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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ushlak.morante - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Not a bad little case, could be a little smaller for me personally but depends on what you are looking for. I do still think that the TJ-08E manages to do pretty much the same job in a smaller space although it could do with a few of the updates that Corsair has used to bring it more up to date.ezridah - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Nice looking case and nice review. It would be nice to see you review the Fractal Design Arc Mini now. And they also came out with the Arc Midi R2 recently.529th - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
what the ffffffff is in the reflection of the first pic!? LOLtnerb - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Are you going to be doing a review of the HAF XB anytime soon? Definitely interested in a CM open-air approach to microATX that's also portable.Comdrpopnfresh - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
does it come with the bowl of noodles?Jambe - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
It's 41.6 liters? There are dozens of full-ATX mid-towers smaller than that!I would not call this "small". Perhaps in comparison to the absolute largest cases available, but those are outliers (and the vast majority of DIYers don't need that space, anyway).
Rosewill's Line-M mATX case (at 27 liters) might constitute "small" but certainly not anything over 40! Yowza.
Anyway, it certainly seems to be a nice case, and the review and photos were thorough as usual.
Jackie60 - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
If Anandtech are doing cookery reviews could I please see the rating for the hot and sour soup.HisDivineOrder - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
It's telling in your recounting of past Corsair cases you completely forgot the Obsidian 550D.I think when I came into this review I expected the 350D to be the 550D except smaller, so imagine my surprise when it was a 650D but smaller. You state it can be used with the H110, but since you did not test it, I wonder if this is true. Corsair states outright that the H110 will not work with the 550D even though it has the 140mm fans at the top (due mostly to the way motherboard heatsinks are often fitted and where the power cables go in at the top). If only you did more than test air cooling...
I also find it interesting you made allowances for this case to be a "water-cooling focused case" and forgave middling air cooling, but with the 550D where there are tons of ATX options for other cases by Corsair if you want air cooling you demanded "great" air-cooling or bust. Curious. Those priorities seem backwards to me.
I can't help thinking you'd be doing us all a big favor in using this case the way it was intended to be used and throwing a microATX motherboard with two GPU's into this case and giving us a real performance test of its cooling rather than a rather fringe case of someone using a mITX instead.
And I look forward to the now inevitable Obsidian 150D mITX case that should come any month now. At least then your mITX motherboard will FINALLY make sense to me when you use it.
DanNeely - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
IIRC the most recent hardware updates left AT with an mITX board and a full ATX board for case testing.LoneWolf15 - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
Beautiful. My only wish is for one more 5.25" (or a 3.5") external bay, which could be done easily. I'd switch from my Corsair 650D in a heartbeat, but I have a DVD-RW, a 5.25" Lamptron fan controller, and a 3.5" multi-memory card reader, and I'd like to keep all three.