Corsair Obsidian 350D Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on April 25, 2013 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- MicroATX
Assembling the Corsair Obsidian 350D
I'm going to point out that the Corsair Obsidian 350D arrived in my hot little hands less than 24 hours before this review went up. Midnight oil was burned, a housecat was shamefully ignored, a Blue Moon was consumed, and had this enclosure come from any other vendor this review might not be up right now. This will be the 75th case I've reviewed, and I've gotten pretty quick at putting these bad boys together, but that depends heavily on the case itself not having any unusual quirks or hiccups. While the 350D's instruction manual isn't particularly instructional, assembly turned out to be as painless as I've come to expect.
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This is the easiest time I've had installing an I/O shield for the motherboard, and then the motherboard itself was tremendously easy to install simply because Corsair included an alignment stud in the center of the motherboard tray. In the case of the mini-ITX board being used for testing, that meant popping that stud into the top right corner of the board, lining it up with the I/O shield, and then just screwing it in. The case's cables and headers are all long enough to easily connect to the motherboard without leaving too much excess.
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Installing the drives was just as painless. The shields for the 5.25" drive bays pop out by squeezing two wedges inside the bay, and the toolless mechanism used to secure the optical drive does its job well. What I appreciated was attention finally being paid to making 2.5" drive installation toolless. I've seen strides from other vendors towards making this more common, and while the 2.5" plastic segmented drive cage Corsair uses looks a little clunky, it works extremely well. 2.5" drives are inserted from behind the motherboard tray and a plastic wedge holds them in place. It's a surprisingly secure design. 3.5" drives use the same old plastic trays Corsair's been using for a while and if anything, these probably need a minor update. They get the job done, but they're at least a little flimsy.
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I could go on about how easy it was to install the power supply and graphics card and wire everything, but the reality is that everything went swimmingly. The pair of routing holes for the power supply cables worked as well as I'd expected, and Corsair has ultimately made a case somehow even easier to build a system in. I might gripe a little about the slightly cramped quarters behind the motherboard tray, but the hinged side panel goes a long way towards alleviating any frustration that might cause. Honestly, the only hiccup I ran into was that the front intake fan uses a 3-pin connector but the testbed motherboard can't support it, and Corsair didn't include any allowances for that. I wound up having to use a molex adapter, and I do think it would've been prudent of Corsair to include one. Some boards only include headers for a CPU fan and a system fan.
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Worth noting is that the space above the motherboard tray is copious, but if you opt to install a 280mm radiator, it will intrude upon the top 5.25" drive bay. This is unfortunately a sacrifice made in allowing for this compatibility in a case as small as the 350D is. The 350D is about two inches taller than the competing Fractal Design Define Mini (owing to the fifth expansion slot and the radiator headroom), but it's also two inches shallower, and it offers amenities the Define Mini lacks.
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ghm3 - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
I do, I got a 5.25" drive cage to stuff 6 SSDs into my Silverstone TJ08-E.CrimsonFury - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
There are a few options if you are after a smaller mATX tower.Lian-Li do a very small matx tower. 1x optical bay, 7x HDD bays PSU is mounted over the motherboard (does limit tower heatsinks, but fits many mid sized heatsinks)
The Silverstone TJ 08-E is another option, it does still have 2x optical bays, but it mounts the PSU up top instead of leaving radiator space, so its quite a bit shorter in height and depth than than the Corsair 350D. Has a 180mm intake and 120mm exhaust (they also do a variant with 2x120mm intake, but I forget the the model name). Still has room for 1x radiator up front is you sacrifice some of the HDD bays.
Gunbuster - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Does it come with a phantom tea cup like in the main photo?just4U - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Did you guys notice? Even Dustin's wiring looked a little better. Damn Corsair is GOOD! (lol im kidding Dustin GREAT REVIEW!) I think your Bronze award was a little conservative, did you do that because you thought you might have gotten a little biased?Rolphus - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
This looks like a lovely case, but I'd have preferred to see it hit with a lot more thermal load in testing. I have a Silverstone TJ-08 with an i5-2500K (at 4GHz), and 2 GTX 580s in SLI. The case (just about) keeps up with that level of load, but I'd be interested in how well the Corsair does with something similar.scook9 - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Great review! I have been very excited to see more about this case since the 900D came out. What you really need to do is compare this to the Antec Mini P180. I know it is discontinued but it was easily THE mATX case to build a system in back in its day (my server is still in mine as I grew to full ATX and a 700D). I do not even have a need for this case but want to just get one because hahamkygod - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
This is what is considered a Micro ATX case now? Good lord. It's actually a bit taller and wider than my Antec P150 full ATX case. Is the size increase the price you pay for having a case that supports water cooling? If that's the case, I want to see Corsair make some cases that aren't designed with watercooling in mind.antef - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
As I mentioned in the Fractal Design Define Mini review, I completely agree that cases like this should barely be considered "micro"-anything. They could be a lot smaller, and I feel like manufacturers are just afraid to because they think people want bigger everything. Then why even make a MicroATX case? Check out the SilverStone Precision PS07, it's only 14.7" tall, 15.75" deep, and 11.46 lbs. Can hold any size video card, 2 drives without the cage, a ton more with the cage, and plenty of spots for 120mm fans. I don't know why they need to make them any bigger.Jumpman23 - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Does the optical bay include a face plate? It breaks the smoothness of the front view without a face plate to sit flush with the front cover.MadMan007 - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
I like this case, the layout and design decisions seem well-thought out and the front is attractive. It still includes 2 5.25" bays for those of us who use optical drives, for those who don't they allow for a radiator or 3.5" drives.The one shortcoming imo is the limited number of 3.5" bays. The 2.5" bay stack is a neat feature, but since it's completely removable using that space for 3.5" bays (which can obviously hold 2.5" drives as well) would give more options. It would make things very tight near the frint edge of a mATX board but it would still fit. With the low idle power draw of modern systems, using a main PC as file storage and serving makes more sense than it used to. If Corsair came out with an optional 3.5" rack to go where those 2.5" bays are the case would be even more flexible - add one, get 2 more 3.5" bays without blocking the intake fan, add 2 (for 4 drives) for maximum storage.