Gadgetory

hey guys and welcome back to another Harmonix review we have an obsidian on our hands today so quite a bit of hype on this one because it stands in the lowest price bracket between the entire obsidian lineup you guys are looking at the Corsair 350d priced at 110 dollars now from the initial glance it is sized as a usual mid tower but unfortunately this is a micro ATX case the aesthetics of course are extremely elegant it's basically a miniature version of the 900 d a very solid construction and of course that beautiful tented side window brushed aluminum front panel and the built in case feed that really brings it all together into one attractive package now for the front panel we have power and reset buttons chrome plated audio jacks and 2 USB 3 ports moving down we have 2 5 in the quarter inch drive base and notice the panel is solid without any ventilation so your fans will have to work extra hard pulling air in from the outside openings behind the cover we find a dual dust filter with an included 140 millimeter intake fan now also notice the extra ventilation cutouts on the frame to allow a bit more air penetration now at the back we have a second fan for exhaust and five PCI slots now this is a micro ATX case after all and of course a remove dust filter underneath your power supply a dual fans can be installed on top with included rubber grommets to absorb any vibration especially if you are installing a radiator but also something to keep in mind is the clearance for that 8 pin CPU cable probably best if you route it first prior to mounting the radiator as it does block both top rubber grommets now moving on taking off the side panel the case internals look a little different from what we usually see from Corsair we still get a toolless five and a quarter inch mount now they've also added a dedicated SSD cage with the usual hard drive cage at the bottom the SSD cage can simply be removed if you don't need it but it can also be repositioned right above the hard drive cage for example if you want to have all your SATA cables sort of concentrated at the same spot instead of you routing them to the SSD cage and its default position now let's take a closer look at the SSD cage these are individual brackets attached with three clips on each side so prepare to be patient if you want to remove one of them but here we have three brackets so technically you can populate all of them but you might have trouble connecting them with the usual l-shaped SATA cables and that's why coarser includes the Miller bracket to provide additional spacing now the 3.5 inch brackets are pretty standard also tooless approach and includes mounting holes for SSDs just in case that three above is not enough now coming around the back we get an oversized CPU opening nobody should complain about the swapping CPU coolers anymore with plenty of rubber grommets and of course plenty of room for any type of cable mess now given both the cages are removable a second dual radiator can be installed at the front this of course means sacrificing the default storage options but for many enthusiasts there is always a solution now with the radiator and the set of fans installed this leaves 12 and a half inches of clearance for your GPU so I thicker radiators are definitely not out of the question and the one thing to keep in mind though is when the bottom hard drive cage is removed the motherboard tray loses some of its stability now it's nothing major but I thought I should point it out now let's take a look at an almost finished assembly if you ever worked with any coarser case you'd appreciate the experience the Obsidian manages to clean up extremely well basically without any effort but when the build looks so professional and clean you come to realize that it's not just a black box that you're working with it's really an experience in a really joy to work with so in summary the Obsidian 350d is stylish and elegant has great water cooling options of course if you are willing to sacrifice on the storage we have great cable management and there is absolutely no issues in the hardware department now while I personally love the simple look at the front panel you're obviously sacrificing on airflow and I would love to see some ventilation integrated into it to keep up with this elegant design while still giving us a little bit extra air for penetration and this only being a micro ATX chassis it's still a little steep to pay at such a high price but even from the very beginning of the Obsidian line these cases have not been budget oriented but instead have always been regarded as sort of these luxury series so the new Corsair 350 is breaking the lowest price point in the entire lineup and definitely going to find the customers who want that obsidian experience without taking out a second mortgage and we're giving it the hardware canucks damn going to work so thanks guys for watching and we'll see you in the next one