Corsair is pumping out cases at a high pace; one could think this leads to a lesser design or a lower build quality. Corsair wouldn't be Corsair if every detail hasn't been verified twice. The today tested Obsidian 450D is a high quality mid-tower case; the Obsidian range is renowned for their sleek and no frills design. This 450D model perfectly fills up the existing gap between the micro ATX 350D and the full tower 750D Obsidian enclosures.

Awesome airflow is what this 450D model is all about, managing to best and even surpass it's bigger 750D brother during the temperature testing. The dual 140 front fans serve as intake and providing direct cooling on the installed HDD's and the graphics card. The heat is expelled in the rear via a 120mm fan, plus the well ventilated top allows no hot air to remain trapped. If ever the stock cooling potential needs some help one can add up to 5 extra fans to create your own personal in house tornado. Water cooling purists will have no installation woes as the top compartment can easily house out of the box a 360mm radiator. A further two 240mm radiators can be installed in the front and the bottom while sacrificing the easily removable HDD cage.

Installing your favorite hardware inside the Obsidian 450D is a matter of minutes as the case is very user friendly to work in, thanks to the numerous cutouts cable management is a breeze, allowing to achieve a clean build.

Storage-wise might be one of the main discussion points with this Obsidian 450D: a max of three HDDs are supported in the modular HDD cage. On the backside of the motherboard tray two SSD bays are foreseen, though I can imagine some users need more storage then what this 450D has to offer out of the box. An optional HDD cage can be ordered to double the total of the HDDs to six, though no word yet on the pricing.  Due to the highly ventilated nature of this case, this 450D model is not as quiet as the more expensive 750D model, though looking at the given cooling performance, it seems small sacrifices had to be made.

The Corsair 450D is a great looking mid-tower case offering maximum cooling performance; hardware compatibility is quite good. Too bad for the triple HDD support, as most cases in the same price category offer more storage space. As with all Corsair cases the attention to detail is high and words can hardly explain how easy going these cases are when assembling. This mid-tower 450D is another great addition to the popular Obsidian series. The Obsidian 450D receives the MadShrimps Performance award for its great cooling potential.

PROS:

• Great aesthetics
• Windowed panel
• Cooling performance
• Easy cable management
• Water cooling upgradability

CONS:

• Only 3 HDDs supported
• Two extra front I/O USBs plz

Thanks to Harry from Corsair for providing us with the Corsair 450D sample

Sven from ASUS for the X79 Rampage IV Extreme motherboard

The Tones crew for the provision of the Intel i7-3960X processor