Corsair Obsidian 550D: Starting to Specialize
by Dustin Sklavos on March 29, 2012 3:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- mid-tower
Assembling the Corsair Obsidian 550D
Despite my misgivings with some of Corsair's design decisions (which could easily be argued as tradeoffs), there's one thing that Corsair's engineers have down pat by now: ease of assembly. I've said before that assembling a Corsair enclosure is like a vacation for me, and the 550D was no exception.
Once again Corsair includes standoffs for the motherboard built right into the tray, although our refreshed testbed's new motherboard is Micro-ATX and thus required me to add a couple of standoffs. That said, installing the board was relatively painless, and I appreciated being able to plug the exhaust fan's 3-pin header directly into the motherboard.
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Speaking in all honesty, it's nigh impossible to find any real point in the assembly that's worth mentioning as a standout, at least in terms of difficulty. Corsair has, over time, gradually assuaged every remaining issue I've had with building systems in their cases. The drive sleds now allow me to install a 2.5" drive without removing any of the pins, and a 3.5" drive snaps in perfectly neatly. Popping out the 5.25" drive bay cover was a little bit of a struggle, but barely worth mentioning.
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Depending on your perspective, you could argue that cabling is a bit easier with the 550D. The recessed area surrounding the motherboard tray proper only further highlights how well Corsair's engineers guide assembly within their enclosures; it's essentially a subtle suggestion that says "cables go here." And while I'm concerned about the long term use of the side panel release mechanism, it must be said that getting that rear panel back on to the 550D doesn't require the same kind of elbow grease some other cases do: there's enough space to fit your cables back here without too much trouble.
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The biggest problem I had in assembly was getting the AUX 12V line to connect, but that's not necessarily something you can fault Corsair for so much as a problem that's par for the course when dealing with this kind of ATX enclosure design. The AUX 12V line on our new motherboard is lower than it was on the old one, and as a result the modular cable that was included with our new testbed power supply couldn't make the journey properly. Thankfully SilverStone uses the same connects for all of their modular power supplies (a convenience Corsair should take to heart) and once I found a longer cable, everything was fine.
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Thus, as I said, there's very little to report in the way of assembly. Corsair somehow continues to get the placement of the cable routing holes in the motherboard tray just right, and I can continue to recommend cases from the brand as a whole as being excellent choices for consumers just learning how to build their own machines.
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SilthDraeth - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Actually, in following up, I express my ignorance for not reading the review first. It appears they built a standardized test bed for cases, and this is the first case to be tested with the new test bed.Also, going on the assumption that review hardware doesn't sit around indefinitely, I would gather that future case reviews will be done with the standard test, as I mentioned in my above post.
haelio - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
I'm sure there must have been more than this case around in Anandtech HQ :) Adding even one other case for comparison would improve this review immensely.I hope this review's graphs are updated when other cases are used with this test bed.
JarredWalton - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
"AnandTech HQ" is where each of us happens to live; I'm in WA, Dustin's in CA, Anand is in NC, Ryan is in OR, Johan is in Belgium, and Brian is in AZ, just to name a few. I'm sure Dustin does have more than one case at his home/apartment, but going back to "re-review" some cases means he basically doubles (triples) the workload for an article just for the sake of graphs. The next review should have two cases listed, and once we have half a dozen or so reviewed this won't be much of a problem.Just for the record, we originally tried to come up with a good testbed so that we wouldn't have to change it after just one year, but first attempts sometimes fall short. So now we have a new testbed that should last Dustin several more years. :-)
MrMaestro - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
That's fair enough, Jarred, it's just that the next case review probably aren't going to be all that relevant. I don't really care how this case compares to your average value or gaming case, I want to know how it compares to its competition - the Antec SOLO II, Fractal Define R3, Cooler Master Silencio and the Silverstone FT02, to name a few. Dustin even mentions that the FT02 is better in the conclusion. Ok, it's not direct competition, since the FT02 is $100 more expensive, but I would like to know if that $100 is worth it.I guess I'm a little disappointed because I'm tossing up quiet cases for my next build, and this review just isn't all that helpful to me. I don't mean to bitch and moan, as the writers such as yourself are doing a great job, and I get to enjoy it for nothing. I also don't envy Dustin's job of repeatedly building and tearing down systems for case reviews. I was looking forward to this review and it was a little disappointing is all.
Cheers.
Dustin Sklavos - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
You can draw a rough comparison between the stats for this enclosure and our previous reviews by adding ~23C to the thermals. Noise levels aren't so fortunate.The reason I suggest the FT02 as a superior option is because I'm actually using an FT02 for my personal desktop. Overclocked i7-990X and two GTX 580s sandwiched together in SLI; with an aftermarket fan controller, the FT02 is actually able to keep all of that both cool and remarkably silent under load. Subjectively, the FT02 is a hair louder at idle than the 550D, but DEFINITELY quieter under load.
mtoma - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
Disappointment I wouldn't call it: after all it is tested a new model of quiet computer case (and the enthusiasts know they aren't to many models to chose from).The fact that we don't have any reference to say ... Antec P280, is unfortunate, but let's not forget that vibration problems are important too (not only noise and thermals), and if there is a chance that to occur in Corsair.... I'm sorry.
Not last, we should remember that changing the testing methodology is a good thing, is a progress. We shouldn't blame progress, and we shouldn't blame a reviewer before reading an article.
kevith - Saturday, March 31, 2012 - link
Hi Jarred.Would it be possible to do a sort of "here-we-are" article on the structure and people of Anandtech?
We all check in almost every day to read the articles by the well-known signatures, but we don't know how you look - apart from Anand - we don know what your "labs" look like, where you're located or how you coordinate the "mag" etc. etc.
Will you share that with us?
gordo453 - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
on the top of the second page you say 500D instead of 550D8steve8 - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
full size ATX cases seem utterly irrelevent now days...I love anandtech, but i wish they spent more of their case-reviewing energy on smaller, more modern designs.
with mobos like the Asus Z77-I Deluxe for those who can make due with 2 dimm slots, and countless high end micro atx mobos with no relevent concessions for their smaller size, i find it dubious to think full size ATX is required outside of very rare cases where you need a large number of pcie cards.
JCheng - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
If Amazon's "Most Popular" sorting is any indication, full size ATX is alive and well, as 16 of the top 20 cases are ATX or bigger.