Corsair Obsidian 900D Case Review: Think Big, That's Only HALF as Large

Conclusion: Highly Priced and Highly Specialized

It should go without saying at this point that Joe Everybuilder isn't going to be interested in spending $349 to cool his single CPU, single GPU, air-cooled build. The Corsair 900D positively dwarfs our full fat testbed and really, it would take serious work to fill up this case anyhow.

My primary concern when reviewing most cases is ultimately how they perform thermally and acoustically, with aesthetics taking a bit of a backseat. If a case is hideous but does its job really well (looking at you, Antec GX700), and the price is right, sacrifices can be made. The 900D is a different beast entirely, though; airflow design and stock performance just aren't part of the equation, and anyone who buys the 900D and then uses it in its stock configuration is someone who has more money than sense. I can tell you that with the pair of closed loop coolers I've installed in my Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 (Swiftech H220 on the CPU and Arctic Accelero Hybrid on the GTX 680), Nanoxia's airflow design and fan control became somewhat less important. Note that this design, coupled with a Noctua fan wherever I could put one, allows my ~$109 case to very effectively cool a 4.6GHz i7-3770K and a GTX 680 overclocked as far as the silicon itself will allow under NVIDIA's voltage spec. I bring all of that up to give you perspective on the 900D and its potential position in your computing life.

The 900D is exceptionally well built, and outside of the expansion slots, it's easy to assemble. At $349 it prices itself right out of contention for the vast majority of users, and the fact that it's an underwhelming choice for air cooling further shrinks its niche. That makes it a strange sort of halo product and while liquid cooling enthusiasts will probably love it, they were already reasonably well served by the 800D. At $49 more it's not unreasonable to just make the jump to the 900D if you were going to buy the 800D in the first place. I do think for the price Corsair could've sucked it up and included the other two drive cages, but I have a hard time sweating the case still shipping with nine cages.

If I'm a bit ambivalent about the 900D, it's for two reasons: one, I had to actually build and move the thing, which wasn't fun, and two, I'm not really sure anyone really needed it. The 800D was already popular and doing well on its own, so Corsair just made a better one. That's fine, but the majority of their case line is going unaddressed. A little birdie told me I'll be seeing something new and exciting from them soon, but they're at the point now where they need to start actually refreshing and improving existing designs. More than that, air cooling has always been a weak point in Corsair's portfolio, and it's something that desperately needs to be addressed.

This is another one of those cases where you already know if you want it or not. Whether or not it's worth the money is subjective; I feel like if I were a liquid cooling enthusiast, the Corsair Obsidian 900D would be pretty close to the holy grail. I'm not sure I'd fork over the cash for it, but in its weird way I don't think the price is actually even part of the discussion. If you do pony up for it and you know what you're planning to do with it, I think you'll be happy with the 900D.