Corsair Graphite Series 600T: Cool and Quiet
by Dustin Sklavos on November 26, 2010 2:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- 600T
The 600T Externally
A jaunt around the externals of the Corsair Graphite Series 600T reveals something a little more curvaceous than we've come to expect from modern enclosures. Outside of the Cooler Master Cosmos the 600T seems to take at least one or two design cues from (as good a place as any), most cases tend to have sharp angles and very few curves. The 600T on the other hand features rounded edges around most of the design. By the same token, while most cases tend to be shades of black or silver, the 600T employs a gunmetal coloring that suits it well.
We'll start from the front and work our way around. The 600T features four external 5.25" bays but surprisingly no 3.5"; it's safe to assume Corsair figures you can always adapt a front panel card reader (or your ancient floppy drive) to fit in a 5.25" bay. The entire front of the case is ventilated, and the panel in front of the massive 200mm intake fan pops off, allowing you to clean the grate and dust out of the fan. That 200mm fan (and its brother in the top of the case) is the source of some consternation in other reviews: it's quiet, but it doesn't seem to move that much air, and I know some reviewers found the bright white LED lighting a little obnoxious. That's definitely going to be a matter of taste.
When we crawl up the front to the top of the case, we see one of the major progressions in modern cases: the I/O, power, and reset buttons are at the top front of the 600T. It's a smart move since most of us tend to keep our cases on the floor these days. Corsair offers a healthy selection of I/O here: a generous four USB 2.0 ports, microphone and headphone jacks, a 6-pin Firewire port, and something of a rarity right now: a USB 3.0 port. That USB 3.0 port doesn't use the USB 3.0 header that's been showing up on some recent motherboards, though; it's powered by an extension cable that routs to the back of the case and plugs into the motherboard's I/O cluster. This isn't the most elegant solution in the world, but it gets the job done and it's flexible enough that you can always just plug it into a rear USB 2.0 port if your board doesn't support 3.0 and get a fifth front port. If I had one complaint about the I/O cluster, though, it's the inclusion of Firewire but not eSATA. I use both but if I had to make a choice for the average user, I'd err on the side of eSATA.
Parked in the middle of all these ports is the 600T's integrated fan controller. If you've read any other reviews of the 600T, allow me to reiterate what they said: this thing just doesn't seem to do that much. If you plug in all of the fans in the case (the controller is actually completely independent of the case fans and you can choose to avoid using it entirely), you will find that the difference between the lowest and highest settings is like night and later that night. You'll only hear the difference in a quiet room, and as you'll see later, the highest setting doesn't appreciably improve cooling performance.
Speaking of which, the top of the case has a second removable grate covering the second 200mm fan, this one an exhaust. Again, this grate is easy to remove but also fairly secure.
The rear of the case reveals the exhaust fan, a more standard 120mm affair, along with two important distinctions. First, Corsair outfits the case with eight expansion slots instead of seven. It's a small but noteworthy inclusion that makes the case well-suited to multi-GPU systems. Second is the increasingly common bottom-mounted power supply. The power supply's cooling is essentially completely cut off from the rest of the system, and there's a vent in the bottom of the case (with a removable filter) for the power supply's fan. This isn't a problem either; the case is built on a raised base that keeps all but the shaggiest of carpeting from clogging up the vent.
Finally on the sides we have one of my favorite features of the 600T: as you'll find when we check out the internals, the 600T is a largely tool-less affair, and the side panels are very secure but use latches that pop them right off. It's a nice change of pace from having to slide the side panel back on and then secure it, even with thumbscrews, to the back. These panels make getting into and out of the 600T an absolute breeze.
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philosofa - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
As I have nothing better to do.. ;)- Anandtech is a site that seems to draw its reviewers primarily from, and is geared in large part towards, the US audience.
- England is not a sovereign nation, the country is called the United Kingdom, or Britain. - If you need help locating this nation on a map you could ask your grandparents :P
- Britain officially measures in the metric system, with the exclusion of distances, which are denoted in miles (aka a 'funnny' measurement). There is the odd exception (e.g. heights are still often given in feet colloquially), but if Anandtech were a British site, you'd be finding the measurements in metric.
killerclick - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
They should also have fan diameters in Imperial.Folterknecht - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
I don't have to ask my (grand)parents where to find GB on a map. On 27th of june this year we sent them back to their islands :-)But I remember an event back in the late 1990s - an international spacemission to mars failed, because some idiots were unable to use standart measurements.
As a website that deals with electronics and not corn prices in Iowa, additional specification in metric system for all people interestet isn't to much to ask?!
philosofa - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
I believe as at the 27th of November you're also planning to send other immigrants back to their homelands due to German multiculturalism having "failed, utterly failed"* ? I think you'll find that the match you were referring to was the England team, not GB if we're being pedantic (ok I'm being desperate with the last comment, good game and well won Deutschland, England was utterly outclassed) .The mission failed because the scientists -mixed- imperial and metric measurements, which is also arguably a good case for not ever using both lol. However troll physics aside I have to agree given the presumably large international readership of Anandtech it would be very sensible to at least have metric, I just think it's unfair to get self-righteous about it as it's an American site and we can all look it up easily.
*Chancellor Merkel
vol7ron - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
I don't get why any fan has a manual fan speed this day in age. Do the mobos not have enough inputs?Fan noise should never be a factor when it comes to cooling, you should set a temperature and have the processing units decide what needs to be done in order to keep things at that temperature.
I think if people want fan controls, they should look at case add-ons that fit into pci slots or drive bays.
Naennon - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
i really like the 600Tperfect cable management and it is HUGE! for a midi tower case
the included fancontrol can control 4 fans from 10 to 12V
it's not silent at all.. so i've used some 7V adapter to keep it silent
you can take a look at a 600T used for my rig
http://www.sysprofile.de/id86892
that case provides a lot of cooling options
the front fan can take the phobya 200mm radiator
the top fan can handle a dual 120 radiator in cooperation with 2 x 120 fans or with some modding
you can put that 200mm fan outside the case but within the top cage
and you can use another 200mm radiator
this is a dual 200mm radiator watercooling!!! nearly the same performance as two 360 radiators will do!
finally this case is great and i love it :)
sorry for the crowd-english! :D
Phoenixlight - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
This is certainly not a cool case, if you actually compare it to other cases it sucks at cooling:http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2010/09/23/...
Dustin Sklavos - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
You'd better tell mine that, then, because it's running nice and frosty.Phoenixlight - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
Well you can see the results for yourself in the link I posted, if you've replace the stock fans and use LN2 then that's something different.erple2 - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
The problem is that for Dustin's review, he evaluated the results that he saw, not what some other (random) review site may or may not have seen. I have no reason to believe that Dustin is lying, so I stand by Dustin's comments above.I'm sure that you can cobble together a more expensive rig that has better cooling characteristics, with custom fans, and additional pieces. However, at the end of the day, this review was about the stock 600T case. Dustin showed what the temperatures were, plain and simple. It would have been nice to compare the temps directly with the P182 in the review, but other than that, the temperatures all look fine.