Corsair Obsidian 450D Review

Today I get to review the Corsair Obsidian 450D the latest mid-tower offering from Corsair in its famous Obsidian series. I've already reviewed the gigantic super tower Obsidian 900D and this is the smaller version of the same to put it right.
It looks elegant, built sturdily and is priced so competitively at just under Rs 10000 that you might be its new purchaser. The specs of the 450D are as follows:

In my methodical manner we'll start the review in the following way so you can skip to any portion you deem fit for your preferences just in case you don't want to read the whole review.

The Packing
Inside and Out the Obsidian 450D
Testing: Load tests and Noise Levels
To Buy or not to buy?

The Packing

The Obsidian 450D is packed in the standard fashion with styrofoam layers both on top and at the bottom contained in a durable enough cardboard box that can endure marginal punishments offered by our Indian road transits. I got mine in one piece with zero scratches on the transparent side panel which is a very good sign.

So if you live in any area of India you can order this cabinet without worrying about the integrity of the product that you'll receive. This is what is very common from Corsair prodcuts as they pack their hardware quite well.

Also it includes a standard manual for the cabinet, a warranty card and four zip ties along with ample of screws for your SSDs etc. A noticeable point is that you get the HDD cage separately and not installed inside the cabinet. This feature is excellent considering that the drive cage can fall out of place and cause damage to the product during any bumpy rides.

Inside and Out the Obsidian 450D

Inside: Hidden surprises

Inside the Obsidian 450D is all black coated and well built. It comes with a rear 120mm fan and two front 120mm fans pre-installed along with two cages for 5.24' optical drives and a cage for installing three 2.3'/3.5' storage drives.

The signature Obsidian feature of a removable back plate for replacing the CPU cooler behind the motherboard is present and four rubber grommets for cable management make it a full fledged cabinet in this range.
The drive cage is located at the bottom and can accommodate another cage of identical size sold separately by Corsair to give you six storage drives in total.
A noticeable feature on the Obsidian 450D is that you can mount two SSDs at the rear area of the motherboard not only utilizing the chamber once left barren but also give you more space in the front. This is a feature that I've only seen in the Obsidian 450D and it makes it worth-fully stand out of the crowd.

What I didn't like was that a graphics card of virtually any length can fit in the first PCI Express slot of the motherboard but it would be wise to stick with cards shorter than 260mm (10.1 in) for the other slots -- unless the drive cage is removed, in which case any card will fit.
In short the Pros for the inside are:

Durable material with a very clean finish and no sharp edges.

Slots for rear mounting 2.5' SSD.

Removable dust filters in the front, top and bottom.
Optimized for air cooling.

PSU of longer lengths can be installed provided a 140mm fan is not used at the bottom.

The cons:

GPU length is limited during dual or tri SLI/CrossFire.

Cable routing options are not available for fan cables.

Outside: Obsidian like the name

The outside is just as the name suggest a plain monolithic design signature of this Corsair series. On top you have a removable dust filter and the front fascia has an in-built dust filter that comes of as a single unit for cleaning purposes.

On the side you have a transparent side panel which is held in place with thumb screws, I didn't' like this as the 900D had push button mechanism for the same. So considering this of the same family and its not a very expensive feature it could've been included in the 450D as-well.
On the back you have outlets for water radiator that are not rubber but hard metal pop outs increasing the noise levels a bit but then this cabinet was never made to be acoustic friendly.
The front has two USB 3.0 ports and a headphone & mic port along with a reset and power button.

The pros:

Beautiful and elegant design meeting.

All aluminum front panel.
Well balanced on four legs so no unnecessary vibrations.

The cons:

The side panel is a bit flimsy but not too bad.

Only two USB 3.0 ports when the Cooler Master 690 II offers four at the same price in India.

Testing: Load tests and Noise Levels

The test was conducted for 1.5 hours at 27° room temperatures at maximum load running FurMark benchmark in stock configuration. The parts used were:

Intel i7 4770K
Nvidia GTX 970 4GB DDR5
Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD
Corsair CS650M 650Watt PSU

The following results were observed for both temperatures and noise levels.

Due to the excessive ventilation and good stock cooling fans, the thermal performance of the Corsair Obsidian 450D is great for a mid-tower case. As there is virtually no way for the warm air to get trapped inside the Obsidian 450D, even the stock cooling options are sufficient to handle a massive thermal load.

This is a very impressive and not to mention very quite levels for any mid-tower cabinet. Thus, the Corsair Obsidian 450D passes with flying colors.

To buy or not to buy?

The Obsidian 450D is a normal sized mid-tower case designed to deliver flexibility and cooling for a reasonable retail price of just Rs 10000.
Considering the variety of cooling options that may be applied and the additional flexibility that the removable drive cage offers, the Obsidian 450D does very well in terms of versatility, within the boundaries of a mid-tower design of course.
So if you want a cabinet with durability, style, elegance and most of all performance than the Corsair Obsidian 450D is your pick.
Considering all the above points I give the Obsidian 450D a 8/10

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Sunday, 15 March 2015