Corsair Obsidian Series 450D review

Corsair’s Obsidian Series 450D midi-tower case is all straight lines and edges, and looks very sleek. It’s a combination of brushed aluminium on the front panel and steel for the rest of the chassis. It feels incredibly well constructed and there’s no hint of any unfinished or unrefined surfaces, making it pleasant to use to build a PC.

The side panel is dominated by a large viewing window, so if you have particularly attractive components or are a dab hand at cabling it’s easy to show off your work. The inside of the case is spacious, which is ideal for efficient airflow. There are also plenty of mounting points for fans and liquid cooling radiators.

The case comes with two 140mm fans installed in the front and a 120mm fan in the rear. The front mount supports two 120mm fans, but we didn’t see any reason to swap out the quiet standard models that are usefully directed at your heat-generating graphics cards. The top of the case can take either three 120mm or two 140mm fans, or a liquid-cooling radiator up to 360mm long. The bottom of the case can take two 120mm fans or a 240mm radiator.

In terms of motherboards, the 450D will accept ATX, ATX-E, microATX and Mini-ITX boards. The rear of the motherboard is designed for tidy cable routing around your case. There’s 430mm of clearance to install a powerful graphics card, which is longer than any card we’ve seen. You can fit a CPU cooler up to 165mm in height, which covers most models, but the very biggest custom coolers may be a tight squeeze.

The rear of the motherboard tray also has mountings for your SSDs, which helps to keep everything neat, and you won’t need any tools for installation. It’s also simple to install 3.5in hard disks without a screwdriver, and you can remove the drive cage to create better airflow. You also have two 5 1/4in external bays if you want to install an optical disk drive or memory card reader. The front of the case has two USB3 ports and a headphone and microphone jack.

The Obsidian Series 450D is a great looking case and we were particularly fond of its large viewing window. If you’re after a case for full-size ATX motherboards and aren’t looking to spend quite as much, the NZXT Source 340 or SilverStone Quiet Precision PS11 are good alternatives.