Corsair Obsidian 900D Case Review: Think Big, That's Only HALF as Large

Noise and Thermal Testing

As I mentioned in the introduction, doing our standard noise and thermal testing on the Corsair Obsidian 900D is primarily an academic affair. When you're dealing with a liquid cooling system, optimal airflow design becomes slightly less important. This isn't an air cooling case the way, say, a SilverStone FT02 might be.

Ambient temperature was 21C during testing.

In its stock configuration, the 900D is closer to the middle of the road. This isn't a tremendous surprise; the stock fans are about as basic as a $349 case is going to get.

Because the 900D doesn't include a fan controller, the fans included push the case's bare minimum noise level to 33.6dB.

Overclocking the system should produce fairly similar results.

Again, the 900D produces...acceptable results as an air cooling case.

Noise continues to be an issue due both to the lack of a fan controller and the lack of any acoustic padding in the enclosure itself. While we're not judging the 900D on the terms it's meant to be judged by here, I do think omitting noise dampening material may have been a poor decision on Corsair's part.

Up until this point drive thermals have been fairly poor, but please note that even under the worst circumstances we're still talking about being 10-15C below spec for these drives at least. They're still running cool, it's just not the aggressive over-cooling a lot of enthusiast cases do.

That said, stock air cooling continues to be fairly underwhelming. This is one place where the competing Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra does have an edge: it includes a stock air cooling design that's pretty aggressive and effective.

Despite the lack of a fan controller, under our most stressful test the 900D is able to run quieter than any of the other cases we've reviewed since adding the "full fat" testbed.