Corsair Graphite Series 780T Review

You can tell a lot about a company by how it both perceives and manages mistakes. Before the launch date of its new Graphite Series 780T full-tower PC case ($189.99 MSRP), Corsair sent us a review sample of the yellow version of this chassis. (It comes in three color schemes.) Depending on your liking for yellow with black accents, the end result was either eye-catching or an eyesore, but either way it was very hip and unmistakably reminiscent of Bumblebee from Transformers.

While we found no flaws with our sample, the head of Corsair PR contacted us a few days later to say that a white replacement was en route, as some paint-matching problems had been discovered on some of the yellow samples (while assuring us that none of the supposedly flawed yellow units had ever gone into production). This is classy. It's easy to ignore the manufacturers involved in product reviews, but we've seen so many that felt lackadaisical in their product launches that we felt Corsair should be called out for going the extra mile.

Of course, this says nothing about the Graphite Series 780T itself. Pretend (if necessary) that you didn't read our mid-September review of the 780T's little brother, the Graphite Series 380T Portable MiniITX, because you're likely to find some spoilers in there. Rather, imagine our first impression when opening that big cardboard shipping case.

First: "Oooh...thick, black-fabric slip cover protecting the whole chassis within its foam blocks. Nice."

Then: "Broad foot brackets for better stability, complete with oversized anti-slip rubber pads on the bottom. Really nice!"

Followed by: "And...whoa, that's a lot of cheap-looking plastic on that case. What happened there?"

And that was before taking it out of the box.

You know about the power of first impressions, so perhaps it's no surprise that our subsequent 780T review followed a similar vein: "Nice. Nice! Oh...really?"

Now, we should lead off with one bit of early analysis. The Graphite Series 380T is meant for Mini-ITX platforms, which are something of a niche. So $139.99, while steep for that novel little box, wasn't necessarily beyond the realm of reason. On the other hand, the Graphite Series 780T costs $189.99 in its yellow or white versions (or $179.99, if you'll settle for it in black). This full tower accommodates exotic, oversize E-ATX and XL-ATX motherboards, in addition to the more usual ATX, MicroATX, and Mini-ITX. Indeed, it's as if Corsair went into this case's design with one mission: "No one is ever going to accuse this case of being too small."

Well, mission accomplished there. In fact, perhaps part of the reason why there's so much plastic on this chassis is to keep its oversize frame down to a reasonable weight.

A few people will put all this size to good use. The Graphite Series 780T is relatively flexible in its internal configuration, and it accommodates water-cooling very well. If you want to pimp up your PC, this case will give you almost enough room to install a disco ball. But if you simply have a lot of drives and maybe a couple of graphics cards, you may find yourself wondering if the designers couldn't have packed the same features into a smaller mid-tower for $50 less. We suspect the answer is yes—but we think you'll be glad Corsair didn't try and find out. You decide.

Designing cases is like designing cars. In the end, it's almost all been done before, and you're confronted with an easily bored market that won't accept anything too radically different.

Even so, you might be interested to check out this quick video(Opens in a new window) Corsair product manager George Makris did, previewing the Graphite Series 780T. In it, he describes several of the design concepts engineers worked through when trying to come up with what would become the Graphite Series 380T and 780T. (We love the DeLorean-like gull-wing doors on that first idea and the old-school, Cylon-looking aesthetic on the T600.) If the final Graphite Series 780T lacks some of the sizzle of Corsair's discarded ideas, don't judge it too harshly. To stay in business, Corsair needs to make thousands of buyers happy with each design, not just a handful of aesthetes with esoteric tastes.

This isn't to say that the Graphite Series 780T looks bland—it sure doesn't. The chassis is neither curvy nor boxy. Rather, it's something in between, with rounded, hexagonal planes at the corners and an angled "nose" that slopes confidently from the bezel's top-center. The underside of this nose contains a thin, white strip that's backlit with a white LED (or a red LED, on the black Graphite Series 780T model), perhaps a last vestige of that discarded Cylon-eye concept...

Below this are two covered 5.25-inch bays, and under this, in turn, sit two LED-lit, 140mm intake fans cloaked behind a giant dust filter/grille. The grille is flat on the top and narrows near the bottom, somewhat like a shield, and it easily snaps out via spring-loaded tabs. We've been burned in the past by these kinds of tabs breaking off on a few other cases, but so far so good with the Graphite Series 780T. Just be careful.

One of our favorite features on the 780T is the design of the side doors. The doors are not quite square. Look closely at the rounded corners, and you'll see that the door shape is actually octagonal, with black handles tucked into the middle of the top edges...

Lift up on a handle, and the entire panel comes away...

To set it back in, let the octagonal shape guide the two tabs on the bottom edge into the bezel's matching slots and push until the latch closes. It's the easiest, cleanest door design we can recall ever seeing on a tower. Plus, the doors are symmetrical, so you can switch their sides, if you like! (Don't scoff. We've seen some wicked under-tray cable management that deserves to be shown off.)

Like the front panel, the top one uses a spring-loaded, shield-shaped dust filter/grille. Between the top grille and the nose sits a port panel with two USB 2.0, two USB 3.0, mic, and headphone jacks...

Flanking these are two fingertip-sized buttons. On the left is a three-speed fan controller ringed by LED speed indicators, and on the right is a reset button that we'd like a lot more if it were recessed. Below all of these is the silver-ringed START/STOP button, pulled straight from the keyless ignition systems of today's luxury cars.

The back panel plays matters fairly by the book. You get nine expansion-slot positions for E-ATX support, above which sit both a Kensington lock slot and two punch-out circles for routing water-cooling tubes to a radiator outside the chassis...

Finally, we mentioned the novel base design, which looks from above like a flat, octagonal rail with large rubber pads at the corners. As the rail thrusts out beyond the footprint of the main case, we found the design to be impressively stable and slip-resistant, a definite improvement over the usual four anti-slip circles under a typical tower's four corners. In fact, though, the octagon is broken in the middle by two broad dust screens, one that pulls out easily to the front and another to the back. We can't gush enough about this base design. Brilliant.

If nothing else, the Graphite Series 780T excels in providing a ton of ventilation, cooling, and expansion capability for hard-core power users. Let's start off with a look at fans and cooling.

As mentioned earlier, Corsair planted two 140mm intake fans behind the front grille. However, the company cleverly built the mounting plate between the front fans and the internal drive cages to also accommodate three 120mm fans or either a 280mm or 360mm radiator.

Now, the odds of placing a true 360mm radiator here seem pretty slim, as you would have to remove both of the tool-less drive cages, each of which hold three 3.5-inch drives. You could still get adapter brackets and place a couple of 3.5-inch drives in the top 5.25-inch bays, but...ewwwww.

The top wall hosts almost the same fan and radiator capabilities as the front, complete with rubber grommets on the three sets of 120mm holes for vibration dampening. You can see them here...

Note, however, that using the full length of the top grille will mean removing the 5.25-inch drive cage. Also, you'll want to use a slim radiator on the top to make sure it can clear a larger CPU heatsink.

On the back wall, you've got those two tubing holes punched right above the Kensington lock slot, but they are only scored for later removal, not pre-removed and rubber-flanged as we see in so many other gaming towers. This was a curious omission, to us. All of the Graphite Series 780T's motherboard-tray holes are rubber-flanged. You've got oodles of water-cooling capability in this case. Why not rubberize the back-panel holes rather than leave the job half-done for buyers? Perhaps it's Corsair's acknowledgement that you should have all the room you need inside this case for water-cooling, and you likely won't even need these cutaways.

Anyway, above this, Corsair mounts another 140mm fan for exhaust, only this one is mounted on inch-long slider rails so you can fine-tune its placement around components, if necessary. Also notice that the mounting panel will accommodate a single 120mm fan in place of the included PWM 140mm model. Why anyone would bother with this is beyond us—Corsair makes decent fans already—but it's an option.

The bottom can support yet another pair of 120mm fans, although Corsair does not pre-grommet these plate holes. Neither does it offer rubber padding for the power supply, another slight oversight in this mainly exceptional case. You have all the clearance you could ask for PSU cabling, even for oversize 230mm EPS12V models (Corsair's specs say a 260mm total length should fit), but the lack of padding is a minor head-scratcher.

Speaking of clearance, you've got 200mm for the CPU heatsink and 355mm for graphics cards. Nearly 40mm—way more than an inch—waits behind the motherboard tray for cable management, which is awesome if you've ever had to crush your wiring with a side door...

We've mentioned the six 3.5-inch and two 5.25-inch bays. In addition, on the underside of the motherboard tray (on the back side of the drive cages), Corsair adds three additional snap-in 2.5-inch drive caddies. You can spot them in the image above, at the lower left. They clip right in and out of the tray itself.

We love this design and can't imagine why it hasn't been done more often before. And together, you've got nine total bays for hard drives and SSDs. That should keep anyone happy in an age of 6TB hard drives, even if you want to have two or three separate RAID 5s running.

During installation, the Graphite Series 780T threw us very few curveballs. This is about as spacious as a modern tower can get, and Corsair does its tool-less design right. Even if the drive trays are just plastic and a bit rickety, they're secure, silent, and satisfactory.

Corsair nails all of the usual trouble spots. It's nearly impossible to so much as scrape your hand inside the Graphite Series 780T (at least on any of the case hardware), thanks to the outstanding finishing. The heatsink cutout in the motherboard tray measures a bit more than 8x5 inches, so you'll never have to perform extraneous dismantling to swap out CPU coolers. The fans are quiet, and, as we've seen, the ventilation/radiator options are many.

We did wish that the rubberized tray cutouts would have been a bit closer to the front, or that additional tie-down clips were nearby to help manage the cabling for the 2.5-inch drives. Also, if you populate the top panel with 120mm fans, you have almost no clearance for braided wiring between the fan bezel and bracket. But really, these, along with our PSU mounting quibbles, are minor concerns. The Graphite Series 780T is a joy to assemble because it's just so dang spacious and comfortable.

Aesthetically, you have to make peace with the plastic, and we're not entirely sold. Yes, we like that the case is lighter because of it, and we really like how the points ("noses") at the front and back serve as handles. But whereas plastic might be cool, stainless steel or brushed aluminum is classy. There's a different vibe, right? You have to know your preference and taste, and choose accordingly.

Finally, the price. Much as we love the Graphite Series 780T, we must question whether this is really a $179 or $189 case. For that price, we would expect passive drive backplanes or an integrated display or, well...not quite so much plastic.

After all, much of the Graphite Series 780T's cleverness and appeal comes from the strength of its iterative design improvements. So is it right to expect to pay an additional $30 to $50 for the design work and novelty? For some, perhaps.

Likewise, if you root around inside your PC often, are the latch handles worth another $10 or $20 of that price hike? Probably. If you're in a dusty environment, how much are these convenient, snap-out filters worth? More than nothing, right? And if you're already paying up for E-ATX hardware, it's not unreasonable to expect that a case able to accept the form factor will run a bit more.

If you look at matters from a solely functional perspective—nine slots, nine bays, lots of cooling capability—then the Graphite Series 780T may be a little overpriced. No premium brand stays in business by price matching, though. If the perks and intangibles of the 780T have value to you, then this case is a good deal. And even if we, ourselves, wouldn't fill all of its bays and slots in this lifetime, we found it an excellent, eye-catching chassis that we would be proud to have housing our daily-driver PC.

The Corsair Graphite Series 780T is a spacious full-tower chassis that offers some welcome refinements to the typical PC case with a tinker-friendly design and highly ventilated interior.

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