Corsair Graphite Series 600T: Cool and Quiet
by Dustin Sklavos on November 26, 2010 2:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- 600T
Inside the 600T
When you pop those side panels off of Corsair's 600T, you find an extremely well thought out internal design that's almost entirely tool-less and extremely spacious.
The motherboard tray is the only part where you can't get away from needing a screwdriver: you're still going to have to screw in the board, but the standoffs come built into the tray, and there's a large cutout for heatsinks that need to be secured on the back of the motherboard. That said, I still found popping the I/O shield and motherboard into the case to be far easier than any other case I've used. Surrounding the motherboard tray are a series of rubber-lined holes used for routing cables behind the tray, and these work fantastically: they keep cables in place, and frankly they just look better than the usual routing holes.
Expansion slot covers are ventilated and secured internally with thumbscrews; I've seen other tool-less implementations that have been more complicated and I have to be honest, this seems like one of those places where you're just better off using screws and individual slot covers. You'll probably want to use your standard Philips head screwdriver to secure these screws, but you can do without in a pinch. Again, there's an eighth slot here that makes doing a multi-GPU setup easier, since you can still use a bottom PCIe slot for a dual-slot GPU. Alternatively, you could use the extra slot for additional USB ports or whatever your particular motherboard might include.
Popping in a power supply is remarkably simple; my 750HX snapped into place securely enough that you could probably get away with not screwing it in on the back of the case. There are adjustable grips on the inside of the case that help hold the PSU in place regardless of size.
When you get to the drive bays, you start to really see some of the more innovative design choices Corsair made with the 600T. The panels covering the 5.25" drive bays don't require any force to pop out; you squeeze the sides inside the case and they come out easily. From there, just push the drive into the bay and a lever-based system locks it into place. Push the lever down and you can eject the drive again. It feels a little bit loose but has proven to be secure enough in practice. You can also screw the drive in on the opposite side, but it's not really necessary.
Below the 5.25" bays are the two internal drive cages that support three drives apiece. These are also completely tool-less. The drive trays snap in and out of the cages easily, and have pins in place on the sides. To install a drive, you just remove a tray, insert the pins into the side of the drive, then flex the other side to snap in the other pair of pins. One of the nicer features about these trays is that they're all designed to accommodate 2.5" drives, too, though this requires you to use screws to mount the drive to the tray. To do it, pop out one of the pins and then screw the drive into place in the tray: no adapters required. The trays are also designed to point the ports on the drives to the back of the case, behind the motherboard tray, for easy cable routing.
Here's where we get really slick: of the two drive cages, the top one can actually be removed and then replaced adjacent to the bottom one. It's a very cool idea for cases that are going to need to support extra-long video cards, although I have to be honest here...I'm not really sure they even make video cards long enough to require you to do that. My stock Radeon HD 5870 still has a heck of a lot of elbow room and I can say with certainty that the 5970 would too.
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philosofa - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
I like this case (albeit that I'm a bit of a side-window whore). But honestly.... as a man whose maleness was unaltered at birth... it reminds me of said personal 'maleness'. Seriously... the 600T appears to have a foreskin lol. Assuming this isn't some kind of Freudian thing, why on earth did they design the case in such a way?Ahh well... my search for a reasonably sized case with good cable routing, a side window, top-notch construction and cooling, good GPU clearance and good looks continues.
MeanBruce - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
Side window, black powdercoat interior tool-less bays, multiple hdd and ssd configs, two 200mm fans, amazing airflow, room for my Noctua NH-D14, and 180mm Corsair HX-850 psu 4 optical bays for $99. Cooler Master HAF 912 Advanced, available in US from the Cooler Master Store! Nothing like beautiful hardware through a window, Yeah Baby!dirtrat - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
Dude, who cares! This isn't a review about your Cool Master case. What an idiotic post!MeanBruce - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
It wasn't an initial post, it was a response to philosofa, who said he was still searching for a case. The HAF Advanced might be what he is looking for. Try reading the above before shouting out dumbass, and if it doesn't concern you move along, what are you twelve?glad2meetu - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
The low cost of the Cooler Master case is offset by your need to add fans to address sound suppression issues. Many other cases also have fan related issues. A Noctura fan is $25+ dollars, which raises the system costs dramatically for a case. Some of the Cooler Master cases are also relatively ugly in appearance in my opinion. For the cost, there are a couple of Lian Li cases on sites such as Newegg which offer a better value, including some aluminum cases. For example, a Lian Li PC-P50WB for $190. Steel cases tend to be rather heavy, so I prefer aluminum if the price is not too high. I thought about this Corsair case, but the large fans in it do not provide enough air flow. I consider it to be one of the main problems with this case. I also have concerns about the Antec cases that generally get good recommendations on Anandtech since they have better airflow than this Corsair 600T case and reasonable sound suppression. My concern with Antec is multiple users have complained about poor ground connections leading to electrical shorts. I currently have a now outdated Antec case in a desktop system that I will be replacing with Sandy Bridge. This time I decided to go with Lian Li.USB 3.0 is still relatively early. I think it is going to be very successful over the next few years with a high adoption rate. Intel screwed up big time with USB 3.0. Luckily other tech companies are filling in the gaps for their screw up. I will probably go with AMD when Intel brings out their high cost light bridge systems in the future. I'm hoping AMD will be able to reduce their power consumption more in the future. I am also interested at looking at their merged CPU and GPU systems.
MeanBruce - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
Corsair memory and PSUs are top shelf, but they are far behind in case design at least for air. If you can enjoy the rugged looks of the HAF 912 Advanced Edition there is no better air case on the market now. Air flow is so good I am running the extra large Noctua NH-D14 passively which looks amazing thru the window. I put 2 Noctua uln fans up front replacing the red led 200mm, Noctua 140mm in the psu, another uln for rear exhaust and attenuated the top Cooler Master 200mm black fan down to an 8db level using a blue in-line Noctua resistor. Left all the dust filters in place. Super quiet, super temps, super fast! $99, they said they were only getting 200 in for the US and Canada, I got number 4. And they will be offering a USB 3.0 module in a few months, right now the add on module is Asia-only. Hope this helps!bigboxes - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
Fanboi much?abbeytim - Sunday, November 28, 2010 - link
try a nzxt tempest evophilosofa - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
Forgot to say cheers for the review Dustin, top notch work :)semo - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
What's with all the USB 2.0 ports? Stopped reading right there. Why would I spend premium price on a case that is already outdated?