Gadgetory

all righty so I hope you're excited about this one we've got our hands on the Corsair obsidian 800 D chassis which may be up for case of the year there has been a ton of hype about this unit as it is Corsairs first case on the market and they've been known to produce some real top-quality products the company says to develop this case they've got feedback from enthusiasts and consumers and basically styled the case around what we wanted and they obviously missed a few suggestions as there's no mini-fridge now with that said the case is not cheap it rings in at a whopping 299 dollars so the question is is it worth it well let's take a look we take our usual look at the dimensions the majority of the case is constructed out of a thick steel and as you may be able to see it has a matte black sort of powder coat finish throughout the entire case the front panel is a bit different and it's made of a brushed black aluminum so it is a little bit of a fingerprint magnet but the two finishes go really well together the case itself is enormous it's 24 inches high 24 inches in length and 9 inches wide it's not gonna fit in your little computer cubby just a quick little warning to those who actually purchase the case we used a few of these cases and found that the sticky front plastic protection will actually rip off a part of the painted Corsair logo at the bottom so if you're doing it be very careful at the front hidden behind a small panel we have four USB ports audio and microphone jacks along with a firewire connection and a reset switch then on the left there is a power button and activity LEDs the case has five external drive bays and at the bottom we have the best feature of the case hot swappable drive trays the front holds for hot swappable sleds which are easy to remove and to install the drives however these racks are not screwless so keep your tools handy Coursera's also added an extra tidbit here the front door can be swapped from either side sort of depending on which way your case is gonna sit it takes all of a few seconds to switch over and it's really handy we have a window at the side of the case and you'll notice a lack of rivets or screws on the outside so it looks really flushed with the rest of the side panel jumping to the back we have two buttons which will release the side panels plenty of venting and holes for water cooling there's also a hundred forty millimeter exhaust fan seven PCI slots and a vent underneath those slots and then we have our bottom mounted power supply there is also venting along the gap in the back panel for more airflow the 800 D is super easy to get into there's no fiddling around with silly thumb screws you push the button and pull off the side that easy once you get inside the first thing you notice is that the case is black everything is black and the metal has the same matte tone as the outside you'll even notice that the fans and the fan cables and headers are black it keeps everything uniform and it really enhances the look the case is separated into three major chambers for the purpose of air flow the bottom is the first end has plenty of room for extended power supplies such as say the Corsair 1000 watt plus other things like say a water cooling pump or small radiator and then at the front there is a second area for hard drives the bottom rack can fit to 3.5 inch drives as well as a hundred and twenty millimeter fan on the outside and then above is the hot swappable enclosure and another 140 millimeter fan now Chris Harris concluded these three covers which are used to keep the chambers air flow contained is recommended that you keep them on when the computer is operational the case holds five five and a quarter inch ROM bays each using a screwless lock system the third area is for the meet of the case the motherboard area on the bottom panel we have a hundred and forty millimeter fan which pushes air up as well as more tubing holes in case you have water cooling components underneath now the cables will have no trouble getting to the motherboard thanks to these rubber grommets that you see surrounding the motherboard area everything is run up the back of the case and out through the tray what Chris air is doing is forcing users to clean up their wiring and provide a great method for doing so at the back we have a CPU backplate cover which opens up a rather large opening and the bottom has a removable cover as well if you want to free up some room underneath the 800 D is designed to be simple and easy to wire yet still look amazing the chamber and grommet system had the potential to be an absolute disaster really but Corsair overlooked nothing they provided plenty of room with perfect spacing so that no one is going to be caught with problems moving to our install our full sized ATX board looks rather small inside this enormous beast the case supports M ATX ATX and E ATX motherboards which all of the grommets are perfectly spaced for every form factor as you can see even with this super quick build that we did the system looks impeccable we did nothing special just wired it up the easiest way possible and it looks like something that should have taken hours the front panel removes with little effort via a few internal clips you'll need to take it off to install external drives and the two bottom hard drives the drives fit in from the front and use screwless rails to slide into position as we looked at earlier there are four hot swappable drive bays these are easy to get in and out but the hard drives do require screws to be secured they also support 2.5 inch SSDs now in order to hook up the hot swappable modules a Corsair has included a special power cable and for black SATA wires in the accessories these wire cleanly through the back of the case and then a cover can be installed over top to hide them while there are only seven expansion slots there's an extra vent at the bottom which acts as a perfect sauce point for a bottom mounted video card and there's a good inch below it for better airflow for the card now probably one of the biggest attractions to the courser 800 d is that it is literally unmatched in water cooling potential with such a spacious interior you're gonna run out of things to put in it before you run out of space one of the best features of this is the ability to mount up to a triple 120 mil rad inside the case there is a ton of room between the board and the three fan spaces at the top I mean you could not only mount the red inside but also the fans now we mentioned the cooling zones in the case earlier but let's take a look at how the airflow should work at the bottom the power supply basically keeps itself cool and 140 millimeter fan in the divider will pull air from underneath and into up into zone 3 now the second zone at the front has fans mounted on the side not much good when side panels on but put the covers over top and air should be pulled up from the bottom and then push through the hard drive cages there are no fans or venting at the front of the case so the entire basis of the thermal design relies solely on getting fresh air from underneath just make sure that the area is relatively clear and not blocking any intake ports already and that wraps up our look at the Corsair obsidian 800 d for their first venture into the case market this thing is amazing it has Corsairs quality and ingenuity written all over it they've included everything you always wish the case would have and a few things you'd never even thought of it has a great design that appeals to a lot of users and the quality is awesome and cable management inside the case is awesome the grommet system and separate bottom zones work perfectly and keep everything clean and you don't have to be a master tailor to really make it look good and to top it off they've included some awesome features like integrated hot swappable drive bays and the ability to mount large internal radiators overall this case is 100% awesome oh yeah and there's no screwless drive trays oh yeah but we'll forgive them and for the first time in a video review we will be giving out the coveted Hardware Canucks damn good award hope you enjoyed our looked at the Corsair obsidian 800 D don't forget to subscribe to receive updates and check out our next video review