with its Factory tuning and data center DNA an Intel 730 series SSD is an
amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts let me open this
video by saying I've got an email thread that's about a mile long with George
from Corsair about this case and I do have a number of complaints about it but
his response of well what else can you
get at this price that's this easy to build in and has these features is
pretty fair the 450d if you don't feel like skipping to the end to hear the
conclusion delivers great features at a great price with great air flow and in
my opinion very good looks which isn't to say that I'm going to completely let
him off the hook the packing material is not the best hard foam I've ever seen
but it's not really a concern unless you're having someone else build your
system for you and then ship it to you all right so once it's out of the box
this is a bit of an unusual look for an obsidian instead of going for a very
plain look with simple straight lines Corsair has in my mind done a great job
of delivering solid cooling performance and still having it look pretty clean
out of the box with the included af140 L fans it still maintains a professional
front bezel look but because the front design with its removable fan filter is
so open throwing some Led fans in there would be a super easy way to give your
system some gamer bling I think it's a great balance speaking of great balance
the top fan filter is pretty much brilliant their flexible mesh and magnet
solution to dust filtration is inexpensive aesthetically pleasing and
convenient the bottom fan filter ain't half bad either it's much easier to
remove and replace without being able to see it because it uses a rigid plastic
frame and a few magnets around the edges to make it very easy to position now I
guess I glossed over the front iio when I was talking about the front there's nothing too special here two USB 3 ports
a headphone and microphone Jack a recessed reset switch and a large power
switch the power and drive activity LEDs are built into the power button the side
window is great too a nice large side panel window looks great on these
smaller cases as long as Cable Management inside is good and the 450d
is almost as good as other obsidian cases in terms of cable routing options
finally at the back we find seven PCI slots some water cooling tubing holes
that corser has given up even pretending that people use note that they don't
even bother including rubber grommets for them anymore and included 120 mm
series or AF series fan I griped at
George about not putting in8 PCI slots when it really looks like there was room
for an additional one and his response here was also pretty fair and that's
that no one should be putting four graphics cards in Quad SLI in a mid
Tower there's just not enough room to cool them adequately unless you do a
side intake like on the Vengeance C70 all right George Fair Point opening up
the case is done with four thumb screws at the back there are no real complaints
here but I'd love to see Corsair implement the self- retaining side panel
screws that NZXT has put on the h440 it
doesn't cost much and is a great hassle saer for the user now that the case is
open the layout will look pretty familiar to anyone who has seen its
little matx brother the 350d by comparison the 450d excepts a full-size
ATX motherboard and corsar has basically just added a 3 and 1/2 in/ 2 and 1/2 in
Drive Bay sled to utilize the extra height and moved the super handy
spring-loaded SSD mounts to the back of the motherboard tray a great move since
it frees up space in the front for either a 240 or 280 mm radiator speaking
of Radiators the case can handle RADS in up to four spots without any
modification an exceptional feet for a case this size by my super precise
eyeball measurements it looks like you could do a 280 or 360 in the top a 120
in the back two 240s in the front and at
the bottom all at the same time unreal
speaking of radiator support for a case that is so well liquid cooling optimized
I feel like the top panel was a bit of a missed opportunity the way that Corsair
allows the grommets to be easily repositioned so you can mount a dual 120
mm radiator in a variety of places is great for improving compatibility but I
would have liked to see the holes offset to the side away from the motherboard to
improve compatibility with thicker radiators and the uh top 8 Pin and four
pin connectors on motherboards the recently released h105 actually doesn't
fit in this case with this motherboard and this incompatibility was entirely
avoidable I understand that the centered holes do look a lot better but the
magnetic mesh would have hidden offset holes so guys let me know in the
comments if you prefer the look of the 450d with the mesh or if you prefer the
look of the 450d without the mesh so that'll give me a good idea of whether
the offset holes would have been okay because if you're going to run it without the mesh you're not going to
want those offset holes it looks really weird um cable management is a good
point for this case there is ample room in the back for the 24 pin and other
bulky connectors and the included cables for the front panel actually come
pre-managed with nice little you know zip ties tied in place so you pretty
much don't have to move them um but note
that I said cable management is a good point for this case and not a great one
this is one of two things that made the case feel a little more like a carbide
or a graphite than an obsidian to me the back of the motherboard tray has only
four Cable Management loops on it and when they're basically free to add I'd
like to see a lot more in addition to that there's no way to cleanly Route the
front panel audio without crossing over at least a few inches of motherboard
down here at the bottom most cases have a little spot in the bottom left for
that connector and this feels like a bit of an oversight the last thing that's
missing is any room in the top aside from the hole for the 8 pin connector to
Route smaller stuff like CPU fan cables
usually we see a couple gaps up here to facilitate this but instead we're stuck
going between the motherboard and motherboard tray or just routing them
across the board the second thing that felt un obsidian was the 3 and 1/2 in
Drive cage it's toolless which is great and while I appreciate the flexibility
of being able to hang the cage from the top of the 5 and 1/4 in Bays or sit it
at the bottom it just feels a little bit flimsier than the rest of the case in
contrast Sharp with the motherboard tray which is very
rigid in spite of the large CPU cutout a second cage would also have been a nice
touch since they're using a modular design that allows you to Simply slide
in another one to double your hard drive expansion but if you're targeting a
price point then I guess it makes more sense to sell that as an upgrade option
rather than charge everyone for a feature that only a handful of people
are actually going to use um it should be noted that leaving it out also helps
this case achieve fantastic air flow over the GPU area without the use of
ugly side panel fans so I see why they did it this way one thing that stood out
to me was that Corsair includes hilariously few screws in the Box
basically some fan screws motherboard screws and 2 and 1/2 in Drive screws
pretty much everything else is tooless and while this is another thing that's
probably only a concern for system integrator shipping systems around in
the 450d I would have liked to see Corsair include some hard drive screws
so I have the option to secure things a little bit better if I want to with
those few complaints out of the way the conclusion for the 450d is actually
pretty positive if you consider its cooling flexibility looks and price
you're going to have a hard time finding a better looking bang for your buck and
speaking of paying for sex my wife actually built the test rig you're
looking at with me looking over her shoulder so for all my complaints about
little Cable Management details and inexperience Builder can still end up
with a damn fine looking system guys like and share this video if you liked
it like it if you disliked it and leave a comment on the line is Tech tips for
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