Corsair Obsidian 550d?

Just a quick FYI, but removing my front door, fan door, and fan filters has DRAMATICALLY lowered my temps on both GPU and CPU. It's not event that much louder, lol. I dust it once a week. More than worth it for the temp drops. As for silence, my board + the Asus AI Suite allows me to turn all 3 front fans off and CPU/Exhaust down to 600 RPM. @ those levels, it doesn't matter that the case is open.

I do wish Corsair offered a windowed side panel as an option. :(
 
shadyqwerty said:
Just a quick FYI, but removing my front door, fan door, and fan filters has DRAMATICALLY lowered my temps on both GPU and CPU. It's not event that much louder, lol. I dust it once a week. More than worth it for the temp drops.
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No way, dude. I have a cat. I'd be dusting that sucker out daily :p As is, I roll a little kitty carpet off those filters once a week or so and it's nice and clean inside. :D
 
10C on CPU, 12C on GPU.

I also cut out the grills on the exhaust and bottom intake.

I'm surprised by how little dust there actually is. I could probably dust 2x a month.

Edit: Reread your post about the "kitty carpet" about 6 times and finally got it. ROFL! Yeah...hmm...maybe it's time for a new cat?
 
shadyqwerty said:
10C on CPU, 12C on GPU.

I also cut out the grills on the exhaust and bottom intake.

I'm surprised by how little dust there actually is. I could probably dust 2x a month.

Edit: Reread your post about the "kitty carpet" about 6 times and finally got it. ROFL! Yeah...hmm...maybe it's time for a new cat?
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Somehow I don't see how adding additional cats would help ;) I certainly can't get rid of the one I have, my wife would never forgive me :p
 
sorry for the necro but I'm about to buy this case and need to buy fans for it.

I was wondering how many 140mm and 120mm fans is recommended/needed for the case. I'm getting an haswell with a nvidia 760 but won't be overclocking so I don't need every fan slot and I'm looking for silence.
Plan to get the Noctua PWM fans.
 
Drakul said:
sorry for the necro but I'm about to buy this case and need to buy fans for it.

I was wondering how many 140mm and 120mm fans is recommended/needed for the case. I'm getting an haswell with a nvidia 760 but won't be overclocking so I don't need every fan slot and I'm looking for silence.
Plan to get the Noctua PWM fans.
Click to expand...

Definitely get some 140s for the top. In my experience, that made a huge difference in how much air was moving through the plenum. Beyond that, the fans it comes with are probably enough initially. Whether or not you consider the oob fans quiet is going to be heavily dependent on whether you leave the door on/shut vs off/open. You may want a fan controller. I have one for the top 140s to run them at the minimum required volts to make them spin up.
 
cortexodus said:
Definitely get some 140s for the top. In my experience, that made a huge difference in how much air was moving through the plenum. Beyond that, the fans it comes with are probably enough initially. Whether or not you consider the oob fans quiet is going to be heavily dependent on whether you leave the door on/shut vs off/open. You may want a fan controller. I have one for the top 140s to run them at the minimum required volts to make them spin up.
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I'm pretty sure I will have the door open as I like to have the optical drive readily available, we'll see.
I plan to get a PWM mobo et fans so that will help with control.

So if I end up putting 1 at top, 1-2 at front and 1 exhaust at back that's be about 4 fans. Are they all 140mm?
 
Drakul said:
I'm pretty sure I will have the door open as I like to have the optical drive readily available, we'll see.
I plan to get a PWM mobo et fans so that will help with control.

So if I end up putting 1 at top, 1-2 at front and 1 exhaust at back that's be about 4 fans. Are they all 140mm?
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Pretty sure the case comes with 1x back and 2x front already. Add 2x top 140s and you're golden imo. Don't replace the oob fans unless you find they're too loud imo. No way to know without tryin' 'em first.
 
cortexodus said:
Pretty sure the case comes with 1x back and 2x front already. Add 2x top 140s and you're golden imo. Don't replace the oob fans unless you find they're too loud imo. No way to know without tryin' 'em first.
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Good point, saves a few $$.
 
Drakul said:
sorry for the necro but I'm about to buy this case and need to buy fans for it.

I was wondering how many 140mm and 120mm fans is recommended/needed for the case. I'm getting an haswell with a nvidia 760 but won't be overclocking so I don't need every fan slot and I'm looking for silence.
Plan to get the Noctua PWM fans.
Click to expand...

You don't need ANY fans for that setup.

FWIW, I'm using a single 120mm exhaust @ 1500 RPM w/ an overclocked 4670K and 780 Ti that dumps ALL of its heat INSIDE the case. This dual 140 top exhaust in addition to the rear exhaust suggestion is laughable.

All u need are the fans it comes with bro. Get a good board that can control the fans and your golden. I have my fans turn off completely when not stressing.
 
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shadyqwerty said:
You don't need ANY fans for that setup.

FWIW, I'm using a single 120mm exhaust @ 1500 RPM w/ an overclocked 4670K and 780 Ti that dumps ALL of its heat INSIDE the case. This dual 140 top exhaust in addition to the rear exhaust suggestion is laughable.

All u need are the fans it comes with bro. Get a good board that can control the fans and your golden. I have my fans turn off completely when not stressing.
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It may not be necessary, but I disagree that having the additional 140s is "laughable" only because having the top mount 140s means I don't have to rev anything up to 1500RPM. Having the 140s means I can run everything "low and slow". Lots of heat removal with very little noise penalty ;)
 
Good point!

My situation is that the fans only run full tilt when gaming and I've got my headphones on so I can't hear it anyway. Also, I'm trying to direct that heat AWAY from me rather than blast it all over my balls. :eek:

Although, I can now see how those top exhausts could be helpful...especially when using speakers and playing a quiet SP game!

edit: I see you have an Nvidia space heater as well. :D
 
shadyqwerty said:
Good point!

My situation is that the fans only run full tilt when gaming and I've got my headphones on so I can't hear it anyway. Also, I'm trying to direct that heat AWAY from me rather than blast it all over my balls. :eek:

Although, I can now see how those top exhausts could be helpful...especially when using speakers and playing a quiet SP game!

edit: I see you have an Nvidia space heater as well. :D
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I use headphones as well, but the background whoosh can still overpower open-back headphones in quiet situations (quiet games, coding, etc.) If I could afford the addition (or understood the necessities of a liquid configuration well enough) I would run the biggest radiator possible with slowest fans to keep it even quieter.

As for "space heater", lol, it's WAY cooler than the 570s in SLI that it replaced. I had to keep the office door open for that crap or even just sitting at idle it would raise the room temp to over 70 in the dead of winter, and I keep the thermostat in the house at 64! As it is with the 780, I gotta wear slippers in my office and my wife says it's not cozy in there anymore :p
 
Yup, I do hear them a bit in some gaming situations.

Sounds like a win to me. Cooler GPU and the wife no like the room anymore.

Also, just an FYI guys, but my configuration is:

2 front intake
1 bottom intake
1 cpu
1 exhaust

I turn the intakes off when not gaming and run the other 2 @ 550 RPM. The GPU runs @ 1100 RPM. @ those speeds the loudest thing in my case is easily my Western Digital Blue HDD. It whines a high frequency whine and of course that motor noise annoys as well. VERY tempted to get me a cheap 512 GB SSD and pitch that silly mechanical.

Anyway, what I'm getting @ is that if I have the front door, fan door, and filters on...my GPU and CPU get PRETTY toasty. With all 3 off, the temps go way down. I also cut out the fan grills of the rear exhaust and bottom intake. Sure, it's no longer super quiet when @ load, but the temps are so much better. IMO, it's totally worth it.

In the future though, I'd like a larger case. A 550D w/ a window that's the size of the 750D.
 
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Have fun!

I'm currently trying to figure out what to do w/ the WD Blue 6400AAKS that's driving me nuts. Very quiet, yet high pitched AND variable whine. I don't...remember...it being this bad before? Maybe time for backup, lol.
 
shadyqwerty said:
Have fun!

I'm currently trying to figure out what to do w/ the WD Blue 6400AAKS that's driving me nuts. Very quiet, yet high pitched AND variable whine. I don't...remember...it being this bad before? Maybe time for backup, lol.
Click to expand...

I personally got a Samsung EVO for the OS on my new rig so that should be silent and my HDD is a WD Black. Not sure how that'll go but we'll see
 
Just depends on your ears. I've had Raptors, Blacks, Blues, and now an SSD. My Raptors were terrible, but there was no other option @ the time. The Blacks are pretty bad too.
 
So I've been running this case since 2012 and didn't realize you could open the front panel until now. Upon opening the panel and the fan door, I was greeted with an entire layer of dust on the bottom fan. The area in front of the top fan was clean because...well, apparently the top fan was never on.

Now to figure out whether it's faulty or I just neglected to plug something in.
 
Drakul said:
I personally got a Samsung EVO for the OS on my new rig so that should be silent and my HDD is a WD Black. Not sure how that'll go but we'll see
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Not every WD with the same number is equal to the others....

From the W5000 AAKS for example exist three (that I know of) different hardware versions: one with 2 platters 4 heads, one with 2 platters 3 heads and one with 1 platter 2 heads.

Also: I have three WD6400AAKS drives in this PC. And one of them has very different AAM settings. If you run 'm separate (they are in a RAID 0 array), one will score significantly better in access time, but will be much noisier.

In my experience the WD6401AALS (the 640 GB Black at the time) is noisier than the 640 GB Blue (WD6400AAKS), yet also faster.
 
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