Corsair 450D review

Belial_69699 · April 11, 2014

I ordered a Corsair 450D case on March 28th and finally got around to putting my rig into it Tuesday night (April 8th). Wanted to give a short review of my experience with it in case anyone was debating whether or not to buy one. Personally, I almost jumped and bought the Corsair 540 when it first came out, I'm glad I didn't though. To me after looking over the 540 very closely it seemed to me like Corsair cut corners on it with examples being leaving big gaping holes under the hard drive hot swap trays, not having dust covers over all the openings on the case, even the price seemed a bit high to me. This isn't a "bash the 540" thread though.

My previous case was a Corsair 600T with a Corsair H80, rest of my rig is the same. My current system specs are as follows so you'll get an idea of what went into my 450D build:

ASUS Z77 Sabertooth

Intel i5 3570K

Corsair H110

x2 Corsair AF 140 White LED

x1 Corsair AF 120 White LED

16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum

EVGA GTX 680 FTW

Corsair HX 750

Corsair Force GS 180GB SSD

Western Digital Black 750GB HD

LG DVD Vurner

First thing I did was replace the stock AF fans with the Corsair AF 140 and 120 White LED fans. Fan replacement was easy, hole placements were perfect.

Next thing was setting the motherboard. Again, hole placements were perfect, no problems. I put in my power supply as well, only ran the 2 cables to the motherboard and left the other modular connectors unhooked for now.

I went ahead and connected the fan wires to the motherboard now because when (and if you use a top mounted radiator like the H110) you mount the radiator at the top of the case you have very minimal room to connect fan wires to the top of the motherboard. I also ran my cpu power cords from my psu at this time as well, again, very limited space at the top.

I probably should have waited on putting in my DVD burner next, might have given me a little bit more room at the top but I put it in anyway.

Now is where I started to get a little annoyed. I installed the Corsair H110. This really isn't a bash against the 450D case, the case is in fact a Mid-Tower case so there might not be as much room as you think between the motherboard and the ceiling of the case when installing a top mounted rad.

That and along with the instruction manual of the H110 is to put it nicely "insufficient". Seriously, even with the pictures it was rather confusing at first but after messing around with it for a while you figure it out.

The hard part was getting the radiator AND both of the fans together fitting it at the top of the case. With some gentle persuasion and patience I managed to line up the holes and get the radiator set into place. Honestly, this was the only real hard part about working in this case was setting the radiator into place.

Rest of the build was easy, installed both SSD and secondary hard drive. Hard drive bays seem just fine to me, didn't seem cheap or fragile, still always be gentle when installing drives.

Went ahead and ran cables from the psu to various components as well as connected case connectors to the motherboard. Zip tied as much as I could to help decrease any cable clutter and to help with cable routing in the back of the case. In my experience depending on how many cables you've got stashed in the back it may be a little difficult putting on the side panel to the back. I met some resistance but not much.

Removed the protective plastic Corsair had over the front mesh panel, side panel and filters. Hooked everything back up and started it up.. AMAZING how quiet it was. Compared to my 600T case I had previously, it was like a whisper. Even with the H110 its super quiet. LED fans are nice, they aren't blinding but give off enough light. I honestly thought about replacing the H110 fans with AF LED fans but not interested in taking my rig apart again so soon. lol

For those of you who think TLDR I'll sum it up:

Pros:

Price is reasonable.

Dust covers over everything, my 600T was a dust hog even with its filters but I also had the mesh side cover.

Plenty of room for top mounted radiators of various sizes.

Cooling seems to be really good. Keeps my motherboard, cpu, everything really even cooler than my 600T case did.

Quiet, stylish, doesn't feel cheap.

Easy to work in.

Cons:

I really haven't encountered any cons personally, the only negative encounter I had with this case was getting the H110 set into place and even that wasn't too bad after making sure cables were out of the way and having some patience.

Hope this review helps. I might come back and edit it with a couple of pics and a screenshot of my Sabertooth's Thermal Armor temps at idle and load after gaming.

Edit: Pic links

The goods:

http://i.imgur.com/FSk8fSb.jpg

Angle views:

http://i.imgur.com/36safoV.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/1enUTfp.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/1J5IuGy.jpg

Front view:

http://i.imgur.com/GUhu582.jpg

Idle Temps:

http://i.imgur.com/9Jpgels.jpg

Load Temps: