Corsair Obsidian 550D Quiet Computing Computer Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,454 words · ~12 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of the Corsair obsidian
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550d let's see what Corsair has to say for themselves in a billion different
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languages on the front sound dampening material silicone mounts on the fans and
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hard drive Bays to a to damp Corsair
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Corsair to dampen vibration you can cover unused fan locations to further
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reduce noise rigid steel and brushed aluminum makes it easy to build a great
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system you get built in USB 3 25 in SSD support etc etc rugged durability smart
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features and Great Looks let's open her
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up I'm pretty familiar with this case because I actually did a presentation on
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stage at the NC first annual Tech fair
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about the 550d which I prepped myself for in like the 2 minutes before Corsair
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was due on stage and asked me to uh to talk about their case for them I hadn't
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actually seen the 550d for more than a
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couple minutes at CES prior to that so
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there you go but uh now I know what I'm
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talking about in time for my actual video which will persistently be on the
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interwebs forever so that's good
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okay closed uh or not closed rather uh
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rigid foam not my favorite um at least it's thick it's not that
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thick yeah I would have expected a little bit thicker than that I guess in
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their defense they do have a pretty robust box that's going to keep it from
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getting damaged as uh as much in shipping as can sometimes happen we've
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had some oh we've had some interesting samples arrived for Tech tips we had one
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case that didn't use um that didn't use
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uh a soft soft foam that arrived with
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the back basically like dented in like that it wasn't from Corsair though don't
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worry guys uh okay there we go let's go
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ahead and have a look at this case so it
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has a very clean overall aesthetic actually let's start with uh with
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removing the plastic here at the front because that's uh going to here let me
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get you guys
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a about what Corsair does with their cases is
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they they spend money on the
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manufacturing where it counts so for something like their
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650d or even the 800d it's a steel case
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which is fine it's strong Steel's good for building things out of you build
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Bridges out of it for crying out loud if you can't build a case out of it then you're probably doing it wrong but they
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do a nice aluminum front bezel that looks very very very Sleek so I
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personally am a big fan of that and let's go ahead and take this off
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so um you know what one more right right so of Corsair yes they
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spend the money on their cases where it counts so the front bezel looks
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outstanding and then the general rest of the case is very plain very professional
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looking and in line with what we've come to expect from Corsair products in
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general so the back is pretty non-descript you've got eight PCIe slots
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though so it is xlx compatible got your IO Shield you got a 120 or 140 mm fan
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slot water cooling holes although I question the um validity of these most
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people aren't running external water cooling setups uh we've got a sound
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dampening foam mounted power Supply thing you can go one way or the other
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you've got aha this was premiered on the
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800d so one of corsairs now standard dual 120 mm fan filter do dads on the
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bottom there uh which is very nice oh look at these rubber feet These are nice
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these are really tall which gives you actually enough space under the case for
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some legitimate air flow down here and they're made out of a nice soft rubber
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and look at these like big L-shaped feet on the front as well very very nice so
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nice little touches so that'll uh keep it from like slipping which is good okay
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the front of the case this is a cool feature check this
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out guys so besides the front uh microphone headphones reset start uh
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hard drive LED power LED and front USB 3
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has a cool feature check this out so it opens from that side go ahead
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and take this off which uh holds in place the uh the front fan filter
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cover okay sound dampening material here you got an easily removable filter which
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comes out probably somehow but I don't really it's not oh oh I think it's
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magnetic actually there we go so magnetic front
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fan filter with dual 120 mm fans included so you go ahead and throw that
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on there just like that so ah there
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that's the side that's a little bit easier to remove very nice okay so we'll
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go ahead and put this back and put
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this apparently I'm doing it wrong cuz I'm just having a lot of trouble with
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what is supposed to be like the easiest fan filter ever but it's like Linus
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proof Edition there we go so let's go ahead and put this back and then I will
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get to what is actually cool about this so once you close it what will become
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fairly evident is that you can actually open it from the other side as well so
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you just clip it in really
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firmly and then you open it from the other side sound dampening material is
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also present here so this will help reduce noise a little bit another cool thing in line with the Sound Reduction
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theme of this case is the fact that there are actually very few vent holes
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actually well no vent holes really to speak of in the very front of the case
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and there's a reason for that I mean there's a couple there's the ones here down the side and there's the ones here
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down the other side but the reason for that is because vent holes in the front
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of the case are where a lot of the noise gets pasted to the user so they've
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shaped the front bezel like this see how there's a gap in there sort of not a
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very big gap but it's a small Gap so that the air will actually be pulled in
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from the back which will reduce the noise that you hear when the case is
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sitting in front of you on the top we find more sound dampening material in
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here you can actually take this off permanently if you do decide to mount
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fans here because obviously this solid
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piece of uh solid piece of plastic would
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not be very conducive to see I line is proof again uh would not be very
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conducive to U air flow so you just take this off and then you have like sort of
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a modular interface we've got more um magnetic fan filters you just take that
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off when it gets dirty and go clean it and then that is what the top of the
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case will look like if you opt not to use this although if you wanted a case
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that's more air flow optimized I'd recommend just going with a 650d or
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something or a 3 300 uh 300 R I believe
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it is 300 R in the first place instead of mucking up what I believe is the very
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clean looking aesthetic of this one this is taped on as well for a very good
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reason because there you go more sound dampening
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material more magnetic fan filters and
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the option to mount either 120 or 10 dual 140 mm fans or what appears to be
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like a single oh man that must be a single 160 mil or something like that
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you guys will have to just correct me if I'm wrong on that one but either way if
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I was going to mount something here I'd probably go with the uh the Dual dual
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140s just because if the theme is silen then you want to make sure that you are
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optimizing the build for silence which
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means what I would actually do is I would just leave this on because I like
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the uh I like the stock configuration of the case Okay keeping with their tooless
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overall philosophy they have brought back the rear buttons so we had those uh
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side clips on the 600t that uh wouldn't
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have really fit with the clean look of this case so we use a rear button in
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order to release the top panel you can see lots of thick sound dampening
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material on the inside of the case that is once again going to reduce the noise
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pass to the user um I don't know how
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many times I can say it about a silent CL case but it's designed to be quiet!
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again other side panel covered in sound dampening material it's great that cases
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are coming with this now because I remember it wasn't that long ago you had
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to just buy a case and then you'd buy like sound dampening kits and they were
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like 50 bucks or like a 100 bucks so now they're just n we'll just throw it in
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the case and call it a day and uh personally as an end user I appreciate
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that because it saves me money on the inside of the case we find the
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usual Staples for Corsair nice big CPU cutout so no matter where your CPU
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socket happens to be you'll be able to install your back plate and all that
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good stuff from the back black internal
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cables and little things like this so this is going to bang around corser
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doesn't want it to scratch stuff so they go ahead and they put some foamy
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plasticky stuff on there for you take care of that uh all black internal
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cables very very clean looking all black interior hard drive mounting is done in
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the form of sleds so you can either Mount Your 3 and 1/2 in drives with no
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tools whatsoever just using these little pins right here oh and these are rubber
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now too oh those are nice actually nice anti vibration thing going on and you
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have the option to either Mount your drive in the middle if you mount a 2 and
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1/2 in SSD or on the side that's kind of cool so they given you the
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option okay supports up to four 5 and 1/4 in Baye up to six either 3.5 or 2.5
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in drives you can completely remove uh and I'm going to need my screwdriver
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which happens to be right here you can
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completely remove this middle one should you have the desire I mean maybe you
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want to I don't know install
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something like like a really long
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graphics card or something I don't know but uh oh okay hold on wait for
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it give me a sec here guys I'm going to have to figure this out we got it
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removed there was just one more screw in the back so you can actually remove both
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cages if you want although you wouldn't really have too many options in terms of
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installing drives but there you go you
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can should you so desire maybe you just want like more air flow directly onto
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your graphics card and you just want to you know Bolton SSD somewhere and call
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it a day in terms of your uh your boot drive so let's go ahead and throw that
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back in there because I think we're we're done with that experiment um right
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cable routing so once again introduced with the 800d these awesome rubber
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grommy things that allow you to easily Mount whoops everything you want
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wherever you want it to go with nice tidy looking cabling plenty of room at
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the back so you can see the motherboard tray is a little bit recessed but there's tons of room here to Mount Your
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24 pin cable and whatever other thick cables lots and lots and lots of room in
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the back and more than enough of these little hooks which are very actually I
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would say wouldn't say more than enough I could use a couple up here so I can get that up to the eight pin or four pin
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uh hole right here and make it nice and tight but we have sort of enough then
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let's say of of these hooks for zap zap
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strapping cables down to make sure that they're nice and clean on the back so you don't have a hard time closing the
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back of the case let's have a look at what they've
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included in terms of accessories and whatnot and of course it's taped
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shut lots of stuff check it out okay so the internal USB 3 header is not
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necessarily compatible with older board so they've given you an adapter to plug
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into a USB two header should you so desire all right the um oh
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boy oh oh replacement clips for the uh
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for the front in case you happen to like break them or something I
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guess you know what I better check yep that's what they are so just
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in case you do happen to break them that's uh included for you we got some
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fan screws we got some hard drive screws no those aren't hard drive screws those
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are vibration dampening fan screws more fan screws
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hard drive screws power supply
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screws Optical and SSD screws and
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motherboard standoffs there's also of course a
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manual brilliant design inside and out I think that pretty much uh speaks for
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itself when it comes to Corsair's uh
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limited track record with cases but it's uh been very very good so far and I
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think that pretty much covers it so thank you for checking out our unboxing and first look at the Corsair 5 50d
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don't forget to subscribe to whoops lus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and
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