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Crystal 280x tasteful easy airflow improvement


RobAP

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I have a black 280x more for style than total awesome overclocking. However, the reviewers of these cases are all complaining about the fan choking placement of, well, everything. I can see what they're talking about.

 

Well some looking and poking around the hardware store with a list of measurements and some parts in my pocket gave me what I needed.

 

First, this case sits low. 7/16" of the ground (just under a half inch)

Second, the top glass sits tight. That glass only has 1/4" gap around the edge for your 140mm fan to suck in or blow out through.

 

Fixes from my local ACE hardware:

1.) Patio furniture plastic foot ends! Yes, the case feet have two pegs to fit into the bottom, but they actually fit perfectly into the furniture footings! All you have to do is drill out the tiny hole in the bottom of it for your screw to go through, plus you will need a half inch longer screw as well, so pick up four of those while you're there. Go too long and your PSU will block it. These little bits double the height of the case, completely doubling the air intake area.

 

oUNymxA.jpg

 

2.) Fixing that top glass. Look in the fitting, screws, bolts section and you will find nylon spacers. The posts, are 1/4" diameter or possibly a bit more but a 6mm I.D. spacer is not large enough....I found that one out. So The spacers I used are 3/8" black nylon. I got some larger ones as well to make the posts look fatter and the same diameter of the rubber feet inset to the glass. This raised the glass to a total of 5/8", making the intake area from 9 sq. inches to 24 sq. inches.2.5 times standard. The thumb screws are juust long enough to secure the glass well.

 

7EbM6tI.jpg

 

and guess what? It isn't too high and looks the part given the other overlapping glass sticking up.

 

LxPoE0M.jpg

 

The front glass, actually, isn't too bad. There's almost a half inch of space at the top, venting in the sides and overall not so bad especially if you don't plan to run a radiator in the front with powerful intake fans. General airflow fans though? 140's? Perfect for that. Lots of people look at radiators and believe they are flooding massive heat into the case but it's really not on the scale you may think. So these fixes ao enough air to really make the case stay good looking but also really flow so much more than before. I will put a 280 radiator in the top. The trick is to get ones as narrow as possible. A few AIO cooling kits have rads 137mm wide leaving you enough room to work cables. But in reality, an air-cooled build with all the 140 fans you can find should work very well with these fixes combined. Quite too.

 

Hope you liked it.

Edited by RobAP
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I'm in a love, hate relation with this case :sigh!: I wish Corsair would do a 3.0 version of this case.

 

I don't know if I'm explaining it right, but I would love to see :

 

-Top Glass Panel to magnetically unlock and swivel on a right angle covering the Top right plain side of case, for better exhaust.

 

-Front Glass Panel to magnetically unlock and swivel on a right angle covering the Front right plain side of case, for better exhaust.

 

-Side Glass Panel to magnetically unlock and swivel open with option to take off the hinges to work inside the case.

 

I will load an image down the line of what I'm trying to say for those that can't picture my idea...

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i totally get what youre talking about. acessability for maintenance. honestly raising the top glass like i did makes that exhaust much better and negligible impact to results of it completely gone. The bottom raised with general case fans there bring in any spare air the front can't bring to the game.

 

but swivel panels, indeed would be nice. I did check the front bezel contraption and dissassemble it completely and the glass can be removed, absolutely, and if you wish to replace it with a nice thick mesh, or another shet of metal bent on a sheet metal brake with custom cut designs in it, that would really look good and completely aid breathing. That's getting into heavier modding territory but at least your not cutting and damaging the origional structure, and could return it to stock easy. So the front and top panels could easily be modded into a shiny nice mesh for breathing if the glass adjustment is undesireable.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 6 months later...
i totally get what youre talking about. acessability for maintenance. honestly raising the top glass like i did makes that exhaust much better and negligible impact to results of it completely gone. The bottom raised with general case fans there bring in any spare air the front can't bring to the game.

 

but swivel panels, indeed would be nice. I did check the front bezel contraption and dissassemble it completely and the glass can be removed, absolutely, and if you wish to replace it with a nice thick mesh, or another shet of metal bent on a sheet metal brake with custom cut designs in it, that would really look good and completely aid breathing. That's getting into heavier modding territory but at least your not cutting and damaging the origional structure, and could return it to stock easy. So the front and top panels could easily be modded into a shiny nice mesh for breathing if the glass adjustment is undesireable.

 

Do you know the dimensions of the pegs?

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  • 2 months later...
i totally get what youre talking about. acessability for maintenance. honestly raising the top glass like i did makes that exhaust much better and negligible impact to results of it completely gone. The bottom raised with general case fans there bring in any spare air the front can't bring to the game.

 

but swivel panels, indeed would be nice. I did check the front bezel contraption and dissassemble it completely and the glass can be removed, absolutely, and if you wish to replace it with a nice thick mesh, or another shet of metal bent on a sheet metal brake with custom cut designs in it, that would really look good and completely aid breathing. That's getting into heavier modding territory but at least your not cutting and damaging the origional structure, and could return it to stock easy. So the front and top panels could easily be modded into a shiny nice mesh for breathing if the glass adjustment is undesireable.

Don't understand why Corsair's Design Department can't think of these ideas?... Common sense stuff :roll:, every new case lacks something:dunno:, never a complete WoW factor case... Who does the final decisions??:werd:
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I just got this 280X RGB case, mainly for its beauty along with my new 3700x ITX stuff.

But I've noticed that the temperature of, not CPU, not GPU, but the 3.5" hard disks always keeps climbing up to a level beyond acceptable I believe.

 

Owned the case for a week and I've observed that the hard disk temp. can reach 56c top after 6 hrs of gaming. I think maybe it's the heat of the CPU being pushed by the AMD stock cooler, Wraith Prism toward the harddisk bay. I have ordered a new cooler (Deepcool Captain 240 Pro) and two 5cm fans for the hard disk / cable management chamber. Hope it will help.

 

Do you guys experience the same problem?

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  • 2 weeks later...
I just got this 280X RGB case, mainly for its beauty along with my new 3700x ITX stuff.

But I've noticed that the temperature of, not CPU, not GPU, but the 3.5" hard disks always keeps climbing up to a level beyond acceptable I believe.

 

Owned the case for a week and I've observed that the hard disk temp. can reach 56c top after 6 hrs of gaming. I think maybe it's the heat of the CPU being pushed by the AMD stock cooler, Wraith Prism toward the harddisk bay. I have ordered a new cooler (Deepcool Captain 240 Pro) and two 5cm fans for the hard disk / cable management chamber. Hope it will help.

 

Do you guys experience the same problem?

Register just to give some of my thought regarding this.

 

The case looks gorgeous indeed. I even considered to build one with it, but one of my concern is the hard drives temperature, which no review said about it whilst the design clearly shows how enclosed the HDD chamber without any useful ventilation for airflow nor dedicated fan mount for the space, which is definitely the flaw of this artistic box.

 

There's no point of having separated compartment for 3.5" storage whilst ignoring the fact that spinning disc generates heat that's critical to the longevity of the drives.

 

My guess since not many people complain about the hard drive temps is because their budgets allow them to use just SSD with such expensive case.

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  • 2 months later...

Great job RobAP. I have done something similar. going to be a Ryzen 3600 build. The plastic washers on the glass still need a tiny tidy up. But that will be done when finished.

 

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Edited by IBSLICE
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  • 4 weeks later...
Register just to give some of my thought regarding this.

 

The case looks gorgeous indeed. I even considered to build one with it, but one of my concern is the hard drives temperature, which no review said about it whilst the design clearly shows how enclosed the HDD chamber without any useful ventilation for airflow nor dedicated fan mount for the space, which is definitely the flaw of this artistic box.

 

There's no point of having separated compartment for 3.5" storage whilst ignoring the fact that spinning disc generates heat that's critical to the longevity of the drives.

 

My guess since not many people complain about the hard drive temps is because their budgets allow them to use just SSD with such expensive case.

Are you sure you actually own the 280x? Mine has mounts for a 120mm or 140mm in front of the PSU on the panel.

1159097002_bsidefansmounts.jpg.1e2bd1d583cbc0ff11f1dbe0a743f68a.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for the great ideas! I have the case torn down and am about to start a custom loop 2080ti/9900k with 3x240mm radiators and a 240mm flat reservoir! Wish me luck.

 

QQ: You mentioned that the fans should be pulling fresh air across the rads and into the case. Should I do this for all 3 rads? Or have the front and bottom pull in fresh air and the top push out case air?

 

Thanks!

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  • 1 month later...
Thanks for the great ideas! I have the case torn down and am about to start a custom loop 2080ti/9900k with 3x240mm radiators and a 240mm flat reservoir! Wish me luck.

 

QQ: You mentioned that the fans should be pulling fresh air across the rads and into the case. Should I do this for all 3 rads? Or have the front and bottom pull in fresh air and the top push out case air?

 

Thanks!

I'd love to see some pictures once you're finished

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Yeah, raising the bottom up helped by 2-3 degrees for my GPU. I am pretty disappointed in Corsair about the side panel though. The side panel (width of the case) needed to be slightly thicker to allow a high-end graphics card (like my 1080Ti from EVGA) to fit in the case without the cables pushing against the glass. It wouldn't be a problem, if it didn't effectively push the card causing pressure on the PCIe slot. It's as if Corsair never tested this case...
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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

I am putting in a final word on this case for anyone finding one to build today.

 

I initially built the pictured rig in the first post with an overclocked 1500x (placeholder till 3k stuff arrived). I was at 4.0 all cores at 1.37vc which showed about 85 watts use on HWmonitor. A 1070sc evga card and it was very quiet overall considering the fan curves and keeping about 10 deg. clear of max temps of all parts.

 

I used the H115i rgb kit, a 280 AiO system. I have Kryonaut under it now. The intake fans are ML 140's and underneath I had the two case fans it came with blowing on the 1070. I bought Silverstone PWM splitters and had total control over all fans on all fan headers. It was a good and quiet enough build.

 

I changed out to a 3700x which runs at stock speeds, and burns idle wattage at what my fully loaded 1500x OC was burning. At it's max, its 110+ watts. The fans were curved up a bit more to compensate but I didn't need too much.

 

This case is not meant for any more power than that. If you were to, say, install a 2070 super, like I tried to do, you would find another 70 watts of heat introduced to the system. That heat required even more fan curve to bring in cool air, and even more fan curve to blow it out of the top radiator. I installed two 80mm Noctua fans on the back grill (actually easy if you don't mind drilling a pilot hole or two) and I really didn't get much more help out of that, but every little bit helps.

 

My idle cpu temps were 60 while folding on the 2070s card. I was heat soaking the radiator! I was never even close to those temps before. The fan curves were increased again. The fan noise was terrible for the home office because the ML 115i cooling fans are ridiculous loud approaching 2000rpm. I pulled the filter screens off the front and bottom so it could actually breathe more. It helped quite a bit at that rpm, but was still loud. The card was seeing 80, the cpu was seeing 80. I could have gone louder on fans, but what was the point. I needed a fix.

 

Recommended design fixes: This case needs a 92mm exhaust fan out the back at least. There is room in the design. Or, punch out the glass just a bit more to fit a 155mm CPU cooler...like the majority of the good ones made are...and fit a 120 fan out the back and save the day.

 

The final note to build a high power system in this short box is to either spend a LOT of money on fans that Corsair does not make for as high an intake pressure as you can get with some semblance of quiet (Noctua's a12's are fantastic, cougars, for example) or, be okay with hairdryer noise in your build. Gaming with music and headphones on and I can still hear the rig trying to breathe?

 

This is an office computer build for someone who is not a power user. It can cool, probably, up tp 400 watts of at load power at audibly quiet office levels (especially with a 3-fan GPU card)

 

After that, the noise dramatically goes up. I'm glad Corsair has a 570 version of this with a mesh front and 120 out the back. That will pretty much fix the whole problem. What people tried to do with this280x, is use it for a game build, instead of a piece of office art for which it was designed.

 

I'm moving this build to the kid's computer use, and putting my higher power things in a Meshify-C tg case. I'm sorry Corsair.

 

Please reach out to me off line if you would like to discuss other directions. I would love to have some input to understated, classy, quiet, yet capable designs. I've built homebrew liquid cooling solutions in my past, cutting up a cooler master cm5 case for bottom draw radiator cooling, used your obsidian 800d and the quiet padded 500 cases. I understand airflow and fly for a living, know about heat transfer and aesthetics. But I'm off the big C until I see something interesting in the future...(I'm still buying the PSU products though! You rock with them!)

 

MODS! please close this one up. The case has been tested, used, abused, and found what it is. Good work on this one! It is a classic gorgeous design piece, and you all are doing better and better every day. Keep up the good work.

Edited by RobAP
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  • 2 months later...

Went to my local Ace after tearing the website apart looking for these items. I could only find the nylon spacers in white and got 2 sizes. The 3/8 tall they had were too small of an ID to go over the pegs in the top and the next ID up were 1/2 tall which wouldn't allow the stock fasteners to screw in at all. So pulled the trusty drill out and drilled the 3/8 tall ones out another ID and good to go.

 

As to the feet extenders the clear ones they had there were much larger diameter then the Corsair feet and wouldn't have looked correct. So still hunting something to raise the case itself.

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I am putting in a final word on this case for anyone finding one to build today.

 

I initially built the pictured rig in the first post with an overclocked 1500x (placeholder till 3k stuff arrived). I was at 4.0 all cores at 1.37vc which showed about 85 watts use on HWmonitor. A 1070sc evga card and it was very quiet overall considering the fan curves and keeping about 10 deg. clear of max temps of all parts.

 

I used the H115i rgb kit, a 280 AiO system. I have Kryonaut under it now. The intake fans are ML 140's and underneath I had the two case fans it came with blowing on the 1070. I bought Silverstone PWM splitters and had total control over all fans on all fan headers. It was a good and quiet enough build.

 

I changed out to a 3700x which runs at stock speeds, and burns idle wattage at what my fully loaded 1500x OC was burning. At it's max, its 110+ watts. The fans were curved up a bit more to compensate but I didn't need too much.

 

This case is not meant for any more power than that. If you were to, say, install a 2070 super, like I tried to do, you would find another 70 watts of heat introduced to the system. That heat required even more fan curve to bring in cool air, and even more fan curve to blow it out of the top radiator. I installed two 80mm Noctua fans on the back grill (actually easy if you don't mind drilling a pilot hole or two) and I really didn't get much more help out of that, but every little bit helps.

 

My idle cpu temps were 60 while folding on the 2070s card. I was heat soaking the radiator! I was never even close to those temps before. The fan curves were increased again. The fan noise was terrible for the home office because the ML 115i cooling fans are ridiculous loud approaching 2000rpm. I pulled the filter screens off the front and bottom so it could actually breathe more. It helped quite a bit at that rpm, but was still loud. The card was seeing 80, the cpu was seeing 80. I could have gone louder on fans, but what was the point. I needed a fix.

 

Recommended design fixes: This case needs a 92mm exhaust fan out the back at least. There is room in the design. Or, punch out the glass just a bit more to fit a 155mm CPU cooler...like the majority of the good ones made are...and fit a 120 fan out the back and save the day.

 

The final note to build a high power system in this short box is to either spend a LOT of money on fans that Corsair does not make for as high an intake pressure as you can get with some semblance of quiet (Noctua's a12's are fantastic, cougars, for example) or, be okay with hairdryer noise in your build. Gaming with music and headphones on and I can still hear the rig trying to breathe?

 

This is an office computer build for someone who is not a power user. It can cool, probably, up tp 400 watts of at load power at audibly quiet office levels (especially with a 3-fan GPU card)

 

After that, the noise dramatically goes up. I'm glad Corsair has a 570 version of this with a mesh front and 120 out the back. That will pretty much fix the whole problem. What people tried to do with this280x, is use it for a game build, instead of a piece of office art for which it was designed.

 

I'm moving this build to the kid's computer use, and putting my higher power things in a Meshify-C tg case. I'm sorry Corsair.

 

Please reach out to me off line if you would like to discuss other directions. I would love to have some input to understated, classy, quiet, yet capable designs. I've built homebrew liquid cooling solutions in my past, cutting up a cooler master cm5 case for bottom draw radiator cooling, used your obsidian 800d and the quiet padded 500 cases. I understand airflow and fly for a living, know about heat transfer and aesthetics. But I'm off the big C until I see something interesting in the future...(I'm still buying the PSU products though! You rock with them!)

 

MODS! please close this one up. The case has been tested, used, abused, and found what it is. Good work on this one! It is a classic gorgeous design piece, and you all are doing better and better every day. Keep up the good work.

 

tbh I don't understand your issue. all you're saying the fans are too loud, that's not the case's fault. every small volume case will struggle with airflow, that's their nature. Doesn't matter if you take the 280x, a H400i or the Phanteks Evolv. If you want your fans run at 1000rpm under full load go get a big tower. I've slapped in a full custom loop into that thing with a 9900k @5G and 2070S running at 2100MHz 24/7 no sweat. Yes, my fans were running at 1800 rpms, yes you could hear it. there is no silent computer in that sense. heat needs to go somewhere dude. it's true that it has some pretty big flaws like the closed front panel, but nothing keeps you from removing or replacing it. and even with the panel, it's perfectly usable.

PS: maybe you should have tried the radiator as intake. ever thought about that? there are enough openings for air to leave the case. sure, a fan in the back would help (i even put a 80mm rad there) but it's not neccesary at all.

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  • 1 month later...
As to the feet extenders the clear ones they had there were much larger diameter then the Corsair feet and wouldn't have looked correct. So still hunting something to raise the case itself.

 

I just bought a second set of feet from corsair, then removed the attached feet and inverted them, and put the new feet together with them and reattached them. So, now double the clearance and the feet look correct.

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  • 3 months later...

So originally I was interested in this case due to the looks, form and function. Obviously taking into account that airflow wouldn't be optimal. After a few tweaks here and there, It performs just fine. I put a 1/2 cylinder spacer under each screw for the top glass just to give it a little more room, but not too much as to affect the aesthetics. I tried the bumper mentioned at the beginning of this thread, but found them no to do a whole lot when it came to thermals.

 

As for the feet-

 

So opted for these 1" feet:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LDT7UHM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

I just attached them with a longer screw to the existing feet.

 

For the front intake, I have alternated between Arctic P14 PWM & Noctua NF-A14. I currently have the Noctua's in and have them set to 70% (1390-1400 RPM) was the same for Arctic's , except i had them running around 1450. Pushes a good amount of air, while not being too loud.

 

Under the GPU (RTX 2080 Super) I have 2 80mm Noctua fans running at 950-1000 RPM. Originally I had the 2 120's that came with the case under the GPU, but found that although it helped with GPU thermals, it would push the hot air from the GPU in the case when gaming.

 

For CPU cooling, I have a MSI Mag Coreliquid 240r with 2 Arctic P-12's on the Rad cooling off a Ryzen 7 3700X .

 

With all that, after heat soak, it Idles between 30.5-33C. And when pushing the GPU in 1440p ultra gaming, CPU stays around 55C and GPU 62-63C. So not too bad, and not too loud in my opinion

Edited by Anthny8711
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