Obsidian 250D

[Essence_of_War]

Has anyone built in this case before?

I was thinking about jumping to mITX in the not-so-distant future, and I think this case looks great, and I wanted to know if anyone if there were any gotchas or pleasant surprises anyone ran into.

 

[aigomorla]

to be honest, i actually love that case.

it has a horizontal mount, which means when the gpu is resting, you dont have torque added to the small board.

Also a heavy heat sink will be able to rest on a flat config, which means a better mount due to less torque, which also translates to more even mounting pressure.

I am a firm supporter of horizontal mounted systems in case.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Yeah, these are all the things that drew me to it in the first place! Small, but not so small that there is no room for airflow. Horizontal mount for that beefy GPU and heatsink even with a small board.

 

[Kenmitch]

Seems like a nice case. I bought one when I thought about going back to mITX. Opened it up and checked it out. Seems like a nice design. In the end decided to go mATX instead so I exchanged it.

 

[Phanuel]

Off the bat gotchas. You can't really put a 120mm vertical cooling heatsink in it. It's not tall enough.

For 2 fan 240mm AiOs, you can only fit 27mm or thinner radiator based AiOs if using 25mm fans next to the motherboard. Otherwise you'll need to use 20mm fans for 30mm+ radiators. You can fit any kind of single fan AiO in the front if you want though.

Some video card third party coolers are taller than the space above the graphics card slot and would hit the top panel. My EVGA SCX 2.0+ is fine, but I think the classified and some others are just too tall.

The SSD drive cages are a bit fiddly and I ended up having to really jam them in to get them to finally seat as the cables on the Corsair power supply (daisy chained) interfere with each other. I think I ended up flipping the SSDs 180 to each other just to try and move the cables out of alignment with each other.

Cable routing is good, plenty of stamped in places to zip tie wires to.

 

[Essence_of_War]

So compact tower coolers, AIOs, or down-draft coolers?

Were you running into tight vertical space with or without the optical drive?

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Here is a video showing a system being built in a 250D. It looks like a pretty well-designed case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA125dPU-uk

It seems to get great GPU temps with a blower style card too.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2014/01/21/corsair-obsidian-250d-review/3

 

[aigomorla]

So compact tower coolers, AIOs, or down-draft coolers?

Were you running into tight vertical space with or without the optical drive?

i would probably go noctua C series on this guy... or a thermalright AXP-140 due to the fact only a thin 27mm rad can be shoved in.

Thin Rad + Weak Sause Pump + crappy stock fans => not worth headache to get a AIO.

 

[Essence_of_War]

i would probably go noctua C series on this guy

Ya...I'm not thrilled with AIOs either...I had similiar thoughts, a Noctua C/L or possibly a Big Shuriken.

 

[Millerboy3]

This case is a.... whats a nice way to put it, spacious yet challenging ITX case? It has plenty of space, but most of the time in some of all the wrong places. The rad problem is very true with the exception of the front 120/140mm position.

I ended up using a 240mm rad as a passive heatsink for the most part. Honestly I wanted this case and wanted to experiment with some different things. So I built it, it has minimal use as a file server with some 1080p streaming occasionally and it hosts various server things like Teamspeak and vent and such.

Anyway check out what I ended up throwing together

The 240mm rad statement is 100% on point, keep in mind that even a 27mm rad might not work depending on your motherboard (mine wouldn't fit an h100i + SP120 fans) because of the power phase heatsink/caps behind the heatsink! Now on top of that think carefully the layout you want to use (where the fittings on the rad will go) because where the mobo sits/where the fan is mounted in the front, things may get tight or in the way!

Here's what I put in it

Here is the rediculous pump and little pump/res combo I wanted to experiment with.

Mine is CPU only loop, and will stay that way as it will never get a true discreet gfx card, the curent one is only in there because my mobo wants to be finicky when I reset the bios -_-

 

[piasabird]

Try looking to see if there are any build videos on YouTube.

 

[Phanuel]

So compact tower coolers, AIOs, or down-draft coolers?

Were you running into tight vertical space with or without the optical drive?

Yeah, compact and down draft only coolers if you're not going to do AiO water cooling.

I didn't put the optical drive in and took the cage out completely, but it really doesn't interfere with the airspace above the motherboard.

It could be a fun challenge to get a proper WC set up using the newer EK 25mm rads but that's about all that would work on the side there. I do wish they had added an extra 5-10mms on the CPU side of the case.

 

[Essence_of_War]

This case is a.... whats a nice way to put it, spacious yet challenging ITX case? It has plenty of space, but most of the time in some of all the wrong places. The rad problem is very true with the exception of the front 120/140mm position.

I ended up using a 240mm rad as a passive heatsink for the most part. Honestly I wanted this case and wanted to experiment with some different things. So I built it, it has minimal use as a file server with some 1080p streaming occasionally and it hosts various server things like Teamspeak and vent and such.

Anyway check out what I ended up throwing together

The 240mm rad statement is 100% on point, keep in mind that even a 27mm rad might not work depending on your motherboard (mine wouldn't fit an h100i + SP120 fans) because of the power phase heatsink/caps behind the heatsink! Now on top of that think carefully the layout you want to use (where the fittings on the rad will go) because where the mobo sits/where the fan is mounted in the front, things may get tight or in the way!

Here's what I put in it

Here is the rediculous pump and little pump/res combo I wanted to experiment with.

Mine is CPU only loop, and will stay that way as it will never get a true discreet gfx card, the curent one is only in there because my mobo wants to be finicky when I reset the bios -_-

Nice build pictures! Really gives a sense of what you're working with space-wise.

Yeah, compact and down draft only coolers if you're not going to do AiO water cooling.

I didn't put the optical drive in and took the cage out completely, but it really doesn't interfere with the airspace above the motherboard.

It could be a fun challenge to get a proper WC set up using the newer EK 25mm rads but that's about all that would work on the side there. I do wish they had added an extra 5-10mms on the CPU side of the case.

Out of curiosity, did you find that removing the optical drive cage made the case feel less stable? I saw HardwareCanucks mention something like that, but they had also stripped it down to just basically a cage at that point, so I wasn't sure if it was the optical cage, or if it was the optical cage + everything else they removed.

 

[Millerboy3]

Nice build pictures! Really gives a sense of what you're working with space-wise.



Out of curiosity, did you find that removing the optical drive cage made the case feel less stable? I saw HardwareCanucks mention something like that, but they had also stripped it down to just basically a cage at that point, so I wasn't sure if it was the optical cage, or if it was the optical cage + everything else they removed.

Mine has the optical bay removed, its actually only 2 or 4 screws. I didnt feel any instability in the 250d without it like the 900d feels without its 5.25 bays

 

[Phanuel]

No instability noted here. But I wasn't really picking it up and resting it on a front vertical edge and putting weight on it. The sides and top are pretty thoroughly slid into channels and lock up really tightly.

I'll try and get a picture at some point.