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
Installation and Cable Routing
I love my Antec P182, but working in that case proved to be a very special kind of hell. If you have a graphics card as long as the Radeon HD 5870 or longer, you pretty much have to remove the top drive cage, which means you're stuck using the bottom cage, which orients the drives in the worst way possible. I have small hands and it was still a nightmare to cable up and install drives. God help me when I have to replace a drive.
The 600T, on the other hand, was freakishly easy to get everything set up in. It helps to have a power supply with modular cabling (and if you're considering spending $160 on a case, you may want to go ahead and step that up too) because it allows you to do the installation in steps.
My first step was installing the motherboard. I already had the heatsink (a Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283) mounted to the board, and popping the I/O shield and then motherboard in proved reasonably easy. Corsair provides enough space above the motherboard proper to route cables, but you can also install a liquid cooling system with dual 120mm fans on the radiator if you are so inclined. Suffice it to say, getting the 8-pin auxiliary power cable routed behind the board and plugged in was about as easy as I could ask.
From there, everything else was just as simple. Pop out two drive panels and slide the optical drives in, and they snap and lock into place. Installing the hard drives was also easy, although if you have a 2.5" SSD like I did you'll have to futz around with trying to pop one of the pins out of the drive tray to get it installed. Installing the SSD was probably the most confused I got during the entire operation; Corsair doesn't include very useful instructions with the case and while most of it is self-explanatory, documentation that's a little more thorough wouldn't hurt.
Where I did run into trouble was in routing cables. While they do route to the back of the tray very nicely and easily, that whole region is going to turn into spaghetti in short order. Corsair includes zip ties, but they aren't reusable like the ties in the back of the P182's tray are. As usual the most egregious offender is the main power cable from the power supply. Unfortunately, while the side panels are flexible and designed to bow a little bit to give you some breathing room, this means that they bow out at the bottom corners when cables are cramped in the back. I imagine a cleaner cabling job could probably be done to alleviate this, but nonetheless just a touch more space in the back really wouldn't have hurt this case.
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kenyee - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
Dustin:I noticed you mentioned you used an SSD and then said the case is quiet. Does it quiet down the track seeking noises of hard drives or fan noises of graphics cards? It looks like a very open case for airflow and open generally means you hear everything going on inside the case :-P
And it doesn't look like the intakes are covered by dust filters as another poster mentioned. Did you ask Corsair why they didn't do that?
Seems like those are the only things missing except maybe a size comparison w/ your P182 case. This sounds like a great case overall except for the filters and positive air pressure...
Dustin Sklavos - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
The removable grates basically fill the role of "dust filters."I have four hard disks in there in addition to the SSD along with a Radeon HD 5870. At this point I'd like to mention that reviews have cited the 5870 as being a little loudish, but I've never had a problem with it. The case masks sound very well, and airflow seems good enough - even with the intake fan blowing through four hard drives and the SSD - to keep the 5870 running very cool so the fan never spins up.
As I mentioned in an earlier comment, I actually tried running two 5870s and there was very little appreciable difference in noise, both at idle and under load.
strikeback03 - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
Maybe I'm blind, but where are the power and reset buttons? They don't appear to be with the ports and fan controller.Also, I personally prefer the front panel stuff to be at the top but facing forward not up, as I have a shelf in my desk above the tower area.
ehpexs - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
You guys should do a review of the Fractal Define R3. It would stack up very well to this case.Mephi5to - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
Rectal Defiler R3 ? :)C'DaleRider - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
"They've moved into Solid State Disks, power supplies, enclosures, and even brought their first gaming headset to market just this year. Each entry has met with some success...."I laughed so hard when I read "met with some success" that coffee came out my nose.
Corsair's entry into power supplies was met with a bit more than "some success", and some people credit Corsair for making enthusiast power supplies (high quality assembly, excellent performance) more affordable. Prior to Corsair's entry into power supplies, you had Antec as the everyman units, uninspiring and many times horrid, or PCP&C and Enermax.....both fine power supply lines but both more expensive than need be. Corsair moved the price point down without sacrificing any performance or quality.
Cannyone - Saturday, December 4, 2010 - link
I bought this case just a few weeks ago. The system I installed in it was an Asus Rampage III Formula with a Core i7 930, and two EVGA GTX-470s in SLI. At first I used a Prolimatech Megahalems cooler, but then switched to a Swiftech H2O-X20 Edge cooler.The Swiftech really helped my CPU Temps. But because I connect two displays, the video cards don't down-clock to 2D mode they just drop down to "low power 3D mode". This meant my #1 card was running at just less than 70°C while Idling at the desktop.
The end result was that the case was neither cool nor quiet.
I tried to upgrade the fans. But without at least one 120mm fan supplying the GPU area with cool air (from the side panel would be ideal), I doubt this case will be able to work with even 1 high powered Nvidia card. I felt forced to reinstall my system in my old HAF 932 case. :(
KaosFaction - Monday, December 6, 2010 - link
Did I miss something, or is this basically a reboxing (slight slight changes) of the Cooler Master Storm Sniper Black?gtech50 - Thursday, March 17, 2011 - link
Quote -"The power supply's cooling is essentially completely cut off from the rest of the system, and there's a vent in the bottom of the case (with a removable filter) for the power supply's fan. This isn't a problem either; the case is built on a raised base that keeps all but the shaggiest of carpeting from clogging up the vent"RAISED BASE???? What raised base?
There is barely 1/8" clearance from the filter to the floor I have cut pile carpeting and it clogs the filter.
I'm returning the case because of this simple overloooked MAJOR design flaw.