Corsair Obsidian 550D – The Sound Of Silence (And The
Heat, Too)
Corsair’s Obsidian 550D comes packed with
sound-dampening acoustic foam (nearly half an inch on its side panel), but it’s
not just Corsair’s dedicating to quiet that has us wowed. It’s the 550D’s
interactivity: Gaining access to most of the steel case’s fan mounts (two 12cm
mounts on the top, two preinstalled 12cm fans on the front, and two 12cm fan
mounts on the case’s side) only requires you to push on a panel. Out it pops
and in you go. The case’s side panels receive a similar treatment; just hit a
button on the rear of the case and bam – you can take them right off.
This
system covers the inside of each panel in acoustic foam
Corsair continues this ‘touch’ motif on the
case's inside, where there's room for you to install four 5.25-inch devices
(that automatically lock into place) and up to six 3.5-inch hard drives (using
drive trays). PCI components require you to deal with thumbscrews. Not the best
way to go about it, but one that's better than normal screws, at least.
We have to call out the Obsidian's excellent
cable-management techniques. Four rubberized holes and two bare holes give you
easy means for stringing and concealing cables – like the big one for the
550D's two front-panel USB 3.0 ports. Since the actual space for an ATX or
microATX motherboard is recessed on the tray, the flip side delivers plenty of
recessed space for aligning your cables. We love this bit, since mashing a ton
of cables between the flat back of a motherboard tray and the case's side panel
is never a fun task.
While we like that this foam-filled case
cuts down on noise, the 550D will get hotter than most cases on the inside,
and it's a bit heavier than you might expect. Perhaps Corsair could have
alleviated its cooling issue by using larger fans.
NZXT Phantom 410 Gunmetal Edition – One Of The
Best-Looking Mid-Towers
The Phantom 410 inherits the good looks of
its full-tower predecessor but adds some tweaks of its own. It's a great-looking
case in any color (we've used white and red for builds), but the gun- metal
gray is spectacular. The paint is thick and luxurious to the touch, enough to
give the Phantom 410 a much better feel than the MSI Ravager, which uses
similar chassis tooling. Like the full-tower Phantom, the 410 has plastic
shrouds on the top and front panels, which increase the size of the case (and
make it impossible to rest anything on top). The top shroud contains two USB
3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, audio jacks, and a three-speed fan controller –
as well as the seven fan-control cables that lead from it.
NZXT
Phantom 410 Gunmetal Edition
The Phantom 410 hides three 5.25-inch drive
bays behind a front-panel door, and has six drive trays. The top four drive trays
are in a removable cage with an adjustable fan mount on it.
The case ships with 12cm front and rear
fans and a 14cm top fan, with room for another 12cm front fan, 12cm or 14cm top
fan (or 240mm radiator), two fans on the side, and one on the bottom.
Half of the motherboard tray's six cable
cutouts are grommeted, though the grommets tend to fall out at a moment's
notice. The mobo tray, per today's standards, includes a large CPU cooler
cutout. There's plenty of room for cable routing behind the mobo tray, which is
good, because otherwise the welter of fan cables would be really annoying.
We
like the fan controller, but we don’t dig the tangle of cables it requires
Our other gripe with the Phantom 410 is not
unique to that case: It shares the Switch 810's drive trays, which have the SSD
mounting holes the wrong way around – annoying, but not fatal. At just $100 for
a solid, great-looking case, this is a steal.
