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
The 600T Externally
A jaunt around the externals of the Corsair Graphite Series 600T reveals something a little more curvaceous than we've come to expect from modern enclosures. Outside of the Cooler Master Cosmos the 600T seems to take at least one or two design cues from (as good a place as any), most cases tend to have sharp angles and very few curves. The 600T on the other hand features rounded edges around most of the design. By the same token, while most cases tend to be shades of black or silver, the 600T employs a gunmetal coloring that suits it well.
We'll start from the front and work our way around. The 600T features four external 5.25" bays but surprisingly no 3.5"; it's safe to assume Corsair figures you can always adapt a front panel card reader (or your ancient floppy drive) to fit in a 5.25" bay. The entire front of the case is ventilated, and the panel in front of the massive 200mm intake fan pops off, allowing you to clean the grate and dust out of the fan. That 200mm fan (and its brother in the top of the case) is the source of some consternation in other reviews: it's quiet, but it doesn't seem to move that much air, and I know some reviewers found the bright white LED lighting a little obnoxious. That's definitely going to be a matter of taste.
When we crawl up the front to the top of the case, we see one of the major progressions in modern cases: the I/O, power, and reset buttons are at the top front of the 600T. It's a smart move since most of us tend to keep our cases on the floor these days. Corsair offers a healthy selection of I/O here: a generous four USB 2.0 ports, microphone and headphone jacks, a 6-pin Firewire port, and something of a rarity right now: a USB 3.0 port. That USB 3.0 port doesn't use the USB 3.0 header that's been showing up on some recent motherboards, though; it's powered by an extension cable that routs to the back of the case and plugs into the motherboard's I/O cluster. This isn't the most elegant solution in the world, but it gets the job done and it's flexible enough that you can always just plug it into a rear USB 2.0 port if your board doesn't support 3.0 and get a fifth front port. If I had one complaint about the I/O cluster, though, it's the inclusion of Firewire but not eSATA. I use both but if I had to make a choice for the average user, I'd err on the side of eSATA.
Parked in the middle of all these ports is the 600T's integrated fan controller. If you've read any other reviews of the 600T, allow me to reiterate what they said: this thing just doesn't seem to do that much. If you plug in all of the fans in the case (the controller is actually completely independent of the case fans and you can choose to avoid using it entirely), you will find that the difference between the lowest and highest settings is like night and later that night. You'll only hear the difference in a quiet room, and as you'll see later, the highest setting doesn't appreciably improve cooling performance.
Speaking of which, the top of the case has a second removable grate covering the second 200mm fan, this one an exhaust. Again, this grate is easy to remove but also fairly secure.
The rear of the case reveals the exhaust fan, a more standard 120mm affair, along with two important distinctions. First, Corsair outfits the case with eight expansion slots instead of seven. It's a small but noteworthy inclusion that makes the case well-suited to multi-GPU systems. Second is the increasingly common bottom-mounted power supply. The power supply's cooling is essentially completely cut off from the rest of the system, and there's a vent in the bottom of the case (with a removable filter) for the power supply's fan. This isn't a problem either; the case is built on a raised base that keeps all but the shaggiest of carpeting from clogging up the vent.
Finally on the sides we have one of my favorite features of the 600T: as you'll find when we check out the internals, the 600T is a largely tool-less affair, and the side panels are very secure but use latches that pop them right off. It's a nice change of pace from having to slide the side panel back on and then secure it, even with thumbscrews, to the back. These panels make getting into and out of the 600T an absolute breeze.
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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?