Early Verdict
Extreme builder patience yields great cooling performance and great looks from the relatively-compact Crystal 460X.
Pros
- +
Great looking RGB fans provide excellent cooling
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Supports a 3x 120mm front and 2x 120mm top radiators simultaneously
- +
Supports oversized motherboards to at least 10.7” deep
- +
Relatively compact exterior dimensions
Cons
- -
RGB controller has no “off” function
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Extremely limited space for cable management
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Extremely limited space around power supply
- -
Cannot support 3x 120mm radiator, long power supply, and 3.5” drives simultaneously
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Top-panel radiator extends fans 1” below the motherboard top, leaving only 1.4” of DIMM clearance
- -
Power supply shroud cannot be reinstalled with motherboard and power supply already installed
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Introducing The Crystal 460X
*Shared on 3.5" tray
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With all the parts choices and dimensional standards floating around, you’d think picking a case would be easy. An ATX motherboard fits an ATX case, and a Micro ATX motherboard fits a Micro ATX case. Yet high-end motherboards that were just a little larger than ATX have been around for as long as most of us can remember, and without a form factor of their own. Boards around one-inch deeper than the ATX standard are usually called EATX, even though EATX requires a fourth column of standoffs and 13.3” of clearance. While nobody is forced to buy a server-sized case to support a 10.6” motherboard, hardly anyone is able to remember which ATX cases will support them. Of course, that includes the Crystal 460X.
Designed with enough space to hold a 13.4” card, the case has no restrictions to prevent a builder from installing a 13.3” real EATX motherboard. Corsair even designed it specifically to hold 10.7” (272mm) deep motherboards by moving its cable passages an inch forward, and rates it that way. Yet without the EATX label (and the extra standoffs needed to support a 13.3” board), your local PC superstore salesperson is as likely as not to tell you that your chosen 10.6” deep motherboard won’t fit this ATX case.
Those three Corsair SP120 RGB fans are certainly powerful enough to cool a big motherboard and graphics card, and the case is even designed with enough space to mount a radiator up to 16.4” tall and 1.4” thick behind them. Since triple-fan radiators are available at 1.375” thickness, that’ll usually do.
Hidden under a magnetic dust filter, the top panel also has room for a radiator. Unfortunately, the 1.1” of space above the motherboard doesn’t leave room for a radiator and fan stack, and the 140mm fan mounts are offset only around 0.6” from the motherboard’s surface. Those limitations will usually limit the top panel to a pair of 140mm x 25mm fans, or a 2x 120mm radiator and fan set hanging 1.4” (35mm) from the motherboard’s surface. Keep this limit in mind when purchasing RAM, or liquid-cooled voltage regulator water blocks.
The front of the Crystal 460X top panel has power and reset buttons, headphone and microphone jacks, two USB 3.0 ports, and three mode buttons for the SP120 RGB fans. Strobing, breathing, and static lighting are available in a broad range of colors (and even mixed cycling colors), but there’s no setting to turn the fan lights off.
The Crystal 460X front dust filter is both magnetically attached and secured with the screws that go through its corners. Those screws secure the tempered glass face panel and decorative face-panel frame to the steel chassis.
The bottom dust filter protects a power supply air inlet, and slides out from the back of the case.
The Crystal 460X has a standard metal side panel behind the motherboard, painted in the same texture as the top and rear panels. It also has only the standard seven expansion slots, and an empty 120mm fan mount with screw slots (rather than holes) to ease 120mm radiator height adjustment.
Behind that metal side panel are three 2.5” bays with snap installation tabs and ejection springs, a drive cage with two 3.5” trays, the RGB LED controller with room for three more fans, and a redundant fan mode selector. Space behind the motherboard tray is limited to around 5/8” (16mm), and the 2.5” bays are of similar thickness. All cables must therefore be routed around the 2.5” trays.
The 3.5” trays feature vibration-damped drive pins on the side and a set of screw holes for 2.5” drives on the base. Secured with a tab on the bottom and two thumb screws at the top, the cage can be moved 1.1” (28mm) forward to fit power supplies up to 9” long while blocking front-panel radiator installation. Power supply length is limited to a mere 7.9” (200mm) by default. Builders who want to use a long power supply and a triple-fan radiator simultaneously may opt to remove the lower drive cage.
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