Corsair Obsidian 650D Review

Testing:

To test the Corsair Obsidian 650D, temperatures will be recorded for the CPU, GPU, chipset, hard drives, and the overall system temperature during load and idle phases. Load will be simulated by Prime95 small FFTs and HD Tune for one hour, with maximum temperatures recorded by RealTemp. The GPU load will be the maximum value recorded by Catalyst Control Center after five loops of 3DMark06’s Canyon Flight test. For the idle temperature readings, I allowed each setup to remain idle for one hour, and the minimum value achieved during this period will be recorded. Each case is tested as is from the factory, including the fan configuration. The fan configuration for the Corsair is left in its default configuration of one front 200mm intake, one 200mm top exhaust, and one 120mm rear exhaust. I will be running the fans at full speed for these tests.

Testing Setup:

• Processor: Intel i7 920
• Motherboard: MSI Eclipse SLI
• Memory: Mushkin Ridgeback 12800 6-8-6-24
• Video Card: XFX HD6970
• Power Supply: Mushkin Joule 1000W Power Supply
• Hard Drive: Seagate 1TB SATA
• Optical Drive: Lite-On DVD-RW
• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
• Ambient Temperature: 25 °C
• CPU Heatsink: Noctua NH-U12P
• Case: Corsair Obsidian 650D

Comparison Cases:

• NZXT H2 Classic
• Cooler Master Storm Enforcer
• Thermaltake V9 BlacX
• Sentey Burton
• Cooler Master HAF 932

Well, we see that the Corsair Obsidian 650D comes in right around the middle of the line. The GPU idle temperature suffers on the graph, but comparatively there is only a spread of 2 °C throughout the data. Chipset and harddrive temperatures are good, along with the CPU temperatures. The noise from the fans at full speed are barely audible with the side panels on and are silent at low speeds. On the next page, I will share my conclusions about the Obsidian 650D and wrap up my thoughts!