Assembly

Installing the motherboard itself is a breeze because you have unobstructed access and the board is pretty small. You may install an air cooler of up to 95 mm in height inside the Obsidian 250D. While not much, the chassis is clearly meant to be used with a liquid-cooling setup. Long graphics cards of up to 290 mm in length should also easily fit.


To install storage drives of either the 2.5'' or 3.5" variety, simply take the trays of your choice out. They are made of plastic, but will not require any tools or screws to fill. The only exception would be if you were to install 2.5" drives onto 3.5" trays.


Once filled, simply slide the trays back into the chassis until they snap into place. Lastly, place the rear chassis cover back onto the case, securing it with the thumbscrews. While all this is great for easy assembly, mischievous people at, say, a LAN Party could also quickly gain access to these drives in your absence.


Before placing the ODD tray back into the chassis to install the drive itself, there is a very important little fact to be mentioned. The inability to secure the drive with screws had Corsair place a locking mechanism with metal pins on the side. So you only have to slide the drive into the bay until the pins snap into the optical drive's mounting holes.


Installing the PSU is done through the aforementioned method. However, the metal frame used to secure the PSU is rather thin. It would have been nice of Corsair to use slightly thicker metal here instead. Regardless, there is still no room for play thanks to the tight fit within the bay itself.


With everything in place and some considerable time spent on cable management, the Obisidian 250D makes a great impression. I actually spent the majority of my time during the photoshoot re-routing and tying cables. The I/O cables were joined and routed next to the board, underneath the 120 mm fan on the side, while the power/reset/LED leads were actually hidden away beneath the motherboard. All the cables going from the motherboard to the PSU or the drives were routed to keep the area around and above the CPU clear—call it the no-fly zone.

Finished Looks

The ability to route cables as well should make putting the side panels and top cover back onto the case a breeze. Once turned on, the tiny Obsidian 250D makes an excellent impression. It feels pretty sweet, knowing you just packed high-performance parts and even liquid cooling into such a compact enclosure, with a fully sized ODD bay to boot.


The black optical drive in the front fits right in, while a white power LED lets the onlooker know that the system has been turned on.


Neither side looks any different to when the chassis was empty, which is simply due to the visual obstruction its included dust filters create. Any installed GPU will still have excellent access to clean, cool air from outside the case, though.


Everything in the rear is easily accessible, and all the leads fit in without issue. Looking into the case through the top reveals a view that puts which parts your system works with on display nicely.