissipate the heat emission that radiates off of the back of the PCB which an exhaust fan supports that's what you're seeing here anyway with the fixed GPU fan speed and firm are burning the VRMs while prime95 is going on we see a forty nine Celsius delta T for the Cullinan five seventy x the corsair case that were reviewing is about 51 c 270 are also reviewing is at about 52 C and the S 340 elite is at about 54 C we're seeing a three Celsius Delta between the 570 X at 1550 and 1050 rpm at about 21 to 22 Celsius roughly for ambient temperatures and you'll get an idea of the GP diode temperature in a cool house where at your own if you want a more accurate measurement our next chart is ambient case temperature we decided to add this chart after running extreme burnin scenarios on the EVGA FTW cards which we'll be publishing this week in those tests we found that an increase in ambient temperature of around 40 Celsius had a significant impact on the vrm cooling in a way that wasn't reflected with a 22 Celsius open air temperature to this end we've learned that ambient case temperature not just diode temperatures are important to the cooling of components which can only be measured by direct thermocouples and not by software again like the V RMS or vram the v so Dax blows the s 340 elites away with a 10 Celsius difference in case ambient temperature at least where we measure it and as we've learned with EVGA that's a significant difference efficiency loss and thermal Headroom limitations on the card come into play at this point to 7-yard does well the Cullinan is okay but it's still suffocated a bit by the intake and we position our case ambient probe just for notes about three inches from that intake fan in the front so that is between the cpu GPU fan and the case fans is sort of triangulated between the three of them that's also a hot spot for the s through 40 elite which will soon be reviewing in a separate video moving on to noise briefly these tests are taken with decibel meter at 20 inches from the front of the case the noise floor of the room is about 26 DBA and we take a delta to get our numbers on this chart keep in mind that decibels are logarithmic so the Delta noise is not calculated the same way as temperatures it's not subtractive these tests are conducted with the GPU fan at 50% CPU fan at 1,100 rpm which is the speed it uses for all our tests and the 270 are at 10:50 rpm is the quietest thanks to its usage of only two fans with one stuck behind the front panel that eats noise s340 elite is next and about equal to the 270 are when it's two fans are also at ten fifty rpm we then move to the 570 X at 1050 see a 35 DBA output pretty similar to the first two and Roseville's Cullinan and it's for fans at 36 DBA thanks to a low rpm that's followed by V 270 our 1300 rpm or 36.6 DBA s 340 elite runs louder at 1300 rpm and part of that is because both of its fans are directly against the top and rear panels and they're more exposed to the outside in that way they're also just a bit louder at 38.1 DBA the 570 X at 1550 rpm is nearly a perceptual 2 X increase in volume from the 270 are at 10:50 rpm but it's still manageable for reference the average phone's text tone is about 80 decibels for max volume based on our Luce tests there you have it and conversation normal conversation at about 3 feet is some around 65 decibels let's start the conclusion with the 270 our this is the easier case to discuss 270 are at $60 price point for a non windowed variant is one of the easiest pickups at its price $70 alternative starts to enter into competition with the launch shredder to NZXT s340 the cooler master master box and the fractal defined s the n1 303 sort of counts but you'd have to buy a few fans that instantly puts the 303 close to the 400 C in price we like the 270 are even at $70 where the comp it's tougher it's a good solution 270 our cools adequately on all fronts and is relatively quiet even at its higher rpms there's a good chance that your components will be louder anyway and it's also easy to build in which is one of the most important things with a cheap case other than the small gripes with expansion slot screws NZXT does a better job with cable management and it's $70 s 314 $100 340 elite then both of these but Corsairs case does better with cooling so to each their own advantages and then for the harder one to review the 570 X I've not I'm not sure what to think of it really from an aesthetic standpoint I don't really stick to testing and data it's a lot easier for me to work with but this is the kind of thing where you got to look at it and decide for yourself I've asked several people what they think I have heard from Andrew the man behind the camera that sort of looks like a modern building construction style which yet sort of does we've heard I've heard two opinions on the LEDs they are unnecessary and they are necessary and personally it does sort of look like coarser just was like let's slap a bunch of glass to a frame and that's what they did but you know if that looks good or not is up to you not up to me so I'll leave that part to you guys as far as the performance the noise the temperatures are all more than adequate for the 570 X and they're fine on the 270 are really no big complaints there the dark bass 900 B quiets case comes to mind that's sort of a direct competitor at least in price this the cheaper one anyway $200 ish and then you could also look at course there's older 760 t if you don't like the tempered or the glass on all sides and you'd rather have something like an acrylic or polycarbonate then those large full window options that are more typical in their design would be a good thing to consider at $160 rather than 180 for the glass thermal takes P 3 and P 5 worth looking at in a similar price range if you want something wall-mounted something a bit unique and there plenty of other options out there so plenty to work with the 570 X is pretty easy to build in same with a 270 are the 270 are I think is the easier one to recommend here because it is a decent deal and as far as the 570 X your deal with a couple of controllers one of them's a dumb quote/unquote dumb controller which is what handles your RGB functions your modes for the fans and the speeds for the fans the first unit we received had issues with lighting not really working actually none of the modes worked but the replacement controller did resolve those issues and Corsair assures me that they've never seen this before which of course we hear all the time but in this case I do actually kind of believe that because I looked around and I couldn't find anything so I think that was a one-off issue I wouldn't really worry about that too much and obviously if it is an issue for some reason they should replace it under normal warranty but when it does work it's okay if you don't want software to control your fans I guess that's the way to do it so as always article for more if you want more it's linked in the description below subscribe for more coverage we have plenty this week EP J's cards being a major item to talk about and patreon link the postal video to help side directly I'll see you all next time you pre-k is testing it just barely fits that so