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
An enclosure built from the ground up for custom liquid cooling loops is actually a fairly rarefied thing. Why wouldn't it be? Building a custom loop is expensive and time consuming, which would make that type of enclosure the very definition of niche. Yet Corsair has come forward with the Obsidian 900D for one big reason: to fill that niche.
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And "big" is definitely the operative word. Riding high on their liquid cooling legacy with the popular Obsidian 800D, Corsair has developed a positively massive enclosure that's designed essentially to hold the most powerful desktop machine you can conceive of while providing ample space to mount radiators and all the accoutrements of liquid cooling.
Before we get too much further into this review, I want to be absolutely clear about how the Obsidian 900D is being evaluated, because it's a very different beast from most cases. It superficially looks and is built like an overgrown ATX case, but at an MSRP of $349 it's about as premium as it gets. When you see the way Corsair designed it, you'll be able to tell like I did that it's destined for much more than a garden variety build.
What that also means is that while I have to put it through our conventional testing, that conventional testing is going to be primarily academic. Unfortunately it's much harder to tell how good an enclosure will be at its job when that job will vary from person to person in much more significant ways than just choosing which air cooler and graphics cards to use. What you're going to want to pay attention to are the feature set, ease of assembly, and overall design, and how they're going to suit your purposes. That's assuming you're in the market for a specialized case like this, and a lot of you won't be.
| Corsair Obsidian 900D Specifications | ||
| Motherboard Form Factor | Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX, E-ATX, XL-ATX, HPTX | |
| Drive Bays | External | 4x 5.25" |
| Internal | 9x 3.5"/2.5" (support for two additional cages for up to 15x 3.5"/2.5") | |
| Cooling | Front | 3x 120mm intake fans (1x additional internal 120mm fan mount behind drive cage) |
| Rear | 1x 140mm exhaust fan | |
| Top | 4x 120mm fan mounts (supports 3x 140mm) | |
| Side | 8x 120mm internal fan mounts (four per side, PSU blocks two of your choice) | |
| Bottom | - | |
| Expansion Slots | 10 | |
| I/O Port | 4x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, 1x Headphone, 1x Mic | |
| Power Supply Size | ATX | |
| Clearances | HSF | 170mm |
| PSU | 280mm | |
| GPU | 500mm | |
| Dimensions |
25.6" x 9.9" x 27.2" 649.6mm x 252mm x 691.6mm |
|
| Weight | 41 lbs. / 18.6 kg | |
| Special Features |
USB 3.0 via internal header Multiple removable drive cages Secondary power supply bay Removable filters on all fan intakes |
|
| Price | $349 | |
Corsair's press materials highlight the fact that the case is designed for liquid cooling, but you've probably figured that out given how much I've repeated it. What you're going to want to know now are the radiator clearances, and they're a doozy.
The top fan mounts have a 110mm clearance from the roof of the case to the top of the motherboard and you can intrude on the top 5.25" bay. Unfortunately in the front of the case, there's a slight spacing between the topmost 120mm fan and the two bottom ones, so that essentially means you can only install a single 240mm radiator; there does appear to be space to install a single 140mm radiator and fan instead if you're so inclined. The back of the case supports a single 140mm radiator in the exhaust fan slot. Corsair keeps the other bulk of radiator potential in the bottom of the enclosure, where you can theoretically install a 480mm radiator on one side and a 240mm radiator on the other, with 110mm of radiator clearance to the PSU. Note that installing a radiator in the bottom chamber does mean sacrificing those drive cages.
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Ubercake - Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - link
Looks a little smaller than my Thermaltake Spedo. I do like it though.Even without water, it's really easy to work in a case this large.
Ubercake - Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - link
It's actually bigger front to back, but not as tall.Ubercake - Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - link
Dimensions are actually bigger all the way around on the 900D. It just doesn't look that way. The spedo has 2 rear 120s. I wish more newer cases had these.truprecht - Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - link
That's not a computer case, that's furniture.nleksan - Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - link
I have been water cooling for a long time, and I have owned a lot of "water cooling cases", some of which were good, a few of which are truly great, but the majority of which are frankly terrible for one reason or another. This is a very niche market and it is one that demands perfection at such a price point as the 900D is attempting to compete, but the sad fact is that most people are going to buy this case simply because it has the (frankly worthless) Corsair name attached to it.I have two fully liquid cooled builds right now, the first is in a Switch 810, without doubt the most capable water cooling case anywhere near it's price range, with as much radiator space, if not more, than the nearly 2.5x pricier 800D.
The other build is at the opposite end of the price spectrum, sitting in a custom made fully equipped Case Labs TH10 (XL Pedestal, 120mm Extension up top, etc) with 4x 560 + 1x 420 + 2x 360 radiators all cooling the system. It makes the monolithic 800D look like a SFF case in comparison, and the build quality is simply so far ahead as to be indescribable.
Which brings me to the point... Case Labs now offers the SM5 and SM8 cases at the same or lower prices than the 900D, but with nearly limitless customizability, build quality that is unrivaled, and small touches absent on anything from the company that Corsair has become.
I simply don't see why this case would sell, it's as much a dinosaur as it's circa 2008 brother...
Biggestinsect - Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - link
Confounds me how most tech sites get all revved up about this case but seem to be unaware of any of CaseLabs' offerings. Corsair and especially higher end stuff from Lian Li and Silverstone have nothing near the build quality at any price point.cjs150 - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
I love my TJ07 but totally agree about the build quality. Holes not perfectly aligned, lack of cable management etc. Case labs looks a lot better (also like mountain mods) on biold qualityhyperdoggy - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
Oh wow, the window is flushed with the side panel, that is awesome! normally case windows looks like someone broke the window on the side panel and they ghetto attach some acrylic on till they can afford to fix it, fine for a sub $100 case, big no no on a $200+ case.isorashi - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
+1: Fluke referenceZoeAnderson24 - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
uptil I looked at the draft of $4237, I have faith that...my... father in law woz like they say actualey receiving money in there spare time from their laptop.. there dads buddy haz done this for only about ten months and just repayed the loans on there home and got a new Jaguar XJ. go to, All29.comCHECK IT OUT