hello you people hope you're excited today is gonna be awesome my neck feels
much better let's begin so we have the new crystal 280x from Corsair oh I got
the black one you know I love me a good mic right X enclosure I think Fred would
agree but the Corsair 280X is not entirely new because it's based on the
air 240 frame design they have made some modifications on the interior and on the
exterior as you will see but before we get into the case review I want to
discuss an important topic so we got contacted by the Canadian men's health
foundation to talk about little ways that we've improved our lifestyle that
has overall benefit our health one of the most important things for me has
been to prioritize the time so actually find the time to go to the gym twice a
week for the last five months and yeah I can finally do pull-ups the
proper pull-ups which is how I hurt my neck but yeah don't overdo it
I've also started taking cold showers because the boost your immune system and
great for the muscles and let's not forget the food I have cut out my
favorite staple of all the potatoes and let's not forget cucumber water it's
super easy to make it's refreshing it's hydrating it's good for your internals
why not now this whole idea of don't change much campaign is awesome because
it's all about the incremental little changes that you can make in your life
now the benefit you overall in a long term so two hours a week for me the
workout is not a significant amount of time but I feel better I have more
energy in from the camera I can write faster boom so don't change much that's
the message check out the links below for more information now let's go back
all right good people so the system is now assembled and the entire experience
has been extremely satisfying and I really hope to see more dual chamber
layout cases in the future because this whole thing of moving your hard drives
and the power supply to the back of the case instead of a bottom chamber it's
sure it widens the case but in terms of actual like height the case it is
significantly smaller than your other micro ATX cases and you know looking at
something like this in next to the Leonie PCO 11 you can definitely see
that both them share that dual chamber layout and are therefore extremely
compact cases when compared to standard mid towers now design wise this is part
the Crystal series which means it is loaded with glass panels the front the
top and the side I do like the front glass panel how it sits on these like
pegs at the bottom it is not removable you have to remove the entire front
panel in order to reach the dust filter and that fan mount while the top one is
mounted via these really long thumb screws and there you can access it dust
filter as well which I don't understand why it's there because this is tough for
your exhaust anyway so why would you have a dust filter there especially
because you have a piece of glass in the top you can further remove the top
plastic piece which I don't understand why but yeah it is separate from the
frame itself now the glass side panel has the worst mount seriously I'm not
sure why Corsair is doing this there are no pegs that hold the glass in place so
mounting it and removing it is super difficult it always just falls on the
table and it scratches furthermore the glass has no blackout perimeter so you
can see the frame underneath and the good thing is they've changed are the
rubber pegs that are actually kind of built into the glass mount so they don't
fall out like we saw on previous Corsair cases the i/o is basic in the top right
corner we have 2 USB 3 power reset buttons and
Jax now the 280x comes in two flavors the standard addition at the hundred and
ten dollars it's a little bit pricey for micro ITX enclosure sure there's a bunch
of glass and two fans included but the RGB edition which has to RGB fans and a
lighting note Pro that's already pre-installed at the back which is very
nice and you can control the lighting of those fans and you can connect other
lighting accessories from Corsair is a hundred and sixty dollar Edition so it's
a little pricey for micro ITX market but I guess it is all Rhenish anyway so it
doesn't hurt to bump up the price for that premium now for airflow you can
install two 120 or 140 s at the front at the top and at the bottom so plenty of
airflow options here however the case is not really tall enough to suck in any
air from the bottom although that section is dust filtered which is nice
you can install a 240 rad at the front the top or the bottom as well so
radiator options are plenty there for options of plenty however this whole
like glass approach you know the glass here is not separated enough from the
frame so the front especially like it's is gonna get choked up and the top here
sure it is exhaust and if you can set your fans to a low rpm it's not an issue
but the gaps here are just not high enough in my opinion so it would be nice
for them to raise it a little bit and looking at the temperature data so the
system runs cooler when the front panel and dust filter are removed that's
understandable so and this is what the keys fans running at the hundred percent
so the Delta here would be even greater with lower rpm but I found it
interesting that the GPU temperature is cooler with the stock configuration with
the front panel on and the dust filter on not sure why if you do let me know in
the comments coming inside I love the interior plenty of space to work in and
route to cables however a standard micro ATX motherboard will cover those two
rubber grommets so you'll be just left with one unless you go with an ITX
motherboard or a non-traditional micro ATX form factor there's plenty of room
above the motherboard for a radiator and the set of fans the same thing in the
front and here I have mounted my sapphire pulse Vega 56 which is an 11
inch GPU and I still have about 80 mm of clearance from the front so you can
left the route rad there and not really compromise your GPU clearance the one
thing I will say about this whole bottom section is that it doesn't really make
sense for air flow because it's not high enough and number two my motherboard
cables are all over the place they kind of block access to those mounts so
unless you're going for an ITX motherboard that is significantly
smaller and allows that clearance at the bottom the only then you could use those
fan mounts now coming to the back I'd love how much room we have for all the
cables i even mounted my giant d quiet power supply we have to drive cages so
one for SSDs that has three caddies and they pull down so if you have any cables
that are right there it might be a little bit difficult but then we have
another one that you can access from the back and that has two three and half
inch caddies and it's really awesome that both of these cages are removable
so you can install things outside the case and then remount them back or just
have this entire section clear if you don't need that area for storage as you
can see cable management is absolutely flawless I do like how the top rubber
grommet that is covered by the motherboard still has a little bit of
clearance so you can pass some cables through it but the other one is actually
a really good position for the 24 pin cable and those SATA cables too now with
my cooler mounted in the standard orientation I wish that we had a
slightly more open rear exhaust section because you cannot mount any fans here
that space is just too little so it would be nice to have a slightly more
open section so airflow can simply exit which is why I left the top exhaust fan
to kind of aid with this whole air flow exhaust situation at the back alright so
those are my thoughts for the 280x I really want to see more dual chamber
layouts from Corsair and other companies because it just makes assembly process
so much easier and while we do have a slight extension in the width dimensions
the whole idea of like compressing at height wise I would say is a greater
benefit than going for something slimmer and much taller and you know the O 11
air and dynamic are quite popular because of that exact direction but with
the compromise of not having the best CPU tower clearance with this micro ATX
direction I don't think that's a big compromise because the case is already
quite small so if you're going for something
of a CPU tower clearance then you have to stick with something that is below
150 millimetres or go with a standard 240 ohm on cooler at the front or the
top I will say the price point is not competitive sure the micro ATX market is
quite a niche market and you do get a fantastic building experience on here
but going with a simple mid tower that's like 69 bucks 79 bucks that will give
you all the same features in terms of the build quality and you know the
visual aesthetics - like the mesh if I see the P 350 X and many others but
again those are ATX cases and I feel like for micro ATX direction there aren't
that many specific micro ATX cases that could compete with something like this
but then you could also argue that buying a standard mid tower and then
populating a micro ATX motherboard inside has benefits of cost savings for
sure one of the best gaming headsets is now available through mass drop the PC 3
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now I would love to hear what you think about the crystal 280X let me know in
the comments below don't forget to subscribe make sure to check out our new
boot sequence Channel and its other relevant content here too and yeah check
out those links about living a healthier lifestyle through those incremental
changes thanks so much for watching we'll see you in next video