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Welcome to my long overdue unboxing of the Fractal Design Core 1000.

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Sorry about that. I forgot my knife. Core 1000 microATX computer case. Now,

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they call it a computer case, but I because I guess it's hard to call uh a

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microATX case like a a gaming case or anything like that. And honestly, this

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case is very, very popular with our B2B sales guys uh at NCIX where I work. So,

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um maybe I'm just being completely

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irrelevant when I bring up gaming at all, but Fractal is more known for their

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enthusiast class of cases. So, I'm pretty excited to have a look at their

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core series because the core series is, as the name implies, more of a

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Oh, okay. The documentation is there. Users manual. more of a barebone style

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case. Now, it's quite small, which is one of the reasons it's gotten chosen

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for some of the uh for some of the designs, uh some of the system builds

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that we've done because it's very very compact and fits, you know, fits in well

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in like an office environment, something like that, just because of its size. I

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know we had one guy who u needed like 20

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of them because that was this was the only case that he could find that fit

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the dimensions of the cabinets that it had that they had to fit into

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other than getting like a Dell or something. And that's what he did last time. And based on his experience with

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it last time, he decided he wanted something from NCX, not something from

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Dell. So there you go.

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All right. It's fairly small, fairly lightweight. I wouldn't have minded

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seeing slightly thicker foam packaging, but it's probably not the end of the

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world because once again, it is fairly small and it is fairly lightweight. The

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user's manual, I'm just going to tuck in there and let's go ahead and get this

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baby opened up. So, everything we look at about this case, it's important to

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bear in mind the price of it. This is a very, very inexpensive case. On the

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bottom, we find like rubberized grippy things on the four feet, which you

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usually actually don't see in a case at this price point. Okay.

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Let's flip it over here. So, this case uses positive pressure in

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order to achieve its cooling. So, you can see we have a filtered front 120 mm

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fan in there. We have up to two 5 and 1/4 in bays. This uses their same kind

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of uh meshed filtered. So, the the mesh

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that we have on here does a couple things. It's a fan filter, but it also

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reduces the overall noise output of the case a little bit. We've got a Fractal

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Design logo right about here. and front

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outputs are all done on the right hand side here. So we have power, two USB 2.0

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headphones, microphone, a reset switch that is recessed, so it's difficult to

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hit actually at all, but especially difficult to hit by accident, hard drive

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indicator, as well as a power LED.

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Now, why did I say this case uses positive air flow? positive. Remember,

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positive, sorry, positive pressure air flow is good because what it does is it

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reduces the amount of dust that can settle in your case. Uh, actually, here,

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can I get you to move a little bit that way? Cuz I think we're going to need this light there. Um, so what that means

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is that if you have a filtered intake that is pushing more air into the case

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than you're actually removing, it means it's very difficult for dust to get

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sucked into the little gaps around the edges and the and into um unpopulated

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fan holes and things like that. So in the back we have a 92 mm uh fan spacing

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that is actually considered optional. It does not have a fan included with it by

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default. So, by using just the 120 mm in

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the front and the power supply fan, you will have positive internal pressure,

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which keeps the dust out. If, for example, you were to install only fans

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that suck air out of the case and that

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and they don't and you didn't have any filtered intake fans, that would mean

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that all these little holes, these ones and these ones, would be sucking in

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unfiltered air and allowing dust to settle in the case. So, I know I've

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blathered about that for an awful long time now, so don't worry. We will at

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some point actually open up the case.

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If you guys watch enough of my videos, you'll probably know this. I'm a bit of a Fractal fanboy at this point. I do

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really like their overall design. Uh they're great at taking sort of a a well

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a lowish price point for the features they deliver and then delivering

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features that are difficult to deliver at a given price point. So, I'm pretty

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interested to see what we find inside here. So, that's a 92 mil. In the back

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is either an 80 or 92 mil. And then that one we saw at the front was a 120

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millimeter fan spot. Like I said, fairly low-end case, so don't expect, you know,

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too it to be too overbuilt compared to something from their Define series or

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their Arc series. Okay. On the inside, we find a very, very, very

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straightforward internal layout. So, you got microATX compatibility. That means

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four expansion slots as well as your IO shield here. Top-mounted power supply.

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Bottom mounted power supply is totally unnecessary for microATX. uh just

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because we're not talking performance machines that have huge huge old power

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supplies that need to be isolated from the rest of the system in terms of their

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air flow. So, your power supply goes right in the top and it'll also easily

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reach, you know, your graphics card or whatever else cuz it's really just not

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that far away from anything. Okay. Motherboard tray is reinforced

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using the bending technique.

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So, that makes it a little bit more stiff and that is important for a case

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like this.

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Front panel connectors are amply long, so you can actually manage those cables

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fairly easily. And you can reach even the furthest away front USB ports or

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front HD audio ports, which on some stupid motherboards are located like

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here, right? So, you'll have no problems with any of those things as well.

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Now, here's something that's actually kind of neat. I mean, totally unnecessary, but kind of neat. Check

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this out. So, okay. Well, first here, let me remove this.

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And check this out, guys. So, you can actually remove with this thumb screw

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right down here and these two thumb screws up here the 3 and 1/2 in hard

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drive mounting. So, what that means is that you could actually install the

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longest possible graphics card in here. If you really wanted to build a tiny,

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like tiny, look how small this case is for context, right guys? tiny microATX

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gaming system, you could do it because it would be receiving direct air flow

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from that 120 millimeter fan in the front, right? And uh you'd have all the

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space that you need. All you have to do is throw a 92mm cooling fan on the side

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panel, exhaust some of that hot air coming off the graphics card, and you're

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in pretty good shape. So, there's your two five and a/4 in phase. There's your

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um hold on a second.

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We figured it out. So, doing a little bit of research before I started my

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video might have helped make this easier, but check this out. That is how the hard drive mounts. So, you can

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actually have your longass video card, in this case, I have a GTX 590 in here

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installed, and you can have a 3 and 1/2 in hard drive because the whole hard

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drive mounting thing is just on this one strip. So, you see these rubberized

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ones, that's for your two 3 and 1/2 in drives potentially. And then you see

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these non- rubber ones, these guys right here, those are for SSDs. So, you can

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either do a single hard drive and then an SSD or you can do two hard drives or

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you can do uh three SSDs. So, cool,

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right? And then, oh, look at that. There's another 3 and 1/2 in uh up here

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as well. Actually, that looks like Hold on. Yeah, that better be 3 and 12 in.

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Yep. And then it looks like there are mounting holes on here for an SSD as

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well. So, you can install an additional drive here. So, you can do two hard drives and an SSD by doing it that way.

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So, this is a fantastic little case in terms of the design that allows them to

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cram in hardware even tighter than I have seen in the past. Not a lot of

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cable routing options, guys. It's a very narrow case, so there's pretty much no

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room between the back panel here and the motherboard tray. But, you know, kind of

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get over it, I guess, for like 40 bucks. What are you expecting exactly? So,

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thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look and uh actually fairly

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impressed first look at the Fractal Design Core 1000 series case. Don't

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forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.