Welcome to my unboxing and first look at
the only true successor to the original
enthusiast class case from Corsair. This
is the 900D and it picks up where the 800D left off. The 800D was at the time
revolutionary. It made cable management
uh turn into something that everyone could do with its grommeted cable
management holes that by now pretty much everybody has copied. It was huge and it
wasn't afraid to be huge. Before the 800D, the only cases you could get that
were large were not even really like a
lot of the time they weren't even proper like normal cases. Like they had 5 and
a/4 in bays that were like weirdly mounted on the side and stuff like that.
and it was not afraid to let you water cool. The 900D takes everything about
the 800D and just completely amps it up.
It's like injecting steroids directly into its corateed. So, there you go. Um,
for foam, we've got a fair not quite super brittle foam, but it's also not a
closed cell soft foam, but Corsair compensates by making it extremely
thick. And as you guys know, it is the girth, not the length that is the most
important thing. You've got another inch and a quarter or so right here on the
top. So, let's go ahead and tilt this over so you guys can have a look at what
the 900D looks like inside the case. So, while the box is huge, the 900D is also
huge. Um, I'm probably going to need Slick's help taking this out of the box.
So, we're going to tip it over and we'll be back in just a moment. How big is the 900D, you might
ask? to which I would reply, you could easily fit at least six cats inside
before they even started to like cause problems. So, it comes with bubble wrap
around it to prevent any kind of or at least my review sample does. I don't
know if they all do, but this will prevent
any random incidental sort of punctures
and jabs with this cardboard and this bubble wrap layer here. So, I'm going to
go ahead and uh pull this off. We've got
another cardboard layer here, which
hopefully I can remove. I thought I was done with my knife, but they've packed
it extremely well to ensure that it gets here safely. And this is going to be
especially important packaging wise. Corsair could not afford to skimp on
this case because especially once you actually build a system inside it, it is
going to be heavy and big. So unless it's built extremely solidly and packed
extremely well, you are going to end up with a damaged computer at the other end
of any kind of shipping expedition. So
we're having some trouble here. So we're going to get this uh wrapping done here.
Got the get the box out of the way. And the unveiling is pretty much complete.
Ain't she a thing of beauty?
gorgeous, enormous window that shows you everything. I mean, at the angle you'll
actually normally be looking at it from. So, we're going to go ahead and adjust
that right there. So, it shows you everything from your back radiator
presumably, uh, your motherboard. You're going to see the power supply a little
bit, but not too much. And then you're going to see, um, a little bit of your
drive cages here, but again, not too much of that. We're actually going to
take a little bit of time to take all of the plastic covers off. So, there's
plastic covers holding things like the uh the IO cover in place, holding things
like the front panel in place, as well as protecting things like the side panel
window here and little bits of uh of trim like this. So, we'll be back in a
moment again with all that
removed. So, I wanted to show you guys a few things that I noticed when I was
taking the plastic off. Uh number one is, holy crap, the system for side
panels on this case is cool. So, I've taken the black plastic off the window.
You can see it's very, very clear, very transparent. However, you still get that
thing with all acrylic Windows where it does it's very staticky, so it tends to
collect. See, there's cat hair on it already, but that's just kind of life.
Uh, the side panel, because it's basically all acrylic, does have a bit
of flex to it, but I'm not super concerned because it's still got some
weight, which is going to help it resist any vibration. And I love the mounting
system for the glass. Just look at this. It's like
solid screws and just oh, feels really
good. I mean, even my TJ07, which is the case that I'm using right now, just had
like cheesy little plastic uh fixings on it. Not Not very uh not very great. Now,
you don't have to remove the top panel in order to remove the bottom panel
here. So, you just pop this open and it's on a friction hinge here. So, right
there. And then over on the other side, there's another one just like that that
controls this opening up. And I wanted to show you guys how Corsair has
included all the appropriate little bits of adhesive so that things don't fall
off in shipping. So, they've uh protected all the corners and then
they've protected things like the magnetic fan filters from coming off.
Magnetic fan filters really are the best way to go about this
because every other system I've seen, I mean, the original sort of fan filters
and cases were usually screwed on and then some of the later ones came along
and they were uh like latched on or they were uh slid in or whatever else. But
check this out. I mean, this is how hard it is to remove your fan filter.
Yeah. You take that, you throw it under the sink, you clean it out, you put it
back. Yeah. Just like that. And the fact
that the intake for the case here and the exhaust for the case over there is
so easy to get at is extremely convenient. Now, speaking of intake and
exhaust, you can see all around the edges here, there's a gap here as well
as over here and all along the bottom. That is how that fan is actually getting
any air. And Corsair thought about this. They didn't just sort of willy-nilly
um you know apply ventilation holes here. There's a gap between that piece
on the front and these pieces right here where you apply your fan filter. That's
going to allow for there to be um it acts as a bit of a Oh crap, the word
escapes me. Shroud. Thank you. Shroud that will allow it to actually draw some
air in. So that's very very smart. Now I want to take you around to the other
side really quick. So there we go.
That's latched on where I want to show you. It's okay. I got it. It's not
actually that much heavier than an 800D, which is nice. It does use aluminum
support struts in order to keep from just being it's just ludicrously heavy.
So there you go. If I can move it, you can probably move it. The one button
releases at the back for the top panels here. Or first I'll show you that
functionality where the bottom opens up without the top actually being open. So
you can get it your drives. You can actually upgrade your hard drive if you
ran yourself cables down from the motherboard and just kind of kept them
here. You could upgrade your hard drive without actually even opening up the top
panel, which is very cool. And there's another removable fan filter there. So,
these one button releases are great. You press them, you pull out the side panel,
and then it comes off. This one's bound to be a little bit more solid. Yep. Just
because it doesn't have that big acrylic piece on it. The way that it latches in
up here is very robust, very strong. I
can't imagine that that would break in any sort of uh realworld situation. Now,
cable management room at the back. This is where the 900D really shines. And
this, I mean, this is where the 800D really changed the game because it added
enough room for proper cable management that everyone could do without, you
know, origami cabling as Voodoo PC used to call it. So, check this out. That
looks like more than an inch behind the motherboard tray. That means you could
have a 24 pin ATX cable and something else running back here without running
out of room and without having to do that thing where you force the back
panel on and you kind of push on it in order to get it to actually close. And
the funny thing is uh George, the designer for cases for Corsair said to
me, he showed me his hands. He went, "I have really big hands, really thick
fingers. I designed my cases so I can work in them." I'm like, "Yeah, okay.
Sounds about right." So on the back you find not only all the cable management
grommets you could want which come out at the top for drives or at the top for
drives depending on whether you've got an ATX or an EATX or HPTX width board.
You've got them here for your 24 pin as well as your PCI Express here for more
PCI Express as well as cables for the drives over here. And I love this. So
many cases do this and it drives me crazy where they'll have something
interfering here between the drives and the motherboard. It's like case
manufacturers. Hello. We have to run cables from the motherboard to the
drives. Did you not think of this? SATA cables. They're not 24 48 in long.
They're short. So, there you go. Thank you, Corsair, for thinking of this
because there's lots of room to coil them up and hide them and keep them on
these um on these drive cages here. So,
very, very nice. You've also got plastic clips for holding cables in place. And
tons of these little anchors. I love these. 1 2 3 4 five 6 7 8 9. Uh these
are great because they allow you to without sort of folding things sort of
under each other and all that, they allow you to take everything, route it neatly, and then strap it down so that
it's not uh so it's not ugly and gross. So even even over here, check this out.
1 2 3 four just for bringing your 8 pin
or your four pin up to the motherboard itself. Speaking of your 8 pin or four
pin, check this out. Uh, this right here is an extension cable and also an
adapter. So, if you have a motherboard that goes uh that just has a single
eight pin, you can just run this as an extension and then you can tuck this one
back here in your ample storage room. If you have a motherboard that takes an
eight and a four, such as a Crosshair 5 formula, you can plug a single 8 pin
into this and plug this into the board itself. So, very, very handy. Nice big
CPU cutout. So, you're going to have no problem installing CPU coolers that uh
that do require a back plate without removing your motherboard. And the
motherboard tray itself has a little bit of flex, but you come to expect this
from motherboard trays that have all this room for cable management as well
as the CPU cutout and the cable management cutouts up here. And once you
actually strap a board to it, you're not going to notice any kind of a problem
with that. So, I'm not uh not too worried about that particular thing.
Nice little rubber grommets in here so that you're not going to see look at
these see these noise dampening pads right here. Corsair doesn't want this
case to make noise. So, they've actually included kind of a Blu-Tack mod style
thing that'll keep it from having any sort of vibration. Um, let's finish up
at the back here and then we're going to go uh or we'll finish up on the outside
and then we're going to uh to spend some more time on the inside. I apologize
guys, this is going to be a long video, but this is a very important case for
the evolution of cases in general. I want to make sure I'm covering it adequately. It's all about cooling. So,
one of the criticisms of the 800D was that it didn't do air cooling as well as
it did water cooling. So, Corsair has taken all that feedback and opened up
every available surface all along the back. Your extra power supply plate,
your IO shield, your 120 or 140 mm fan,
and the back as well as the entire top of the
case. Uh-oh. Oh, water bottle. It's all good. Um, is all mesh. Now, this mesh
has a fine filter on it in addition to the uh to the cutout metal. So, it's
also got a reinforcement plastic bracket
on it. There you go. So, it's going to be nice and strong. And I think that's
pretty much it for the back and the top. We'll get to more about the inside once
we're on the inside. I just want to lead myself around the case in a logical way
so I don't miss anything cuz uh that's really important to So, up at the top,
there we go. We've got our IO, microphone, headphone, two USB 3 super
speed, reset button. Love to see this tucked away where the cats won't
accidentally hit it. Four USB 2.0 ports.
This is great to see because so many motherboards have anywhere from sort of
two to six USB 2 headers built into into
the inside. And it's like, what am I going to plug into this thing, you guys?
None of my cases support. Well, now we have a case that supports it. So, there
you go. Very nice to see. uh power buttons right here in the middle and
then you've got four 5 and 1/4 in expansion bays. Now you might say, "Oh,
Lionus, that's sort of odd because I thought that's what a 5 and 1/4 in
expansion bay looks like. This is a lot bigger than 5 and 1/4 in." And I would
go, "Yes, you're right." Because in order to not lose the integrity of the
look of the case, well, I think I might need to open those from the inside. I
actually don't remember how these come off from the uh from the video we did at
CES. But in order to not compromise the look of the case, Corsair decided to
widen the five and a quarter inch standard to make it uh sort of work for
them. So, I'm going to figure out how this comes off cuz I can't remember. All right, so we figured it
out. I mean, I can actually get inside the case to work on it, which is handy
because that's what I had to do. Uh there's little tabs in the back. Okay,
all you got to do is release those with your fingers. See, just pinch those and
then the whole thing comes out. Now you can see this is obviously much larger
than a 5 and a/4 in device. But what Corsair's done is they have because so
few people even use 5 and a/4 in devices. They want it to look clean if
you don't install anything. And then they've used kind of a stylized um Oh, I
might as well show you the toolless installation here, you guys. So you just
peel this up, slide the drive in, and then let it click into place. Drives in.
You can screw it in with a couple screws if you want to, too. So, they've gone
with a recessed bezel here that will match your 5 and a/4 in device, just
like that. Now, we pulled off the solid aluminum front piece simply by prying it
up from the bottom. So, you can see there's four uh four points here that
will hold that in place. There you go. Got your nice little Corsair logo on
there. And uh the front had a couple more little pieces of tape that were
holding in another very conveniently removable fan filter. So, Corsair
includes not their regular class of fans with this case, but their uh their
airflow style sort of modeled after their AF series fans. So, the entire
front comes through this. Look, I mean, look at what the thought they've given to this. They're like, "Okay, well, fans
pull air from directly in front of them, but they also pull air from the side of
directly in front of them as well. And the whole thing's filtered. You can take this thing off, clean it, and you are
good to go." So here once I've put that
in place, you can see it draws air here. So you can actually if you get a bit of
a better angle there, you can see from that side how there's lots of room
there. And then you can also get air from the front here as well. Now you can
replace these fans. You can install a triple 120 mm radiator up here without
much difficulty whatsoever. And that is
part of what will lead us to the inside of the case where we will start to
investigate the water cooling options that are available. Now, speaking of
water cooling options, the side of the bottom panels here, you can actually
remove this solid piece. Uh, Slick pointed this out to me simply by
removing the eight screws here. So, that'll leave you with a mesh side on
either side or both sides, giving you even more access to fresh air for the
components that you're keeping inside there. Now, let's go ahead and flip it
down to the bottom so we can see if there's anything interesting to see down
there. I don't want to uh let go of it here so much. So on the bottom, no, not
a whole lot that is interesting down there. So there you have it. Um I think
it makes a difference that on the older 800D, the bottom had that fan filter for
your power supply, whereas the 900D uses a sidemounted power supply. So it's
going to draw its air from the outside of the case here or the outside of the
case on the other side rather than from the bottom of the chassis. They've
included some SATA cables and I guess we'll figure out how those work in a
moment. But um there you go. These are the mounts that are going to hold your
power supply in place and keep it from putting any unnecessary strain on the
back of the chassis itself. And then this right here is an additional
mounting point for more 3 and 1/2 in or
2 1/2 in hard drive or SSD mounting
cages. So let's go ahead and close this up. Again, I I you know, it's
interesting because I I found myself closing and opening it quite frequently.
But what's good is I'm able to do it quickly and efficiently because that is
how you are going to upgrade your computer. You're going to want to just go flip flip open do whatever you need
to do and then move on. You don't want to spend all day every day actually
working on the thing. So, hard drive mounting options. You've got these
little sleds here that are capable of mounting 3 and 1/2 in drives toollessly
or 2 and 1/2 in drives by uh screwing them in. And then it comes with three
sleds that each holds three drives. So,
they uh Oops. Hold on. Let me see if I got that lined up correctly there. So,
we've got three in each one that clip in like that. You can see they popped out a
little bit in shipping, but uh shouldn't be anything to worry about. Now you can
install you can actually okay they're modular for one thing. So you can move
all your drives to the basement and then you can go ahead and install pumps or
radiators or whatever other you know I don't know action figures. I've seen
those in computers before up here that you want. You can take this one and move
it up here and you can keep all your drives in the front. Throw some water
cooling over here on this side. Throw some water cooling over here on the
other side. Maybe just a small single 120 mil radiator. or you can pull them
all out or you can add a full additional two for 15 2 and 1/2 in or 3 and 1/2 in
drives in the case natively. So those will be available from Corsair. Uh these
are those aluminum pieces that I talked about before, those supports and I think
that pre Oh yeah, mounting right. Okay, so mounting for radiators is awesome. So
you can do up to a Okay, here let's let's do all the radiators now. You can
do a quad 120 mm meter radiator across
here. To pull out these drives, you can put a power supply here and you can do a
dual 120 mm radiator on the other side.
Then you can put up to a triple 120 mm
in the front. Up to a triple 140 or quad
120 in the top. You can do a single 120
or single 140 in the back. And I think what I actually missed was this could be
a triple 140 or a quad 120 as well. So,
the radiator mounting options, you can have up to five radiators in the case
without making any modifications to it, which is absolutely outstanding.
Motherboard compatibility, as I mentioned before, is pretty much um
unparalleled. So, you can install an ITX board, an MATX board, which will go down
to about here, an ATX board, which will
be this big, and then check this out, an XLATX board, which can go all the way
down from either eight or nine expansion
slots. Here, I'm going to give you a bit of a better angle there, Slick. So, eight or nine expansion slots. Remember,
they've included 10 expansion slots. So, even with a nine expansion slot board,
you could install a dual slot card in the very, very bottom slot. And then you
can even install an HPTX board which would take up pretty much the entire
thing here and would allow you to really make the most of this particular beast
chassis. I wonder if we've missed anything. We did show this in the top
here. So you can see all those different mounting hole options depending on what
you opt for up there. Let me just go sort of scan through and I'll see if we
missed anything. So, here's our variety of boards that
we'd like to try out in the 900D. Um, it
it does say on the box it's compatible with ITX. So, I'm obligated to put an
ITX board in there to just show you guys what it'll look like if you build a
system with a single PCI Express slot and uh about a half of ATX or half of
sort of slightly wider than ATX width on it. So, that's sort of ridiculous.
Here's what an MATX board will look like inside. So, most people are not going to
go microATX with a uh with a system like
this, but that's your four expansion slots and standard width. Next up, we're
going to do ATX. So, this is a crosshair 5 formula. This is one of those ones
where that uh that extension cable will come in handy. All right, so this guy
right here is going to look a little something like this. So, that's seven expansion slots and standard width. So,
you can see there's tons of room over here for much, much wider boards than a
standard ATX board. Now, the next one I have is a bit of a hybrid because some
boards are labeled as EATX, but what they actually are is slightly wider than
ATX. So, you see here how there's a little bit of extra width to this board.
That makes it sort of EATX, but it's also wider than normal because there are
seven expansion slots, but there's a burned one here at the top. So, this is
actually eight expansion slots. And this is the biggest XLATX board that I had on
hand. This is an X79 UD7 from Gigabyte.
And even that doesn't look that big in
the 900D. I did miss something on the
inside. So in here, we've got all of our front panel connectors, our USB 2, our
HD audio, our other more different USB 2, USB 3 front panel headers, as well as
three SATA cables. So, what I noticed is that two of the included triple hard
drive cages uh do not have back planes,
but one of them does. So, if you slide that out, you can see that that is a
toolless installation. So, you can pre-run uh presumably there's power over
there somewhere. I think I did see it before. You can pre-run power to the
back plane, pre-run SATA data to those three drives, and you can just take down
this thing, pop in a drive, and you are literally ready to go without any
difficulty. If you have hot swap enabled on your motherboard, you actually won't
even have to turn off your computer, which is very, very cool. So, we're
going to put the case back together and do some size comparisons against some
other chassis that we have lying around. So, we're going to start with um the
kind of case that most normal people would be running. And this is a
modestsized ATX tower. So, this is the
900D. Corsair has increased the width compared to a normal computer. And
they've also dramatically increased the height and the length. So, I'm going to
line them up back to back so you can see
the sheer size of the 900D. This is a Corsair Carbide
300R. Significantly narrower. Go ahead.
Get it from this angle as well, Slick. So, I'm going to go ahead and adjust
that for you so you can really see. You could almost probably fit two of these
in here. rumble in terms of the sheer volume. So,
we're going to tuck this one aside for now and I'm going to show you one of our
most space efficient computers that we've ever had here at TechTips. And
this is our Shuttle X79. It has a 6 core
3960X, 32 gigs of RAM, a Quadro 4000,
and a 10 GB network card. And you could probably fit anywhere from um five to
about seven of them inside the volume of
the 900D. With that said, you obviously can't do a dual socket shuttle. So,
there's uh there's an option that you have with the 900D that you don't have
with that. Here is a Corsair Vengeance
C70. So, this is a pretty uh Skookum
gaming tower and even this one. So, with uh up to dual 140 mm radiator in the
top, single 140 mm in the back, lots of
air cooling. Uh I think it supports up to quad fans in the front, something
like that. And this is what it looks like next to the 900D. And we're working
our way up to the 800D next to the 900D.
I have to go get one right now, though. Just a sec. So, just for lulls, I hauled
down my rig. So, this is the Silverstone TJ7 next to it. Bear in mind, the TJ7
doesn't look like that out of the box. I still haven't put my glass panel window on it or anything like that, but there's
still like a good sort of 3 or 4 in
there. that is the difference in height and then a good few inches here. And
look how much wider it is, how much wider it stance is than the TJ07 which
just has 5 and a/4 and then sort of a border. Whereas that's pretty much the
width of just the bay covers on the 900D, never minding the huge gap around
here for air flow through the front of the case. Now I'm going to move my
system and we are going to show you a couple more size examples including the
Bit Phoenix Prodigy. uh which is sort of a gaming grade ITX
tower with similarly sort of way too many water cooling options but not
designed for HPTX ports. So there you go. This also actually has a similar
width to the 900D. I'm going to pop it up here for a sec so you can see that uh
the Bitfenix Prodigy has kind of a wide stance and that's because it actually
holds the motherboard in it the flat way as opposed to vertically. So I don't
know what the uh the 900D's excuse is. Actually, I do know what its excuse is.
The excuse is it holds a butt ton of hardware. So, there you go. That's how
you could probably fit about three Prodigies and change in the 900D. And
let's wrap up. Actually, here one more practical demonstration of how big the
900D is. And you know what? It's big, but it's efficient. I did make fun of
the uh the Cosmos 2 a little bit when it was released because I said, "Well, this
thing is so big." But the Cosmos 2 doesn't fit nearly the same caliber of
hardware in it that the 900D does in terms of liquid cooling. I couldn't
figure out there. I couldn't figure out what the Cosmos 2's excuse for being so
big was because it didn't fit that much stuff. Um 900D does. We can actually put
our shuttle computer right inside it without any difficulty. So there you go.
We can put a couple in there. No problem. There's your dual X79 solution.
Um, all right. So, let's wrap up with a size comparison to the classic 800D. So,
this is Slick's personal
rig. There we go. All right. Man, that's
heavy. Slick, how do you move this thing
around? So, there's a liquid cooled 800D. Actually, I'm going to put it
right next to it for size comparison first and then we'll uh then we'll go.
So, if the 800D is the biggest case you've ever seen, then the 900D will be
bigger, and it will be the biggest case you've ever seen because uh it's
definitely definitely taken that crown
from the 800D. So, it is wider, taller,
and it is deeper. It is all three of
those things. It holds so much more hardware, though. Corser hasn't wasted a
cubic inch of the space that they've added to the 900D because remember the
800D natively only supports a triple rad in the top, a single 140 in the back,
and you can mount a 140 here, but other than that, the space isn't nearly as
usable as the 900D. Personally, I don't miss the hot swap here because I find
that the easily accessible uh opening door down here at the bottom and those
hot swap or well, not hot swaps, but backplained uh SATA mounts back there
are an equally good option compared to the older system. And it doesn't break
up the uh the clean look of the front that the 900D has. So, there you have
it, you guys. The new enthusiast
champion from Corsair, the 900D. I hope
you enjoyed this unboxing and first look. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus
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