Corsair Crystal Series 460X RGB Review

Performance Analysis

The eagle-eyed out there will have spotted that there's no exhaust fan and fairly predictably, this did hurt it in the cooling results. With such good ventilation and three fans up front, the 460X could have done much better here if the heat removal was aided a bit by a fourth fan at the rear and the CPU cooler would have benefited too.

In the end a CPU delta T of 53°C was reasonably good - a few degrees behind its bigger brother, the 570X, and mixing it up with the Nanoxia Project S and Be Quiet! Dark Base Pro 900. The fans, which top out at 1,400 RPM, were certainly noticeable at maximum speed, but not intrusive. It's worth noting that they're 3-pin, not 4-pin PWM too, so you'll need a motherboard that can alter the voltage to tune them down a bit.


The GPU delta T of 54°C wasn't particularly inspiring, but interestingly neither was that of the 570X, which was just 3°C cooler. The more potent cases dip under 50°C quite easily here, but the results were very close to the 400C so it's clearly just down to the case's design, possibly the angled vents at the front as opposed to open front mesh. The benefit of this though is that noise leakage is reduced.

Conclusion

We'd say the 460X has reasonable cooling, although the first thing we'd do in either an air-cooled or water-cooled system is to add a fan into the rear mount. This would likely improve the situation significantly at a stroke and it's a shame Corsair didn't do this out of the box. One reason may be that the inclusion of yet another pricey RGB fan would breach that £150 barrier, while including a cheaper model would detract from the other three fans' impact.

In other areas, the 460X is very good. It has plenty of enthusiast-orientated features, although for some reason the 2.5in tool-free mounts didn't work with our particular SSD. It's easy to build a tidy system and the potential for creating a potent water-cooling system is huge for what is a fairly compact ATX case. Finally, the glass panels really do look the business on the 460X and the RGB lighting is the icing on the cake. It would definitely stand out at a LAN party and for all the right reasons.

The price is steep, though, and opting for the cheaper single red LED fan model still costs £120 - £30 more than the Phanteks Enthoo Pro M Tempered Glass. In value terms this means that despite the aesthetics, we can't quite stretch to our top award - for the money it just doesn't blow our pants off like the Phanteks does. However, if RGB fans and glass panels float your boat and you want a case that's kitted out for liquid cooling then it comes highly recommended.