Corsair Obsidian 550D: Starting to Specialize
by Dustin Sklavos on March 29, 2012 3:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- mid-tower
Assembling the Corsair Obsidian 550D
Despite my misgivings with some of Corsair's design decisions (which could easily be argued as tradeoffs), there's one thing that Corsair's engineers have down pat by now: ease of assembly. I've said before that assembling a Corsair enclosure is like a vacation for me, and the 550D was no exception.
Once again Corsair includes standoffs for the motherboard built right into the tray, although our refreshed testbed's new motherboard is Micro-ATX and thus required me to add a couple of standoffs. That said, installing the board was relatively painless, and I appreciated being able to plug the exhaust fan's 3-pin header directly into the motherboard.
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Speaking in all honesty, it's nigh impossible to find any real point in the assembly that's worth mentioning as a standout, at least in terms of difficulty. Corsair has, over time, gradually assuaged every remaining issue I've had with building systems in their cases. The drive sleds now allow me to install a 2.5" drive without removing any of the pins, and a 3.5" drive snaps in perfectly neatly. Popping out the 5.25" drive bay cover was a little bit of a struggle, but barely worth mentioning.
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Depending on your perspective, you could argue that cabling is a bit easier with the 550D. The recessed area surrounding the motherboard tray proper only further highlights how well Corsair's engineers guide assembly within their enclosures; it's essentially a subtle suggestion that says "cables go here." And while I'm concerned about the long term use of the side panel release mechanism, it must be said that getting that rear panel back on to the 550D doesn't require the same kind of elbow grease some other cases do: there's enough space to fit your cables back here without too much trouble.
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The biggest problem I had in assembly was getting the AUX 12V line to connect, but that's not necessarily something you can fault Corsair for so much as a problem that's par for the course when dealing with this kind of ATX enclosure design. The AUX 12V line on our new motherboard is lower than it was on the old one, and as a result the modular cable that was included with our new testbed power supply couldn't make the journey properly. Thankfully SilverStone uses the same connects for all of their modular power supplies (a convenience Corsair should take to heart) and once I found a longer cable, everything was fine.
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Thus, as I said, there's very little to report in the way of assembly. Corsair somehow continues to get the placement of the cable routing holes in the motherboard tray just right, and I can continue to recommend cases from the brand as a whole as being excellent choices for consumers just learning how to build their own machines.
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Nje - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
The side panel can also fit a 200mm fan, would be interesting to see if it is possible to fit a 200mm fan and a NH-D14..stratosrally - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
I have SLI'd GTX580s and a Corsair H60 with push/pull 120mm fans in my Scout. It is a noise machine - and that is with a custom solid side window - no vents or fans on it. I added a second 140mm intake in the 5.25"bay area under my single ODD so there are 2 front 140mm intakes, 1 top 140mm exhaust, and the 2x120mm push/pull rear =exhaust.I'd really like to try this case, the only change from as AT tested would be add an additional 120mm bottom fan next to the PSU, and keep my push/pull on the rear exhaust. I'd want to leave the solid side and top panels installed to keep noise at a minimum.
I wonder if I'd see a temp rise? My Scout is just crammed full, it has 1 SSD and 2 HDD and an audio card.
jimmyzaas - Saturday, March 31, 2012 - link
I like everything about this case except for the Front IO/power button position. If you have something plugged in to the USB port, like a usb cable for your cellphone or a usb thumb drive, you won't be able to open the door to access your optical drive or other 5.25" devices without first unplugging your device. This is just stupid IMHO.Many cases out there got this simple thing right by placing IO and buttons on TOP of the case. Why do you have to be special and put it in some ugly color-mismatched rectangular cutout in front of the case that feeds through a hole in the front door?
Sure you can remove the front door completely but why would you want to go that route? If I wanted something that looks like a Silverstone RV03, I would have bought that. I'm getting this case for the minimalistic look with the door in tact.
Death666Angel - Sunday, April 1, 2012 - link
It is, as you correctly denote in the graphs, "Degrees Celsius". Which is not "C" but rather "°C". But since you are dealing with deltas here, it would be much simpler to just use "Kelvin", "K", as most people do. :-)Thanks for making the switch to deltas though! :D
1ceTr0n - Sunday, April 1, 2012 - link
But you honestly do the worst case reviews with the worst reviewer possiblyhelvetio - Monday, April 2, 2012 - link
I just built a new system with this case and I really like it. The door can open to both sides, but the clips that allow this to happen are a bit delicate and I already broke one. Fortunately two spares are included.Since I keep the PC on the desk, it is important to me that the front ports and buttons are on the front, not on the top.
The PC is very quiet, even to my hypersensitive ears, the loudest part of the build as an evga GTX 460 but the sound proofing further lowers its noise.
Mosab - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
1- From what I have seen the GC is Zotac not ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP.2- (GPU thermals are at the 90C) that is toooooo much for the GTX 560 Ti. I have GTX560Ti and I think that 90C is extreme even for over clocked one
cyberguyz - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
They sink in the motherboard pan appproximately 1/4". If you are using a mATX board like the one in this article, you are fine, but if you have a full size board like an ASUS Maximus IV Extreme Z that has that lovely bank of 'lay down' SATA ports right at the edge of the motherboard, get set to break out a hammer and do some remodelling of that case.You see that raised area surrounding the motherboard pan area? It is just high enough that it blocks access the bottom-most sata ports on these motherboards. You just can't get a SATA connector into them. In short, unless you want to ding up your case to fit that really expensive full size motherboard with SATA connectors facing to the edge, I would suggest steering away from any of the Corsair Obsidian, Carbide and possibly the Graphite series cases.
As you can guess, this is from bitter experience after buying a Carbide 500R, getting it home and being faced with this conundrum.
jmunjr - Friday, April 16, 2021 - link
"but I also feel like there are large parts of it just waiting to develop issues with vibration in the future."8 years after building my system in this case it is as quiet and noise free as it was on day 1. Never an issue and never a vibration. This is the best case I have ever owned by far.