Corsair Obsidian 350D Case Review

Assembling the Corsair Obsidian 350D

I'm going to point out that the Corsair Obsidian 350D arrived in my hot little hands less than 24 hours before this review went up. Midnight oil was burned, a housecat was shamefully ignored, a Blue Moon was consumed, and had this enclosure come from any other vendor this review might not be up right now. This will be the 75th case I've reviewed, and I've gotten pretty quick at putting these bad boys together, but that depends heavily on the case itself not having any unusual quirks or hiccups. While the 350D's instruction manual isn't particularly instructional, assembly turned out to be as painless as I've come to expect.

This is the easiest time I've had installing an I/O shield for the motherboard, and then the motherboard itself was tremendously easy to install simply because Corsair included an alignment stud in the center of the motherboard tray. In the case of the mini-ITX board being used for testing, that meant popping that stud into the top right corner of the board, lining it up with the I/O shield, and then just screwing it in. The case's cables and headers are all long enough to easily connect to the motherboard without leaving too much excess.

Installing the drives was just as painless. The shields for the 5.25" drive bays pop out by squeezing two wedges inside the bay, and the toolless mechanism used to secure the optical drive does its job well. What I appreciated was attention finally being paid to making 2.5" drive installation toolless. I've seen strides from other vendors towards making this more common, and while the 2.5" plastic segmented drive cage Corsair uses looks a little clunky, it works extremely well. 2.5" drives are inserted from behind the motherboard tray and a plastic wedge holds them in place. It's a surprisingly secure design. 3.5" drives use the same old plastic trays Corsair's been using for a while and if anything, these probably need a minor update. They get the job done, but they're at least a little flimsy.

I could go on about how easy it was to install the power supply and graphics card and wire everything, but the reality is that everything went swimmingly. The pair of routing holes for the power supply cables worked as well as I'd expected, and Corsair has ultimately made a case somehow even easier to build a system in. I might gripe a little about the slightly cramped quarters behind the motherboard tray, but the hinged side panel goes a long way towards alleviating any frustration that might cause. Honestly, the only hiccup I ran into was that the front intake fan uses a 3-pin connector but the testbed motherboard can't support it, and Corsair didn't include any allowances for that. I wound up having to use a molex adapter, and I do think it would've been prudent of Corsair to include one. Some boards only include headers for a CPU fan and a system fan.

Worth noting is that the space above the motherboard tray is copious, but if you opt to install a 280mm radiator, it will intrude upon the top 5.25" drive bay. This is unfortunately a sacrifice made in allowing for this compatibility in a case as small as the 350D is. The 350D is about two inches taller than the competing Fractal Design Define Mini (owing to the fifth expansion slot and the radiator headroom), but it's also two inches shallower, and it offers amenities the Define Mini lacks.