Gadgetory

welcome to my unboxing and first look at the only true successor to the original enthusiast glass case from Corsair this is the 900 d and it picks up where the 800 d left off the 800 d was at the time revolutionary it made cable management turn into something that everyone could do with its grommeted cable management holes that by now pretty much everybody has copied it was huge and it wasn't afraid to be huge before the 800 d the only cases you could get that were large we're not even really like a lot of the time they weren't even proper like normal cases like they had five and a quarter inch bays that were like weirdly mounted on the side and stuff like that and it was not afraid to let you water cool the 900 e takes everything about the 800 d and just completely amps it up it's like injecting steroids directly into its carotid so there you go for foam we've got a fairly not quite super brittle foam but it's also not a closed cell soft foam but course our compensates by making it extremely thick and as you guys know it is the girth not the length that is the most important thing you've got another inch and a quarter or so right here on the top so let's go ahead and tilt this over so you guys could have a look at what the 900 d looks like inside the case so while the box is huge the 900 d is also huge I'm probably going to need slicks help taking this out of the box so we're going to tip it over and we'll be back in just a moment how big is the 900 d you might ask to which I would reply you could easily fit at least 6 cats inside before they even started to like cause problems so it comes with bubble wrap around it to prevent any kind of or at least my review sample dies I don't know if they all do but this will prevent any random incidental sort of punctures and jabs with this cardboard and this bubble wrap layer here so I'm going to go ahead and pull this off you've got another cardboard layer here which hopefully I can remove I thought I was done with my knife but they've packed it extremely well to ensure that it gets here safely and this is going to be especially important packaging wise course there could not afford to skimp on this case because especially once you actually build a system inside it it is going to be heavy and big so unless it's built extremely solidly and packed extremely well you are going to end up with a damaged computer at the other end of any kind of shipping expedition so we're having some trouble here and we're going to get this wrapping done here got the box out of the way and the unveiling is pretty much complete ain't she a thing of beauty gorgeous enormous window that shows you everything if I mean at the angle you'll actually normally be looking at it from so we're going to go ahead and adjust that right there so it shows you everything from your back radiator presumably your motherboard you're going to see the power supply a little bit but not too much and then you're going to see a little bit of your drive cages here but again not too much of that we're actually going to take a little bit of time to take all of the plastic covers off so there's plastic covers holding things like the the i/o cover in place holding things like the front panel in place as well as protecting things like the side panel window here and little bits of trim like this so we'll be back in a moment again with all that removed so I wanted to show you guys a few things that I noticed when I was taking the plastic off number one is holy crap the system for side panels on this case is cool so I've taken the black plastic off the window you can see it's very very clear very transparent however you still get that thing with all acrylic windows where it does it's very staticky so it tends to collect see the cat hair on it already but that's just kind of life the side panel because it's basically all acrylic does have a bit of flex to it but I'm not super concerned because it still got some weight which is going to help resist any vibration I love the mounting system for the glass just look at this it's like solid screws and just off feels really good I mean even mighty jo7 which is the case that I'm using right now just had like cheesy little plastic fixings on it not very not very great now you don't have to remove the top panel in order to remove the bottom panel here so you just pop this open and it's on a friction hinge here so right there and then over on the other side there's another one just like that that controls this opening up and I wanted to show you guys how Corsair has included all the appropriate little bits of adhesive so that things don't fall off in shipping so they've protected all the corners and then they've protected things like the magnetic fan filters from coming off magnetic fan filters really are the best way to go about this because every other system I've seen I mean the original sort of fan filters in cases were usually screwed on and then some of the later ones came along and they were like latched on or they were slid in or whatever else but check this out I mean this is how hard it is to remove your fan filter yeah take that you throw it under the sink you clean it out you put it back in just like that and the fact that the intake for the case here and the exhaust for the case over there is so easy to get at is extremely convenient now speaking of intake and exhaust you can see all around the edges here there's a gap here as well as over here and all along the bottom that is how that fan is actually getting any air and Corsair thought about this they didn't just sort of willy-nilly you know apply ventilation holes here there's a gap between that piece on the front and these pieces right here where you apply your fan filter that's going to allow for there to be it acts as a bit of a I'll crap the word escapes me shroud thank you shroud that will allow it to actually draw some air in so that's very very smart now I want to take you around to the other side really quick so and there we go that's latched on where I want to show you it's okay I got it it's not actually that much heavier than an 800 d which is nice it does use aluminum support struts in order to keep from just being it's just glue to Christie heavy so there you go if I can move it you can probably move it the one button releases at the back for the top panels here or first I'll show you that functionality where the bottom opens up without the top actually being open so you can get at your drives you can actually upgrade your hard drive if you ran yourself cables down from the motherboard and just kind of kept them here you could upgrade your hard drive without actually even opening up the top panel which is very cool there's another removable fan filter there so these one button releases are great you press them we pull out the side panel and then it comes off this ones bound to be a little bit more solid yeah just because it doesn't have that big acrylic piece on it the way that it latches in up here is very robust very strong I can't imagine that that would break in any sort of real world situation now cable management room at the back this is where the 900 you really shines and that's I mean this is where the 800 D really changed the game because it added enough room for proper cable management that everyone could do without you know origami cabling as voodoo pcs to cause check this out that looks like more than an inch behind the motherboard tray that means you could have a 24 pin ATX cable and something else running back here without running out of room and without having to do that thing where you force the back panel on and you can push on in order to get it to actually close and the funny thing is George the designer for cases for Corsair said to me he showed me his hands he went I have really big hands really thick fingers I designed my cases so I can work in them I'm like yeah okay it sounds about right so on the back you find not only all the cable management grommets you could want which come out at the top for drives or at the top for drives depending on whether you've got an ATX or an e ATX for hptx width board you've got them here for your 24 pin as well as your PCI Express here for more PCI Express as well as cables for the drives of human love this so many cases do this and drives me crazy where they'll have something interfering here between the drives and the motherboard it's like manufactures hello we have to run cables from the motherboard to the drives did you not think of this SATA cables they're not 24 48 inches long a short so there you go thank you Corsair for thinking of this because there's lots of room to coil them up and hide them and keep them on these on these drive cages here so very very nice you've also got plastic clips for holding cables in place and tons of these little anchors I love these 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 these are great because they allow you to without sort of folding things sort of under each other and all that they allow you to take everything route it neatly and then strap it down so that it's not odd so it's not ugly and gross so even even over here check this out 1 2 3 4 just for bringing your 8 pin or your 4 pin up to the motherboard itself speaking of your 8 pin or 4 pin check this out this right here is an extension cable and also an adapter so if you have a motherboard that goes that just has a single 8 pin you can just run this as an extension and then you can tuck this one back here in your ample storage room if you have a motherboard that takes an 8 out of 4 such as a crosshair 5 formula you can plug a single 8 pin into this and plug this into the board itself so very very handy nice big CPU cut out so you're going to have no problem installing CPU coolers that that do require a backplate without removing your motherboard and the motherboard tray itself has a little bit of flex but you come to expect this from motherboard trays that have all this room for cable management as well as the CPU cutout and the cable management cutouts up here and once you actually strap a board to it you're not going to notice any kind of a problem with that so I'm not not too worried about that particular thing nice little rubber grommets in here so that you're not going to see look at these see these noise dampening pads right here Corsair doesn't want this case to make noise so they've actually included kind of a blu-tack mod style thing that'll keep it from having any sort of vibration let's finish up at the back here and then we're going to go or we'll finish up on the outside and then we're going to spend some more time on the inside I apologize guys this is going to be a long video but this is a very important case for the evolution cases in general I want to make sure I'm covering it adequately it's all about cooling so one of the criticisms of the 800 D was that it didn't do air cooling as well as it did water cooling so Corsair has taken all that feedback and opened up every available surface all along the back your extra power supply plate your i/o shield your 120 or 140 millimeter fan and the back as well as the entire top of the case oh what a bottle is all good is all mesh now this mesh has a fine filter on it in addition to the to the cutout metal so it's also got a reinforcement plastic bracket on it there you go so it's going to be nice and strong and I think that's pretty much it for the back and the top we'll get to more about the inside once we're on the inside I just want to leave myself around the case in a logical way so I don't miss anything that's really important to me so up at the top there we go we've got our i/o microphone headphone 2 USB 3 super speed reset button love to see this tucked away swear the cats won't accidentally hit it 4 USB 2.0 ports this is great to see because so many motherboards have anywhere from sort of two to six USB two headers built into the inside and it's like what am I going to plug into this thing you guys none of my cases support well now we have a case that supports it so there you go very nice to see power buttons right here in the middle and then you've got four or five and a quarter inch expansion bays now you might say Oh Linus that's sort of odd because I thought that's what a five and a quarter inch expansion day looks like this is a lot bigger than five and a quarter inches and I would go yes you're right because in order to not lose the integrity of the look of the case well I think I might need to open those from the inside I actually don't remember how these come off from the from the video we did at CES but in order to not compromise the look of the case Corsair decided to widen the five and a quarter inch standard to make it sort of work for them so I'm going to figure out how this comes off because I can't remember all right so we figured it out I could actually get inside the case to work on it which is because that's what I had to do there's little tabs in the back okay well you're going to do is release those with your fingers just pinch those and then the whole thing comes out now you can see this is obviously much larger than a five and a quarter inch device but what Corsair has done is they have because so few people even use five and a quarter inch devices they want it to look clean if you don't install anything and then they've used kind of a stylized oh I might as well show you the tool list installation here you guys so you just peel this up slide the drive in and then let it click into place drives in you can screw it in with a couple screws if you want to too so they've gone with a recessed bezel here that will match your five and a quarter inch device just like that now we pulled off the solid aluminum front piece simply by prying it up from the bottom so you can see there's four four points here that will hold that in place there you go got your nice little Corsair logo on there and the front had a couple more little pieces of tape that we're holding in another very conveniently removable fan filter so Corsair includes not their regular class of fans with this case but their their airflow style sort of modeled after their AF series fans so the entire front comes through this look I mean look at what the thought they've given to this so like oh okay well fans pull air from directly in front of them but they also pull air from the side of directly and from them as well and the whole thing's filtered you can take this thing off clean it and you are good to go so here once I put that in place you can see it draws air here so you can actually if you get a bit of a better angle there you can see from that side how there's lots of room there and then you can also get air from the front here as well now you can replace these fans you can install a triple 120 millimeter radiator up here without much difficulty whatsoever and that is part of what will lead us to the inside of the case where we will start to investigate the water cooling options that are available now speaking of water cooling options the side of the bottom panels here you can actually remove this solid piece slip pointed this out to me simply by removing the eight screws here so that'll leave you with a mesh side on either side or both sides giving you even more access to fresh air for the components that you're keeping inside there now let's go ahead and flip it down to the bottom so we can see if there's anything interesting to see down there or to let go of it here so much so on the bottom no not a whole lot that is interesting down there so there you have it I think it makes a difference that on the older 800 D the bottom had that fan filter for your power supply whereas the 900 D uses a side mounted power supply so it's going to draw its air from the outside of the case here or the outside of the case on the other side rather than from the bottom of the chassis we've included some SATA cables and I guess we'll figure out how those work in a moment but there you go these are the mounts that are going to hold your power supply in place and keep it from putting any unnecessary strain on the back of the chassis itself and then this right here is an additional mounting point for more three and a half inch or two and a half inch hard drive or SSD mounting cages so let's go ahead and close this up again I you know it's interesting because I found myself closing and opening it quite frequently but what's good is I'm able to do it quickly and efficiently because that is how you are going to upgrade your computer you're going to want to just go flip flip open open do do whatever you need to do and then move on you don't want to spend all day every day you're actually working on the thing so harddrive mounting options you've got these little sleds here that are capable of mounting three and a half inch drives to lessly or two and a half inch drives by screwing them in and then it comes with three sleds that each holds three drives so they lips hold on you see if I got that lined up correctly there so we've got three in each one that clip in like that you can see they popped out a little bit and shipping but shouldn't be anything to worry about now you can install you can actually locate their modular for one thing so you can move all your drives to the basement and then you can go ahead and install pumps or radiators or whatever other you know add action figures I've seen those in computers before up here that you want you can take this one and move it up here and you can keep all your drives on the front or some water cooling over here on this side cooling over here on the other side maybe just a small single one 20 mil radiator or you can pull them all out or you can add a full additional two for 15 two and a half inch or three and a half inch drives in the case natively so those will be available from Corsair these are those aluminum pieces that I talked about before those supports and I think that pretty oh yeah mounting right okay so mounting four radiators is awesome so you can do up to a okay here let's let's let's do all the radiators now you can do a quad 120 millimeter radiator across here pull up these drives you can put a power supply here and you can do a dual 120 millimeter radiator on the other side then you can put up to a triple 120 millimeter in the front up to a triple 140 or quad 120 in the top you can do a single 120 or single 140 in the back and I think what I actually missed was this could be a triple 140 or a quad 120 as well so the radiator mounting options you can have up to five radiators in the case without making any modifications to it which is absolutely outstanding motherboard compatibility as I mentioned before is pretty much unparalleled so you can install an ITX board an M ATX board to go down to about here an ATX board which will be this big and then check this out an XL ATX board which can go all the way down from either eight or nine expansion slots here I'm going to give you a bit of a better angle air slick so eight or nine expansion slots remember they've included ten expansion slots so even with a nine expansion slot board you could install a dual slot card in the very very bottom slot and then you can even install an HP TX board which would take out pretty much the entire thing here and would allow you to really make the most of this particular beast chassis I wonder if we've missed anything we did show this in the top here so you can see all those different mounting hole options depending on what you opt for up there let me just go sort of scan through and I'll see if we missed anything so here's our variety of boards that we'd like to try out in the 900 d it does say on the box it's compatible with ITX so I'm obligated to put an ITX board in there let me show you guys what it'll look like if you build a system with a single PCI Express slot and about 1/2 of 80 X or 1/2 of sort of slightly wider than 80 X width on it so that's sort of ridiculous here's what an m-80 X board will look like inside so most people are not going to go micro ATX with a with a system like this but that's your 4 expansion slots and standard width next up we're going to do ATX so this is a crosshair 5 formula this is one of those ones where that that extension cable will come in handy all right so this guy right here is going to look a little something like this so that's 7 expansion slots and standard width so you can see there's tons of room over here for much much wider boards than a standard ATX board now the next one I have is a bit of a hybrid because some boards are labeled as EA TX but what they actually are is slightly wider than ATX so you see here how there's a little bit of extra width to this board that makes it sort of e-atx but it's also wider than normal because there are seven expansion slots but there's a burned one here at the top so this is actually 8 X panshin this is the biggest XL ATX board that I had on hand this is next 79 ud7 from gigabyte and even that doesn't look that big in the 900 d I did miss something on the inside so in here we've got all of our front panel connectors our USB to our HD audio or other more different USB to USB 3 front panel headers as well as three SATA cables so what I noticed is that two of the included triple harddrive cages do not have back planes but one of them does so if you slide that out you can see that that is a toolless installation so you can pre run presumably there's power over there somewhere I think I did see it before you can pre run power to the backplane pre run SATA data to those three drives and you can just take down this thing pop in a drive and you are literally ready to go without any difficulty if you have hot up enabled on your motherboard you actually won't even have to turn off your computer which is very very cool so we're going to put the case back together and do some size comparisons against some other chassis that we have lying around so we're going to start with the kind of case that most normal people would be running and this is a modest sized ATX Tower so this is the nine hundred D Corsair has increased the width compared to a normal computer and they've also dramatically increased the height and the length so I'm going to line them up back-to-back so you can see the sheer size of the 900 d this is a Corsair carbide 300 are significantly narrower go ahead get it from this angle as well slick so I'm going to go ahead and adjust that for you so you can really see you could almost probably fit two of these in here Rumble in terms of the sheer volume so we're going to tuck this one aside for now and I'm going to show you one of our most space efficient computers that we've ever had here at tech tips and this is our shuttle x79 it has a six core 39 60 X 32 gigs of ram a quadrille 4000 and a 10 gigabit network card and you could probably fit anywhere from five to about seven of them inside the volume of the 900 d with that said you obviously can't do a dual socket shuttle so there's a there's an option that you have with the 900 d that you don't have with that here is a Corsair Vengeance e 70 so this is a pretty sukham gaming tower and even this one so with up to dual 140 millimeter radiator in the top single 140 millimeter in the back lots of air cooling I think it supports up to quad fans in the front something like that and this is what it looks like next to the 900 d and we're working our way up to the 800 d next to the 900 d i have to go get one right now though just a second so just for lulz I hold down my rig so this is the silverstone t jo7 next to it or in mind the t seven doesn't look like that out of the box I still haven't put my glass panel window on it or anything like that but there's still like it could sort of three or four inches there that is the difference in height and then a good few inches here look how much wider it is how much wider it stances than the T jo7 which just has five and a quarter and then sort of a border whereas that's pretty much the width of just the Bay covers on the 900 d never minding the huge gap around here for airflow through the front of the case now I'm going to move my system and we are going to show you a couple more size examples including the BitFenix prodigy which is sort of a gaming grade ITX tower with similarly sort of way too many water cooling options but not designed for hptx parts so there you go this also actually has a similar width to the 900 d I'm going to pop it up here for a sec so you can see that the BitFenix prodigy has kind of a wide stance and that's because it actually holds the motherboard in it the flat way as opposed to vertically so I don't know what the 900 these excuses actually I do know what it's excuses the excuses it holds a butt ton of hardware so there you go that's how you could probably fit about 3 prodigies and change in the 900 d and let's wrap up actually here one more practical demonstration of how big the 900 is and you know what it's big but it's efficient I did make fun of the cosmos too a little bit when it was released because I said well this thing is so big but the cosmos too doesn't fit nearly the same caliber of hardware in it that the 900 d does in terms of liquid cooling I couldn't figure out there I couldn't figure out what the cosmos 2 is excuse for being so big was because it didn't fit that much stuff 900 D does we can actually put our shuttle computer right inside it without any difficulty so there you go we can put a couple in no problem there's your dual x79 solution alright so let's wrap up with a size comparison to the classic 800 d so this is slicks personal rig ah there we go alright and that's heavy it's like how do you move this thing around yeah so there's a liquid-cooled 800 d actually I'm going to put it right next to it for size comparison first and then we'll then we'll go so if the 800 D is the biggest case you've ever seen then the 900 d will be bigger and it will be the biggest case you've ever seen because it's definitely definitely taken that crown from the 800 D so it is wider taller and it is deeper and there's all three of those things that holds so much more hardware though coarser hasn't wasted a cubic inch of the space that they've added to the 900 D because to remember the 800 D natively only supports a triple rad in the top a single 140 in the back and you can mount a 140 here but other than that the space isn't nearly as usable as the 900 am personally I don't miss the hot-swap here because I find that the easily accessible opening door down here at the bottom and those hot spot of the will not hop swaps but back planed SATA mounts back there are an equally good option compared to the older system and it doesn't break up the the clean look of the front that the 900 D has so there you have it you guys the new enthusiast champion from Corsair the 900 d I hope you enjoyed this unboxing and first look don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos