Now, this is a product that is going to be completely boring for some people,
but really exciting for others because it is a miniITX case that houses six 3
and 1/2 in hard drives and one 2 and 1/2 in drive. So, that means if you're into
Windows home server or any other kind of uh home storage software or if you uh if
you have a media PC that you like to keep a lot of content stored on, this is
for you. This is an aluminum case. This is the Fractal Design Array R2 miniITX
case. I guess I'll show you what it says on the outside. So, the case size, it
looks like they actually uh made some adjustments to the box, but it's 250x
200 by 350 mm, so it's quite small. It's
compatible with miniITX boards. It has a 140 mm fan, which is also very
impressive for a miniITX case. I already talked about all that storage space. Uh,
okay. There's a little bit about Fractal Design itself. And then finally, I just
want to show you what it says on the front. Oh, yes. And it does also include
a 300 W SFX power supply. So that's
pretty sweet as well. So let's go ahead and get this
open. And yeah, there's something else I
thought I wanted to mention, but I was wrong. Okay, I have not seen this one in
person yet. Although everything that I've seen from Fractal Design so far has
uh looked great on paper and then looked
even better in person. So, I have a very
very high expectations for the Array R2. I apologize for it taking me so long to
do this unboxing, but uh just haven't
really gotten around to it for some reason. All right. Now, one thing that I
have on um fairly good authority, but
you know, keep it to yourself, is that this case is actually OEM, at least in
part, by Lean Lee. So, the finish on it, you can already see, is just
outstanding. A beautiful black anodized
aluminum finish all over the outside of this case. Very clean looking, which is
something that we've come to expect from Fractal Design. Just lots of straight
edges, ventilation holes in places where they make sense, and an overall elegant
elegant design and look and feel to the case. So, I'm going to flip it over on
its side. Oh, I feel terrible flipping it onto its side on the table. So, just
looks so nice. So, I'm gonna just put down some plastic here. And there we go.
So, you can see that it does have four rubber feet on the bottom. And uh we've
got yet another Looks like this panel is actually removable. The assembly of the
case looks quite modular. So, um I'm going to have to go get a screwdriver so
we can take this apart. So, we're on a voyage of discovery about how exactly
all of this fits together. uh right now. So, I removed the top panel and you can
see we've actually got some noise dampening material here on the top. All
right. So, you got to be really careful when you're handling these uh these
anodized aluminum panels because as soon as you touch them once the oil from your
fingers will leave a fingerprint on it that you
can't even remove. So, you want to be really careful when you're working with
cases like this. And uh this goes for
pretty much all anodized aluminum surfaces and even some of the
non-anodized aluminum cases. You just got to be uh very very careful. Now uh
the the screws on the top allowed me to remove the top panel. And then these two
screws here appear to loosen the hard drive cage which is here. So that's
where we mount our six hard drives. And I have yet to figure
out exactly how to remove uh this part.
Oh, you know what? I figured it out. But this is going to take a little while. I think I have to remove the screws on the
bottom. So, you can see that uh there is some disassembly required for this case.
So, better just uh turn off the camera for a minute. All right. Well, after
um about 20 screws and uh removing some
completely unnecessary parts, I think I finally figured out how it works. So,
you do not remove the screws in the side. Actually, what you do is you
remove the four screws in the top of the hard drive cage, which slides in like
this. And then we'll move the power supply cables out of the way there. So,
you can see it rests on top of these black pads so that you get some
antiibration action going on there. And
uh so you just screw those in. And I'm just going to remove it for the sake of
showing you guys some of the other things that are included. So maybe I can
also figure out where the 2 and 1/2 in drive
goes. H oh there it is. So the 2 and 1/2
in drive mounts on the bottom of this.
And you can see that there are four convenient screwdriver holes located
here. So you can actually screw the drive in. And then it just sits on the
bottom of the entire hard drive cage. So, this holds six 3 and 1/2 in and two
well rather one 2 and 1/2 in
drive. All right. Now, let's finally look at the accessories and what's
inside the case. So, here we have uh motherboard screws. We have lots of hard
drive screws and that's pretty much it. We've got one uh cable management tie
and then we have our motherboard tray which I removed which is entirely
unnecessary. So, what I would like to do is I'll put this back down. Get some of
this stuff out of my way. Oh, it comes with a power cord since it does include
a power supply. So, I can take this, put
it back on top where it belongs. And now we can examine what the inside of the
case looks like. So, here we go. Here is the uh SFX power supply. Uh you can see
that it is a 300 W unit capable of providing up to 14 amps on one of the
12volt rails and 16 amps on the other 12volt rail. So it does have two 12vt
rails. In terms of connectors, we have a
24 pin connector. Oh, no way. Is that a
is that a 20 pin? No, it's a 24 pin. Good. Yeah, we have a 24 pin. So a 20 +
4. And then we also have a 4 pin uh P4
connector. And then, go figure, we've got a bunch of SATA power. So, how many
of those do we have? We have 1 2 3 4 5 6
7 SATA power, which makes sense cuz that's how many drives it holds. And
then we have one additional Molex connector. So, this is pretty much
designed to power your board, your
drives, and that's it. The front 140 mm
fan hooks up via a three pin fan connector. And you can see that the
whole front assembly for the 140 millimeter fan is held in by three
screws at the top. And it's also held in by a matching three screws at the
bottom. So you can remove this whole thing, put on a different fan if you so
desire, and it can be easily replaced that way. The front panel connectors are
here. So we've got a power switch as well as a power LED. And that is it. The
front of the case is very clean and uh
they're able to achieve that by only having one switch. And then the LED is
actually inside there. You've got space for two expansion cards. So that is you
can install one expansion card with ITX or you can install one dual slot card.
Although I wouldn't be expecting to install any uh any long graphics cards
unless you make some modifications to the hard drive cage, which you could
quite easily do now that I look at it. Although you'd have to make some
modifications to the power supply mounting and you'd be you'd be making
some pretty serious modifications to the case itself. Not something that I think is uh
for the first time modern necessarily, but it does look doable actually. If you
wanted to uh to take this out, you could probably cut out a new hole for a fulls
size ATX power supply and then you could probably uh chop this off and do up to
like a 12-in graphics card in here. So, that'd be kind of cool. Anyway, that is
my unboxing and first look at the Fractal Design Array R2.