Corsair Obsidian 900D Case Review: Think Big, That's Only HALF as Large
by Dustin Sklavos on April 16, 2013 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- Water Cooling
- ATX
- XL-ATX
Conclusion: Highly Priced and Highly Specialized
It should go without saying at this point that Joe Everybuilder isn't going to be interested in spending $349 to cool his single CPU, single GPU, air-cooled build. The Corsair 900D positively dwarfs our full fat testbed and really, it would take serious work to fill up this case anyhow.
My primary concern when reviewing most cases is ultimately how they perform thermally and acoustically, with aesthetics taking a bit of a backseat. If a case is hideous but does its job really well (looking at you, Antec GX700), and the price is right, sacrifices can be made. The 900D is a different beast entirely, though; airflow design and stock performance just aren't part of the equation, and anyone who buys the 900D and then uses it in its stock configuration is someone who has more money than sense. I can tell you that with the pair of closed loop coolers I've installed in my Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 (Swiftech H220 on the CPU and Arctic Accelero Hybrid on the GTX 680), Nanoxia's airflow design and fan control became somewhat less important. Note that this design, coupled with a Noctua fan wherever I could put one, allows my ~$109 case to very effectively cool a 4.6GHz i7-3770K and a GTX 680 overclocked as far as the silicon itself will allow under NVIDIA's voltage spec. I bring all of that up to give you perspective on the 900D and its potential position in your computing life.
.jpg)
The 900D is exceptionally well built, and outside of the expansion slots, it's easy to assemble. At $349 it prices itself right out of contention for the vast majority of users, and the fact that it's an underwhelming choice for air cooling further shrinks its niche. That makes it a strange sort of halo product and while liquid cooling enthusiasts will probably love it, they were already reasonably well served by the 800D. At $49 more it's not unreasonable to just make the jump to the 900D if you were going to buy the 800D in the first place. I do think for the price Corsair could've sucked it up and included the other two drive cages, but I have a hard time sweating the case still shipping with nine cages.
If I'm a bit ambivalent about the 900D, it's for two reasons: one, I had to actually build and move the thing, which wasn't fun, and two, I'm not really sure anyone really needed it. The 800D was already popular and doing well on its own, so Corsair just made a better one. That's fine, but the majority of their case line is going unaddressed. A little birdie told me I'll be seeing something new and exciting from them soon, but they're at the point now where they need to start actually refreshing and improving existing designs. More than that, air cooling has always been a weak point in Corsair's portfolio, and it's something that desperately needs to be addressed.
This is another one of those cases where you already know if you want it or not. Whether or not it's worth the money is subjective; I feel like if I were a liquid cooling enthusiast, the Corsair Obsidian 900D would be pretty close to the holy grail. I'm not sure I'd fork over the cash for it, but in its weird way I don't think the price is actually even part of the discussion. If you do pony up for it and you know what you're planning to do with it, I think you'll be happy with the 900D.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
65 Comments
View All Comments
Subyman - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
I have a 800D and would not purchase something like this again. I really like the case, very well built, and so forth but with boutique manufacturers like Case Labs making thick, aluminum cases that weigh half as much with ridiculous customization, it seems a serious watercooling enthusiast has better choices out there. The 900D looks great and well built, but steel at $349 + 41lbs dry is rough. Believe me, a fully loaded 800D was is ***** to move! No wheel option is a little disappointing as well with something this large.hero1 - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
This. I had absolutely forgotten about Case Labs as of late. And you do have a good point here and I think most people ought to know that they can have better cases for similar price or slightly more.Blindsay04 - Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - link
Case labs makes some quality stuff but their pricing is a lot more. SMH10 is $500 and that is probably the closest to the 900Dpensive69 - Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - link
see? Subyman picked up on the need for wheels...and the case didn't seem to have what i might term
non slip handholds either.
that's where my insurance kicks in.
good god
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
it would require changing the appearance slightly; but to make installing cards easier I'd suggest putting holes in the frame at the proper screw location and extending the side panel to cover them. It worked well in one of the more plebeian cases I've used.I've had trouble with hinged toolless latching mechanisms not being compatible with dual slot GPUs before and am leery about suggesting them for something like this; although with a watercooled card the obstruction might not be an issue.
minijedimaster - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
So they basically just took a Fractal Design XL R2 and modified it, slapped their name on it and called it a day.http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&ca...
santiagoanders - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
The interior is much more similar to the CoolerMaster Cosmos IIJFord047 - Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - link
Which is basically Just an Antec Performance case re-jiggedSabresiberian - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
Not sure why someone would question the "need" for this over the 800D. It's pretty simple:800D - 7 Expansion slots
900D - 10 Expansion slots
The 900D will simply hold a much larger mainboard. The 800D might well be crowding a third graphics card, and a fourth one would be out of the question.
Aikouka - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - link
I already own an 800D, and it's nice to see that they addressed the cable routing shortcomings in that case. It annoys me that I spent $300 on that case to see the side panel bow out because I'm routing a fairly common number of cables behind the case. While the side panel bowing doesn't really hamper you, I have found another issue with it that makes me reconsider ever buying another Corsair case. The other issue is that the 800D is limited in regard to the radiator sizes that it supports. Why is it that Corsair designed the 800D, their previous flagship case, to only support up to a 240mm radiator? If I had to guess, it's probably because Corsair was only selling a 240mm solution at this point (their H100 all-in-one). However, a few months ago, Corsair released a 280mm all-in-one solution called the H110i, which isn't even supported by the 800D!