Questions for any Fractal Design Define C owners

C

Citizen Snips

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 6, 2009
Messages
171
I am considering the Fractal Design Define C (window version) for my upcoming build and had two questions:

What are the external dimensions of the plastic window?

Is there room to mount an LED strip (NZXT HUE+) along each edge of the case's interior? My concern is that the fans in the front and/or back may prevent an LED strip from being mounted along those edges.
 
avoid Fractal design. I build a Define R5, at the the top left / right gap where your motherboard sits, where you are SUPPOSED to have the space to insert your 8 pin motherboard cable, their gap is too narrow, so they forced you to snap your 8 pin to 2 x 4 pin to force the 8 pin thru that hole. They are idiot. All the other brand, from Antec, to Corsair, gives you enough space to loop that 8 pin cable thru that hole. Your Define C is the same thing:

http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-c/define-c-window

then there is the USB 3.0 ports, if you use the Define C on your own, that's fine, but if you are building it for a business client, they don't color code their USB 3.0 port in blue. THey leave it in black. Such dinosaur. No other brand does that.
 
Happy Hopping said:
avoid Fractal design. I build a Define R5, at the the top left / right gap where your motherboard sits, where you are SUPPOSED to have the space to insert your 8 pin motherboard cable, their gap is too narrow, so they forced you to snap your 8 pin to 2 x 4 pin to force the 8 pin thru that hole. They are idiot. All the other brand, from Antec, to Corsair, gives you enough space to loop that 8 pin cable thru that hole. Your Define C is the same thing:

http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-c/define-c-window

then there is the USB 3.0 ports, if you use the Define C on your own, that's fine, but if you are building it for a business client, they don't color code their USB 3.0 port in blue. THey leave it in black. Such dinosaur. No other brand does that.
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Such English. Much bad.
Don't most PSU 8 pin headers break in half by design? Then again, perhaps you were just holding it wrong?
It is black to match the color scheme of the rest of the outside, black. Blue just looks all out of place.
 
It does. I refuse to break it in half. Because I don't have to do that on all the other cases from Antec P100. So that Define R5 is the only Fractal design case I bought.

By the way, they use metal on all the 3.5" bay and on the 2 x 2.5" bay. Metal gets hot, it makes the case get hotter. Tthe other 99% of the case manufacturers use plastic for good reason
 
^^^ Those have to be the weakest complaints I've heard regarding Fractal cases.

The Define C is more narrow than the R5 or S. I can take some measurements when I get home.
 
zoob said:
There's not enough space between the PSU shroud and the side panel... there's pretty much only enough space for the side panel to slot in.
You can put it on the top of the PSU shroud but it wouldn't look very nice with the window placement.

You can get an idea of how narrow it is from this pic here: https://content.hwigroup.net/images...fractal-design-define-mini-c-window-black.jpg
Click to expand...

OK, what about along that slanted portion of the PSU shroud? Would that work? Would it look good?

Also could an LED strip be mounted vertically along the front interior, to the right of the fan in the picture you have shown? It looks pretty tight there too.

Finally, could an LED strip be mounted vertically along the back interior, next to the rear fan? I can't really tell from the angle in that pic if it would fit or not.
 
Citizen Snips said:
I am considering the Fractal Design Define C (window version) for my upcoming build and had two questions:

What are the external dimensions of the plastic window?

Is there room to mount an LED strip (NZXT HUE+) along each edge of the case's interior? My concern is that the fans in the front and/or back may prevent an LED strip from being mounted along those edges.
Click to expand...

External window dimensions are 280 x 332 mm on the Define C and 280 x 292 mm on the Define Mini C. There's definitely space for an LED strip, and as it just so happens one of our crew had a Define C with an NZXT HUE+ installed at a recent gathering: http://imgur.com/a/hM87P

Happy Hopping said:
avoid Fractal design. I build a Define R5, at the the top left / right gap where your motherboard sits, where you are SUPPOSED to have the space to insert your 8 pin motherboard cable, their gap is too narrow, so they forced you to snap your 8 pin to 2 x 4 pin to force the 8 pin thru that hole. They are idiot. All the other brand, from Antec, to Corsair, gives you enough space to loop that 8 pin cable thru that hole. Your Define C is the same thing:

http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-c/define-c-window

then there is the USB 3.0 ports, if you use the Define C on your own, that's fine, but if you are building it for a business client, they don't color code their USB 3.0 port in blue. THey leave it in black. Such dinosaur. No other brand does that.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear you've had such a bad experience with your Define R5. We have heard customers' feedback about the 8-pin through-hole being a bit of a tight fit, and I have experienced this myself having built several systems in the R5 as well. However, we do take customer feedback very seriously, and as a direct result this issue has been fully addressed in the newly designed Define C Series and is something we'll always be mindful of in future models and revisions.

Happy Hopping said:
By the way, they use metal on all the 3.5" bay and on the 2 x 2.5" bay. Metal gets hot, it makes the case get hotter. Tthe other 99% of the case manufacturers use plastic for good reason
Click to expand...

I can totally follow your reasoning, but believe it or not the fact that metal trays get hotter than plastic is a good thing. The reason the metal tray is getting hot is because it has removed that heat from the drive, meaning the device itself runs relatively cooler. Plastic on the other hand is an insulator, so the reason it stays relatively cool is because it's trapping that heat in the drive. Given a choice between the two, it's far better to have a cool component in a hot enclosure than a hot component in a cool enclosure.
 
pendragon1 said:
I still don't see how popping apart the 8pin is so hard...
Click to expand...

That's the deal breaker. It's not hard at all, but I don't want to do it. The 8 pin comes snapped together on the power supply I bought, I do about 10 power supply per month on 10 cases. Everything takes time. For that same reason, I changed from installing 2.5" SSD to m.2 SSD. It's faster, I don't need to mount the screws on a 2.5" plastic tray, I don't need to loop cables.

Same deal w/ that tiny hole: With other brands, I don't need to snap the 8 pin to 2 x 4 pin. And the other brands, such as Antec P100, can l easily insert the 8 pin thru that hole, I don't need to snap a 8 pin into 2, and I don't have to squeeze thru that tiny hole.

In short, since I'm the one paying for these cases, I don't feel a case should inconvenient me. It should be the other way around.

I tried out a no. of different brand, so far, Antec P100 is the most convenient. They are not perfect neither. Their door feels snappy. By contrast, the Define R5 door feels solid. IF Antec can make the P100 case w/ that solid door, that would be perfect.

By the way, I pay more on the Define R5 than the P100. And I do that just to try out the Define R5, but I get less satisfaction out of it.
 
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Apparently something that takes 5 seconds is a deal breaker. I could understand that, if you are building hundreds of systems a month as a business. If not then I just don't understand why something that minor even matters at all.
 
Have you look outside your window? did you notice all the roof of all houses outside your window are triangular? Why do you think that is? because it shed rain and snow. That's why 99.99% of all houses use triangular roof. But at one time, I was at this client's house, he bought 2 lots, merged into 1, and have this multi-million commercial grade house that the roof is flat, and the damn button to flush the toilet is not on the toilet bowl, but on the wall. And it was raining that day, and when I got there, there are buckets everywhere catching rain water inside the house.

You know what this means? if you are doing something that most people won't do, you're either a genius or an idiot. I tried 4 different brand: Corsair, NZXT, Antec and Fractal Design:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...&cm_re=corsair_carbide-_-11-139-089-_-Product @$64.99


https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...69481&cm_re=antec_p100-_-11-129-199-_-Product @$79.86


https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...8&cm_re=nzxt_mid_tower-_-11-146-198-_-Product @ $69.99


https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...352048&cm_re=define_r5-_-11-352-048-_-Product @ $109.99

all 4 cases are brush aluminum on the front, and dual panels. I paid $30 more on the Define R5 than the Antec, and yet I get less out of it. And in each of the other brand names, in which they are also less $ than the Define R5, their top left 8 pin hole can easily feed thru the 8 pin cable. So why should anyone put up with that, and paid $30 more? It's a matter of principle, I simply refuse to put up w/ that kind of "design".
 
Happy Hopping said:
did you notice all the roof of all houses outside your window are triangular
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actually they are mostly rectangular in my neighborhood. there is a reason that the 8 pins pop apart and this is exactly it.
ps: different case brands use different materials and building processes that affect the cost. so two similar cases will have different costs.
 
Most commercial buildings have a rectangular roof, most suburban residential builds have a triangular roof and most urban residential builds have a rectangular roof. There must be a good reason for that I but I am not an architectural engineer (and I doubt you are either).
Happy Hopping said:
if you are doing something that most people won't do, you're either a genius or an idiot.
Click to expand...
Or it means that it is of so little importance, it doesn't really matter. Out of the dozen or so reviews that I have read on the R5, not one of them mentioned a problem with the 8-pin connector. Must not have been a big deal to them either or they would have mentioned it.

 
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