Corsair Vengeance C70 Case Review: Going for the Gamers

Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked

Going into overclocked testing after seeing the results from the stock tests didn't leave me with much confidence in the Corsair Vengeance C70. Performance is basically on par with the much quieter Obsidian 550D, while Antec's Eleven Hundred is running away with the crown at as much as $40 cheaper. As you'll see, overclocking didn't treat the C70 much better.

At this point Corsair's own Obsidian 550D is basically running away from the C70 at virtually every metric. I expected at least GPU temperatures to do well with an intake fan sitting right behind the video card, but as a whole the C70 just isn't competitive.

There does seem to be one place where the C70 holds an advantage over the 550D, though: fan speed on the CPU. The 550D has virtually no thermal headroom left on the CPU, while the C70 can probably handle just a little bit more. On the GPU side the situation is flipped, though that could also be chalked up to slightly higher ambient temperatures during testing of the C70.

Under load the C70 winds up being the loudest case we've tested, with even Fractal Design's $40 Core 1000 besting it and generally providing a better performance profile overall. Meanwhile the 550D is able to provide comparable (or better) performance at substantially less noise.