Corsair Obsidian 250D Case Review
by E. Fylladitakis on January 21, 2014 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- Mini ITX
- Case
Final Words
Corsair says, "if you want to build a Mini ITX system without sacrificing expansion, flexibility, or performance, the Obsidian Series 250D is your answer". Although that may be the case, the Obsidian 250D does sacrifice one thing: compactness. The volume of the case is by no means small, meaning that the Obsidian 250D is not meant to be a small system to be hidden away. As a matter of fact, it would be more accurate to call the Obsidian 250D a mini version of the Carbide 540 Air. The large volume and cubic design also make the Obsidian 250D a not so friendly case for frequent LAN party attenders, as it is inconvenient to carry around, regardless of its lightweight construction.
When compared to Mini-ITX cases designed with compactness in mind, for living rooms and narrow spaces, the volume difference is vast. For example, the Obsidian 250D requires four times more volume than the Silverstone Milo ML05, a case designed for HTPC builds (0.028 vs 0.007 cubic meters). The Obsidian 250D however is not a case designed for HTPC builds or for anyone seeking to build a system smaller than the size of an average shoebox.
Corsair created the Obsidian 250D for enthusiasts who want to create a fully featured, powerful gaming system in compact dimensions. As such, the Obsidian 250D feels perfectly balanced. The two 2.5" slots for SSDs allow the use of either a single drive or a fast RAID array and up to two 3.5" HDD slots provide for high capacity drives and are more than enough for most users -- not to mention very few Mini-ITX motherboards have more than four SATA connectors anyway. (Do not forget that the optical drive, if installed, will need one SATA connector as well.) There is also enough space to house a powerful GFX card and room to install liquid cooling solutions; these are what the vast majority of enthusiasts will ever ask for.
However, we do not feel that the Corsair Obsidian 250D is for gamers and enthusiasts alone. As it is an aesthetically appealing product and selling for a fair price, it can easily attract the attention of typical home users as well. Home users require a balance between a good appearance, silent operation, some expandability and good value for money, the combination of which can be easily used to describe the Obsidian 250D. Especially considering that modern Mini-ITX motherboards come with just about everything onboard, very few home users will require any expansion cards. A typical Mini-ITX board paired with a mainstream CPU (or with an integrated CPU/APU), a couple of HDDs for storage, a single SSD for the OS and perhaps a good GFX card are more than enough to please most home users and casual gamers, all of which can easily fit inside the Obsidian 250D.
While designing the Obsidian 250D, Corsair made some very good and some not so good selections. The slow, narrow bladed fans are one of the very good selections. Narrow blades tend to be noisier at high RPM and reduce the static pressure of a fan, but on the other hand they make no audible difference at low RPM and have greater free-delivery CFM ratings. Case fans are almost entirely unobstructed and typically perform better with high free-flow CFM ratings, while static pressure ratings are unimportant. Filling the case with cable tie mounting points also was a very good idea, as they really do help with the cable management in such a design. The opening beneath the motherboard not only is practical but also helpful to overclockers, even though that may not have been one of the original intentions.
Moving to the other side of the coin, installing USB 3.0 only front panel ports without providing an adapter for USB 2.0 motherboard headers is a bad call, as very few Mini-ITX motherboards have a USB 3.0 header. An adapter will be required by most users, especially those who will go with value and mainstream range motherboards, in order to convert the front USB 3.0 ports to USB 2.0 ports. Optional improvements could be the modification of the optical drive support frame, allowing it to be repurposed if no optical drive is installed rather than making it entirely useless.
To summarize, the Obsidian 250D is a well-made, versatile and fairly priced Mini-ITX high performance case. Its main drawback is that it is not really "mini"; the cubic case is small but hardly less conspicuous than small tower cases. Nevertheless, it can fit very powerful components within relatively compact proportions. Enthusiasts can even go with a full liquid cooled system, using a liquid cooler on the CPU and mount the radiator on the side of the case and another liquid cooler on the GPU (with the aid of NZXT's newly released Kraken G10 bracket, for example) and mount the radiator to the front of the case. For those that want to build a compact and silent yet fully featured and powerful PC, the Obsidian 250D is a fine choice.
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Death666Angel - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
"it can also backfire if the user is far too negligent"You can say that about every case. I've seen enough people coming to forums saying that their 1 year old PC suddenly freezes or has terrible performance or is super loud. Some time late we find out the CPU and/or GPU throttle and it is mostly the case of the the coolers being clogged by dust and debris. In my opinion, it is far easier to see and remove dust from filters than it is from the coolers themselves. So I'd still give this one a better grade than most other cases (note: many Silverstone ones have positive air pressure with filter designs which helps this a lot!).
E.Fyll - Thursday, January 23, 2014 - link
That's true. However, the clearance between the side panel filter and the graphics card fans is but a few mm in this case. Other cases could end up with clogged filters and yet, even if the air could not easily enter/exit the case, there would be room for air circulation. If the side panel filter of the Corsair 250D gets clogged however, I fear that the card will "suffocate", there is just not enough clearance for it to continue sucking air from the side of the card.Hrel - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
Still prefer the Fractal Design Node 304faster - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
Dimensions 350 mm ×277 mm ×290 mm(D × W × H)I could go convert this to inches, but it would be nice if the author did it for me.
Slomo4shO - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
Welcome E! Thank you for the review. I would like to see a write up on the Cooler master Elite 110 as well in the near future :)bobbozzo - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
Try a CPL (polarized, rotatable, filter), and rotate it until the glare (mostly) disappears.And/or move lights around.
Bob
bobbozzo - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
Hi,I'm all for a consistent thermal load for repeatability, etc., but I worry that the noise levels will be misleading.
e.g. imagine 2 cases with similar fans in similar locations and similar airflow (direction, position, and CFM)...
with no component fans, they might sound about the same, but if case A has extensive noise dampening internally, and case B has none, then in the real-world, the components in case A would be harder to hear, resulting in a quieter system.
Perhaps your testing should be expanded to include some noise sources to simulate CPU and VidCard coolers (and maybe liquid cooling pumps).
The PSU fan is another possible source of noise; some cases (e.g. FD Node 304) now have the PSU mounted in the middle, so a noisy PSU might be quieter in such a case.
Thanks!
E.Fyll - Thursday, January 23, 2014 - link
Good thinking bobbozzo,Indeed, a case which has sound insulation will most likely result to lower noise levels than a case which has not (even though that is not always the case). However, I fear that currently I can only assess the noise level of the stock case and still end up with comparable results. You see, the sound pressure level, the position of the sound source, its frequency and several other factors are in play here. You could even use two configurations which generate similar acoustic pressure and yet end up with different results for each of them. Even if I do use some equipment to simulate the sound of a system, the results can vary depending on the configuration of the sound sources. For example, the liquid cooling pump of kit A could be reading less dB(A) than that of kit B during an unobstructed test, yet the sound wave could be at far higher frequency (the annoying whine that some kits make is such a wave) and the results would end up being significantly different if they were installed inside a case, depending on the case's size (echo), materials (rebound), the position of the pump and the insulation. Also, results can vary if there is difference between the sources of sound. For example, if the rest of the system remains the same and just a single fan becomes louder, it does not mean that the test results will just change scale, different cases will react differently.
However, I do consider it a very good idea and I will see what I can do about it. At the very least, I could perform a test with some additional noise sources, just as a basic reference.
Thank you for the advice. :)
just4U - Thursday, January 23, 2014 - link
Dustin not doing cases anymore? :( Hope he's still with Anandtech. Anyway, great first review there E. Would be nice if you could snag a modular PSU with ribbon cables for these case reviews. Their easy to work with and show what many of us might do in one of the builds.. Corsair should send you one! Or CoolerMaster.. It's free advertising for them after all :DJohnMD1022 - Thursday, January 23, 2014 - link
How about posting dimensions and weight in English as well as metric?I shouldn't need a calculator to read the review.