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Corsair Obsidian 450D PC Case

2014-03-25
with its factory tuning and data center DNA and Intel 730 series SSD is an amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts let me open this video by saying I've got an email thread that's about a mile long with George from Corsair about this case and I do have a number of complaints about it but his response of well what else can you get at this price that's this easy to build in and has these features is pretty fair the 450d if you don't feel like skipping to the end to hear the conclusion delivers great features at a great price with great airflow and in my opinion very good looks which isn't to say that I'm going to completely let them off the hook but packing material is not the best hard foam I've ever seen but it's not really a concern unless you're having someone else build your system for you and then ship it to you alright so once it's out of the box this is a bit of an unusual look for an obsidian instead of going for a very plain look with simple straight lines Corsair has in my mind done a great job of delivering solid cooling performance and still having it look pretty clean out of the box with the included AF 140 L fans it still maintains a professional front bezel look but because the front design with its removable fan filter is so open throwing some LED fans in there would be a super easy way to give your system some gamer bling I think it's a great balance speaking of great balance the top fan filter is pretty much brilliant they're flexible mesh and magnet solution to dust filtration is inexpensive aesthetically pleasing and convenient the bottom fan filter ain't half bad either it's much easier to remove and replace without being able to see it because it uses a rigid plastic frame and a few magnets around the edges to make it very easy to position now I guess I glossed over the front i/o when I was talking about the front there's nothing too special here 2 USB 3 ports a headphone and microphone jack a recessed reset switch and a large power switch the power and drive activity LEDs are built into the power button the side window is great - a nice large side panel window looks great on these smaller cases as long as cable management inside is good and the 450d is almost as good as other obsidian cases in terms of cable routing options finally at the back we find seven PCI slots some water cooling tubing holes that Corsair has given up even pretending that people use note that they don't even bother including rubber grommets for them anymore and an included 120 millimeter series RAF series fan i graped it George about not putting in eight PCI slots when it really looks like there was room for an additional one and his response here was also pretty fair and that's that no one should be putting four graphics cards in Quad SLI in a mid tower there's just not enough room to cool them adequately unless you do a side intake like on the Vengeance e70 all right George fair point opening up the case is done with four thumb screws at the back there are no real complaints here but I'd love to see Corsair implement the self-retaining side panel screws that NZXT has put on the aged 440 it doesn't cost much and is a great hassle saver for the user now that the case is open the layout will look pretty familiar to anyone who has seen its little ma TX brother the 350 d by comparison the 450 d accepts a full sized ATX motherboard and Corsairs basically just added a three and a half inch / 2 and a half inch drive babe sled to utilize the extra height and move to the super handy spring loaded SSD mounts to the back of the motherboard tray a great move since it frees up space in the front for either a 240 or 280 millimeter radiator speaking of radiators the case can handle rads in up to four spots without any modification an exceptional feat for a case this size by my super precise eyeball measurements it looks like you could do a 280 or 360 in the top a 120 in the back to 240 s in the front and at the bottom all at the same time unreal speaking of radiator support for a case that is so well liquid cooling optimized I feel like the top panel was a bit of a missed opportunity the way that Corsair allows the grommets to be easily repositioned so you can mount a dual 120 millimeter radiator in a variety of places is great for improving compatibility but I would have liked to see the holes offset to the side away from the motherboard to improve compatible leti with thicker radiators and the top eight pin and four pin connectors on motherboards the recently released H 105 actually doesn't fit in this case with this motherboard and this incompatibility was entirely avoidable I understand that the centered holes do look a lot better but the magnetic mesh would have hidden offset holes so guys let me know in the comments if you prefer the look of the 450 D with the mesh or if you prefer the look of the 450 D without the mesh so that will give me a good idea of whether the offset holes would have been okay because if you're going to run it without the mesh you're not going to want those offset holes it looks really weird cable management is a good point for this case there is ample room in the back for the 24 pin and other bulky connectors and the included cables for the front panel actually come pre managed with nice little you know zip ties tied in place so you pretty much don't have to move them but note that I said cable management is a good point for this case and not a great one this is one of two things that made the case feel a little more like a carbide or a graphite than an obsidian to me the back of the motherboard tray has only four cable management loops on it and when they're basically free to add I'd like to see a lot more in addition to that there's no way to cleanly route the front panel audio without crossing over at least a few inches of motherboard down here at the bottom most cases have a little spot in the bottom left for that connector this feels like a bit of an oversight the last thing that's missing is any room in the top aside from the hole for the eight pin connector to route smaller stuff like CPU fan cables usually we see a couple gaps up here to facilitate this but instead we're stuck going between the motherboard another board tray or just routing them across the board the second thing that felt unab Sydney was the three and a half inch drive cage it's tool-less which is great and while I appreciate the flexibility of being able to hang the cage from the top of the five and a quarter inch base or sit it at the bottom it just feels a little bit flimsier than the rest of the case in contrast sharply with the motherboard tray which is very rigid in spite of the large CPU cut out a second cage would also been a nice touch since they're using a modular design that allows you to simply in another one to double your harddrive expansion but if you're targeting a price point then I guess it makes more sense to sell that as an upgrade option rather than charge everyone for a feature that only a handful of people are actually going to use it should be noted that leaving it out also helps this case achieve fantastic airflow over the GPU area without the use of ugly side panel fans so I see why they did it this way one thing that stood out to me was that Corsair includes hilariously few screws in the box basically some fan screws motherboard screws and two and a half inch drive screws pretty much everything else is tooless and while this is another thing that's probably only a concern for system integrators shipping systems around in the 450d I would have liked to see Corsair include some hard drive screws so I have the option to secure things a little bit better if I want to with those few complaints out of the way the conclusion for the 450d is actually pretty positive if you consider it spooling flexibility looks and price you're going to have a hard time finding a better looking bang for your buck and speaking of paying for sex my wife actually built the test rig you're looking at with me looking over her shoulder so for all my complaints about little cable management details an inexperienced builder can still end up with a damn fine-looking system guys like and share this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it and leave a comment on the Linus tech tips forum linked in the video description if you want to discuss this product or you have constructive criticism for me and my team also linked in the video description is our support link with options to buy t-shirts like this one give us a monthly contribution or give us a kickback whenever you buy random junk on Amazon check it out if you enjoy our videos it helps us out a whole bunch oh and as always thank you for watching and don't forget to subscribe
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