Fractal Design Gallery

You can order direct from them I think. I see it on their site.
 
My Define R2 (sorry, the photo from the back is bad quality photo without flash, and i'm not going to take down that panel once again, after few minutes of struggle to get it back) :

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Description :
1) Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4-B3, Core i5-2500K, 2x2GB Dominator GT 1600CL7, Cooling Corator DS cooler with Enermax Cluster fan.
2) cards - Zotac GT430 Zone, Startech 2,5" device bay (S25SLOTR) with Intel X25-M G1 80GB inside, Intel SASUC8I and finally KNC1 DVB-C card with CI card slot
3) power supply is Seasonic X-750 (my X-650 started to make noises, so i had to swap them).
4) hard drives are 4x WD10EADS and 6xWD20EARS.

And yes, that fan controller mounted to back of the case using a screw and motherboard standoff is a uggly hack, but it is good enough :D.
 
I dont like how the hard drive bays sit behind the fans. Blocking flow.
 
I dont like how the hard drive bays sit behind the fans. Blocking flow.

I don't like how in some cases the hard drive bays have no airflow and cause the hard drives to fail prematurely.

My next case will be a fractal or a H2, I like the white cases. What case do you think is better im assuming the fractals are better built.
 
I dont like how the hard drive bays sit behind the fans. Blocking flow.
Almost every tower case these days has a similar layout.

Where do you suggest those 8 HDD's should be located, without cooking themselves up?
 
well assuming you HAVE to use 8 hard drives. I guess you HAVE to put them there. Or I can think of another place you can put them
I use two hard drives. So I LOVE the fact that some 'Cases' if it has a giant hard drive rack, I can take out part of it. kind of like the 'Fractal Core 3000.
http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&category=2&prod=60

I modded my Lian Li PC-9F by cutting off the top part of the hard drive rack leaving only the bottom part
 
There is a canadian website that sells fractal fans. It contains the letters N, C, I, X, and .com.

There are other white bladed black framed fans on the market though, like the gelid silent 12, which I find are much better than the fractal fans.
 
There is a canadian website that sells fractal fans. It contains the letters N, C, I, X, and .com.

There are other white bladed black framed fans on the market though, like the gelid silent 12, which I find are much better than the fractal fans.

Thanks, I don't really know a lot about fans. :p
 
Cracked and ordered one of these, my Lian-Li is going to my sister. The fan filters and whatnot were a big turn on. Anyone know where I can buy a second matching fractal design fan for the front though?

It comes with 2 fans. Just move the one from the rear to the front and have other fans in the rear, top, and bottom if you like...
 
Pics soon, I just mine done. Was a little tight behind the mobo tray but it's all together. Never buying another case without cable management. I had also found two little metal balls which might be rivets that popped out? Not sure the case itself is pretty damn amazing. There is no better buy at $110.
 
Cell phone camera can't take clear pictures in my room. Blue LED Tricool was the only spare fan I had. EDIT: So my X650 was getting pretty warm/hot so I flipped it upside down so that air is being forced into it from the rest of the case. It's noticeably cooler.

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I just picked up an XL. Will post pics tonight. Getting the rest of my h2o parts on Wednesday, should be a fun setup :)
 
My R3 just got delivered; luckily UPS did me right (as usual) and didn't beat the crap out of it. I was worried judging by recent NewEgg reviews claiming theirs were damaged/beat up.....mine arrived flawless. I was scared though when I turned the case over and heard something loose rattling around inside (metal on metal noise)....luckily it was just a thumbscrew from one of the side panels that came loose and was rattling around. :)

Nevertheless....beautiful, just beautiful. I'd put the craftsmanship on par with Lian Li (which I've owned several over the last few years). The white is gorgeous. I'm floored by how heavy the side panels are; I know I'm going to be very pleased with how quiet it runs.

Hopefully going to start doing some building later....have to wait 'til Tuesday for my 6950 to arrive but I have several cards to throw in there in the meantime. :) Will post plenty of shots after everything's put together. So glad I gambled on the R3 (mainly the shipping)...they are now packing them better apparently, I can attest to this. Plenty of foam to protect all the corners. Glad I went with the R3 instead of going cheap and getting another Three Hundred (and I do love my other Three Hundred ;)). I'm going to test temps without the side intake and top exhausts, but I'm planning on using my 2 140mm Yates for the top and putting my S-Flex E's everywhere else.
 
My R3 just got delivered; luckily UPS did me right (as usual) and didn't beat the crap out of it. I was worried judging by recent NewEgg reviews claiming theirs were damaged/beat up.....mine arrived flawless. I was scared though when I turned the case over and heard something loose rattling around inside (metal on metal noise)....luckily it was just a thumbscrew from one of the side panels that came loose and was rattling around. :)

Nevertheless....beautiful, just beautiful. I'd put the craftsmanship on par with Lian Li (which I've owned several over the last few years). The white is gorgeous. I'm floored by how heavy the side panels are; I know I'm going to be very pleased with how quiet it runs.

Hopefully going to start doing some building later....have to wait 'til Tuesday for my 6950 to arrive but I have several cards to throw in there in the meantime. :) Will post plenty of shots after everything's put together. So glad I gambled on the R3 (mainly the shipping)...they are now packing them better apparently, I can attest to this. Plenty of foam to protect all the corners. Glad I went with the R3 instead of going cheap and getting another Three Hundred (and I do love my other Three Hundred ;)). I'm going to test temps without the side intake and top exhausts, but I'm planning on using my 2 140mm Yates for the top and putting my S-Flex E's everywhere else.

I have a very similar build in mine, and temps are fine without the side or top fans.

I have the two included Fractal fans in front intake, a 140mm NZXT ~70cfm fan as a bottom intake, a CM Hyper 212+, and another Blademaster 120mm PWM fan as rear exhaust. My CPU has not broken 50C during gaming, and I haven't run into any problems with my shader unlocked 6950 @ 900/1325 either.
 
I got the R3 a few weeks back. Running a 2500k in it with a Scythe Mugen 2. Only got the two stock fans going and one HD 5770.

Is anyone else seeing semi-bad airflow with the two stock fans and sides / front-door closed? My 2500k seems to run a little hot. Thinking of adding/replacing case fans, but don't want to increase the noise-level too much.
 
So when can we expect the Arc Midi or the Core 3000 to be released for sale?
 
It is mounted with screws, so it technically is, but the way it's done, it would not look good with the door removed.
 
It is mounted with screws, so it technically is, but the way it's done, it would not look good with the door removed.

Thanks for the fastest reply ever :)

I probably will keep the door on, just wanted to see if it was able to be removed which NO review of it on youtube or the web mentions at all. :confused:
 
Only downsides to the door (aside from aesthetics, which is subjective) are that there isn't much room between it and the 5.25 bays, so any fan controller will have to have short knobs, and also that it only opens about 90 degrees, making it incredibly inconvenient for people who keep their computers on their right side
 
Only downsides to the door (aside from aesthetics, which is subjective) are that there isn't much room between it and the 5.25 bays, so any fan controller will have to have short knobs, and also that it only opens about 90 degrees, making it incredibly inconvenient for people who keep their computers on their right side

I don't even think short knobs would fit. It doesn't seem like anything that sticks out farther than the eject button on an optical drive would fit.
 
In this year computex fractal representatives presented a front panel replacement for r3 and xl with USB3(2 usb2 2 usb3). But they did not estimate a release date, nor price.
 
^Nice work. That sabertooth automatically makes everything look so much cleaner.
 
All of these photos were taken on a Samsung Galaxy S2, great quality for a phone! :)








Sometimes I wonder how my side panel fits on with the cables like that haha.
 
how's the space behind the mobo tray for management? looks snug, but workable?
 
how's the space behind the mobo tray for management? looks snug, but workable?

My R3 has enough room to run a sleeved 24pin ATX cable behind it, but not enough room to overlap that with another cable, and it's difficult to get the side panel back on, but still workable.

The XL seems to have more room.
 
My XL came in today. Some comparison shots between the R3 to show size differences:

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Interior shots:
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One issue I found with the XL was a goofy overhang of the PCI slots. For instance, it was not possible to plug in the VGA cable on my video card.
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Thoughts on the two:

I really liked the XL side panels compared to the R3. The R3 had the little tabs that went into slots, so you would put it flat against the side of the case, and push it forward about a half inch. It got a little annoying on the back side, because it was tight with the cables, and it really took three hands to put that panel on. The XL panels only attach at the front. You put the front in (there is a curved rail on the front that holds the panel, and swing the back closed. Much easier to manage.

The top 180mm fan was a bit of a pain. It has a short pigtail, and the default configuration had it in the back right side. It was a pain to unscrew the bracket and remove the fan to reposition the pigtail to the front right so it went in the rubber grommet. I initially had an issue with my individually sleeved EPS extension cable, because it gets caught in the fan blades. I had to carefully zip tie it down.

I wasn't a huge fan of the PSU mounting solution. It allowed up or down mounting, but it was a flimsy little bracket, and it bowed out slightly in the middle of the ling sides when I tightened the screws.

I removed the panel between the PSU and the hard drives. With it installed, there is no airflow path for the lower front intake. I also removed the panel behind the mobo tray that is cutout for a CPU cooler install, as it served no purpose.

My biggest area of complaint is the divider. It reaches all of the way to the left side panel to channel airflow, but that means you can't really route cables over it. Cables from the mobo to the lower section have to go through the side panel grommet and behind the drive cages. A standard length SATA cable barely reaches from the mobo to the front three-drive cage, although right angle SATA on the motherboard would fix this. The only cutout in the divider is to either run cables behind the mobo or drive cages against the right side panel, or to remove the big piece under the PCI slots. I really would have liked to see at least one or two rubber grommets in the divider - maybe one below the front panel header at the bottom right corner of the motherboard, and another below the PCI slots. It is less of an issue if you run the drives with the connectors facing the other direction, and it looks better as well, but for as many drives as I have, I want to keep it all accessible from the same side. My R3 is cable managed so tightly that it is a big pain to add or remove a hard drive, which is fine because I don't. but with nine drives, I wanted the wiring accessible. I'd happily spend $100 if Fractal offered a backplane for all of the SATA drives that mounted off of the left side panel and made swapping drives a snap. I went this route because I have enough hard drives that my old case (Lian Li fulltower, all the drives were in 4x3.5"-in-3x5.25" racks, so I needed to remove both side panels and the front bezel and the fan in front of the rack then slide out the entire rack to replace one drive), and this case offered the aesthetics (looks good and is quiet) of a good HTPC case with the functionality (easy to swap drive caddies) of a $$$ Norco/Supermicro rackmount case.
 
I currently have a sick Antec P182 and am looking to get a new healthy Define XL to replace it. Looking at YouTube videos shows that the filters are a pain to regularly clean, especially compared to the Antec. I have to clean my filters monthly due to some very cute felines.

Never having seen the case in person I am wondering how easy it would be to remove the existing filters and use something else like the DEMCi Flex filters.
 
I currently have a sick Antec P182 and am looking to get a new healthy Define XL to replace it. Looking at YouTube videos shows that the filters are a pain to regularly clean, especially compared to the Antec. I have to clean my filters monthly due to some very cute felines.

Never having seen the case in person I am wondering how easy it would be to remove the existing filters and use something else like the DEMCi Flex filters.

The XL isn't bad at all. It is tool-less. Open the door, there are two clips, and the fan/filter assembly pops out. Two more clips, and you can remove the fans from it, and blow the dust out. Can be done in less than a minute.

The R3 had annoying fan filters. It was similar, except instead of both fans being on a filter assembly that clips to the case, there were separate filter assemblies for each fan, and they screwed into the front. So you'd need to remove eight screws from the front of the case, then pull the filter/fan assemblies out, then unclip the fans, then clean them.
 
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