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
Inside the 600T
When you pop those side panels off of Corsair's 600T, you find an extremely well thought out internal design that's almost entirely tool-less and extremely spacious.
The motherboard tray is the only part where you can't get away from needing a screwdriver: you're still going to have to screw in the board, but the standoffs come built into the tray, and there's a large cutout for heatsinks that need to be secured on the back of the motherboard. That said, I still found popping the I/O shield and motherboard into the case to be far easier than any other case I've used. Surrounding the motherboard tray are a series of rubber-lined holes used for routing cables behind the tray, and these work fantastically: they keep cables in place, and frankly they just look better than the usual routing holes.
Expansion slot covers are ventilated and secured internally with thumbscrews; I've seen other tool-less implementations that have been more complicated and I have to be honest, this seems like one of those places where you're just better off using screws and individual slot covers. You'll probably want to use your standard Philips head screwdriver to secure these screws, but you can do without in a pinch. Again, there's an eighth slot here that makes doing a multi-GPU setup easier, since you can still use a bottom PCIe slot for a dual-slot GPU. Alternatively, you could use the extra slot for additional USB ports or whatever your particular motherboard might include.
Popping in a power supply is remarkably simple; my 750HX snapped into place securely enough that you could probably get away with not screwing it in on the back of the case. There are adjustable grips on the inside of the case that help hold the PSU in place regardless of size.
When you get to the drive bays, you start to really see some of the more innovative design choices Corsair made with the 600T. The panels covering the 5.25" drive bays don't require any force to pop out; you squeeze the sides inside the case and they come out easily. From there, just push the drive into the bay and a lever-based system locks it into place. Push the lever down and you can eject the drive again. It feels a little bit loose but has proven to be secure enough in practice. You can also screw the drive in on the opposite side, but it's not really necessary.
Below the 5.25" bays are the two internal drive cages that support three drives apiece. These are also completely tool-less. The drive trays snap in and out of the cages easily, and have pins in place on the sides. To install a drive, you just remove a tray, insert the pins into the side of the drive, then flex the other side to snap in the other pair of pins. One of the nicer features about these trays is that they're all designed to accommodate 2.5" drives, too, though this requires you to use screws to mount the drive to the tray. To do it, pop out one of the pins and then screw the drive into place in the tray: no adapters required. The trays are also designed to point the ports on the drives to the back of the case, behind the motherboard tray, for easy cable routing.
Here's where we get really slick: of the two drive cages, the top one can actually be removed and then replaced adjacent to the bottom one. It's a very cool idea for cases that are going to need to support extra-long video cards, although I have to be honest here...I'm not really sure they even make video cards long enough to require you to do that. My stock Radeon HD 5870 still has a heck of a lot of elbow room and I can say with certainty that the 5970 would too.
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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.