Corsair Obsidian 250D Case Review

Final Words

Corsair says, "if you want to build a Mini ITX system without sacrificing expansion, flexibility, or performance, the Obsidian Series 250D is your answer". Although that may be the case, the Obsidian 250D does sacrifice one thing: compactness. The volume of the case is by no means small, meaning that the Obsidian 250D is not meant to be a small system to be hidden away. As a matter of fact, it would be more accurate to call the Obsidian 250D a mini version of the Carbide 540 Air. The large volume and cubic design also make the Obsidian 250D a not so friendly case for frequent LAN party attenders, as it is inconvenient to carry around, regardless of its lightweight construction.

When compared to Mini-ITX cases designed with compactness in mind, for living rooms and narrow spaces, the volume difference is vast. For example, the Obsidian 250D requires four times more volume than the Silverstone Milo ML05, a case designed for HTPC builds (0.028 vs 0.007 cubic meters). The Obsidian 250D however is not a case designed for HTPC builds or for anyone seeking to build a system smaller than the size of an average shoebox.

Corsair created the Obsidian 250D for enthusiasts who want to create a fully featured, powerful gaming system in compact dimensions. As such, the Obsidian 250D feels perfectly balanced. The two 2.5" slots for SSDs allow the use of either a single drive or a fast RAID array and up to two 3.5" HDD slots provide for high capacity drives and are more than enough for most users -- not to mention very few Mini-ITX motherboards have more than four SATA connectors anyway. (Do not forget that the optical drive, if installed, will need one SATA connector as well.) There is also enough space to house a powerful GFX card and room to install liquid cooling solutions; these are what the vast majority of enthusiasts will ever ask for.

However, we do not feel that the Corsair Obsidian 250D is for gamers and enthusiasts alone. As it is an aesthetically appealing product and selling for a fair price, it can easily attract the attention of typical home users as well. Home users require a balance between a good appearance, silent operation, some expandability and good value for money, the combination of which can be easily used to describe the Obsidian 250D. Especially considering that modern Mini-ITX motherboards come with just about everything onboard, very few home users will require any expansion cards. A typical Mini-ITX board paired with a mainstream CPU (or with an integrated CPU/APU), a couple of HDDs for storage, a single SSD for the OS and perhaps a good GFX card are more than enough to please most home users and casual gamers, all of which can easily fit inside the Obsidian 250D.

While designing the Obsidian 250D, Corsair made some very good and some not so good selections. The slow, narrow bladed fans are one of the very good selections. Narrow blades tend to be noisier at high RPM and reduce the static pressure of a fan, but on the other hand they make no audible difference at low RPM and have greater free-delivery CFM ratings. Case fans are almost entirely unobstructed and typically perform better with high free-flow CFM ratings, while static pressure ratings are unimportant. Filling the case with cable tie mounting points also was a very good idea, as they really do help with the cable management in such a design. The opening beneath the motherboard not only is practical but also helpful to overclockers, even though that may not have been one of the original intentions.

Moving to the other side of the coin, installing USB 3.0 only front panel ports without providing an adapter for USB 2.0 motherboard headers is a bad call, as very few Mini-ITX motherboards have a USB 3.0 header. An adapter will be required by most users, especially those who will go with value and mainstream range motherboards, in order to convert the front USB 3.0 ports to USB 2.0 ports. Optional improvements could be the modification of the optical drive support frame, allowing it to be repurposed if no optical drive is installed rather than making it entirely useless.

To summarize, the Obsidian 250D is a well-made, versatile and fairly priced Mini-ITX high performance case. Its main drawback is that it is not really "mini"; the cubic case is small but hardly less conspicuous than small tower cases. Nevertheless, it can fit very powerful components within relatively compact proportions. Enthusiasts can even go with a full liquid cooled system, using a liquid cooler on the CPU and mount the radiator on the side of the case and another liquid cooler on the GPU (with the aid of NZXT's newly released Kraken G10 bracket, for example) and mount the radiator to the front of the case. For those that want to build a compact and silent yet fully featured and powerful PC, the Obsidian 250D is a fine choice.