Performance
Our test platform is equipped with an eight-core, 16-thread AMD Ryzen 7 processor, but with a 240mm Fractal Design liquid cooler strapped on top, there's no difficulty in keeping the chip cool. Every mid-tower to use our liquid cooler deserves similar results.
Only two of the tested chassis have managed to keep our Radeon RX 580 graphics card locked to 70ºC when gaming. The Obsidian Series 500D is one of them, with the GPU clearly liking the unobstructed airflow path and, most likely, the open-air nature of the floating side panel.
The third and final graph is arguably the one that best differentiates the tested enclosures. Some are clearly better than others at containing noise; with no sound-dampening material and floating side panels, it is no surprise that the Obsidian Series 500D falls into the bottom half of the chart. Our test platform is designed to run quiet, and the 500D build could hardly be described as loud, but the same hardware does run quieter in competing cases.