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Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Fractal Design Define R4 computer

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case. As you can see, this case has a

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very ugly box. But I'm going to hope

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that this is more of a story of the beauty within than a story of the beauty

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without. And see the funny thing is that

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the whole Oh, for crying out loud. Give me a sec, guys. Sorry about that, guys.

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Had to fix the uh the TV there. So, you can see we have a Fractal Design logo on

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the TV behind me, which is of course appropriate for a Fractal Design case

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unboxing. Very appropriate indeed.

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There we go. All right. So, what is I mean, what do they say about themselves

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on the So, they've done away with the silver case color. So, it's available in

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black, white, and titanium. Supports ATX, microATX or miniITX cases, uh,

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motherboards. It's minimalistic, elegant, and that's something we've come

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to expect from the define series. Patent pending modu is something we've come to

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expect. So, basically, what is this? This is an evolutionary change, not a

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revolutionary change. Fractal is going

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for h

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just the define R3 plus I guess. So they've

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updated the internals in a big way, but I'm not expecting the outside of the

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case to really look very different at all. Packing material wise, it's I'd

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prefer to see a soft foam, but more and more we're seeing manufacturers go with

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hard foam because they do present a bit of a better value.

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um on the manufacturing side. So, well,

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they're going with them. Included is a user's manual. Define our four computer

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case users manual. Very good stuff. As

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well as a plastic cover. So, from the

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outside, sort of any immediate

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similarities that you might notice between the Define R4 and the Define R3

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are obviously not present. you know,

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this doesn't look anything like a Define R3, which clearly didn't look anything

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like a Define R2. And of course, I'm being very um sort of very very ironic

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here. Um so, it looks pretty much like a Define R3 from the outside. For front

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IO, we've got our power indicator. We've got our microphone, headphone, and reset

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button. That's not a headphone button, that's a jack, but that's a button.

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Power button. Did I mention that before? with cool little concentric circle

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finish on it. USB 3 super speed ports. Two USB 2 not super speed ports. Two

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front panel 5 and a/4 in bays. Sound

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dampening material inside the front panel here. This is actually very

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important for sound uh sound dampening.

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H. Oh, cool. Built-in fan controller. 12vt, 7 volt, 5vt. Awesome. Those are

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the only things you really need. Any fans that'll go all the way down to 5V,

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fantastic. the uh hydraulic bearing fans that are included should do it. There's

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a 140 in the back and a 140 in the front. They've updated this a little

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bit. So, that's kind of interesting. So, now instead of being on a swinging door,

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this is actually this actually swings

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down, does it? Or Hold on. I think it's uh H. There we go. Oh, no. Give me a

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sec, guys. Okay. So, yeah, we got had a bit of a clearance issue there, but I

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just kind of tucked this in. So, there's a removable fan filter right here, which

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sort of comes out somehow. Um,

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sure. Like that. That's probably not how you do it. Dual 140 or 120 mm fans.

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These are their R2 fans with the hydraulic bearings that I mentioned

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before that are included. And uh, so I

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talked about the filter already. Talked about the ah, yes. So, there's a grill

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here. And then they also have access to air through the vents that are on the

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side. So, you can go and have a look at that vent while I figure out how to get this filter back in place. I'm really

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sure this isn't how I'm supposed to do it, but I'm just kind of like bending it

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in. So, if you do it my way, then sort

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of you're doing it wrong, but uh I'm trying to film an unboxing here and not,

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you know, paint the Mona Lisa. So, maybe I don't do things the most elegant way.

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I'm very, very sorry. Moduvent. This is a cool technology. The first time I saw

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Moduvent was with the Define R2. And basically, see these? These are fan

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holes, but there's like nothing that goes through them because there are

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actual pieces of sound dampening material that are screwed in. You can

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take these screws out. You can put a couple of 140 mm fans up there and it is

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off to the races. On the side, you've got another modu vent. So, this one

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supports either a 120 or 140 mm fan

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directly over where your graphics cards would be if you had graphics cards in

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your system. Uh, in the back you see a 120 or 140 millimeter fan mount mount,

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more just general venting holes. Seven PCI slots with one auxiliary one that

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you could use for like a fan controller or something like that. Bottom mounted

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power supply with sound dampening material. The Defined series is all

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about quiet computing. So, let's go

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ahead and get it opened up and I'll be right back.

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Now, Define R3 is a little on the heavy side for its size. So when you open it

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up, you realize it's because they spent money on the sound dampening material.

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So the side panels are phenomenally heavy because they have this thick dense

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material here that helps to deaden the noise that gets made inside your case.

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So that combined with the sound deadening material that's built into the

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front panel means that any sound usually gets kind of projected out the back or

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out those vents on the side and you're not as likely to hear it. They have

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seriously upgraded the cable management room in the Define R4 compared to the

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Define R3. There is enough room that you can easily route a 24 pin cable back

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here. Lots of cable management um

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anchors so you won't have any difficulty routing things wherever you need them to

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go outside of the holes here. They've also put in a larger than usual bottom

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power supply cable grommet. And what that means is that all the cables that

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need to come up here will actually be able to fit. I've seen cases that have ones that are only about this size. So,

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while you've got lots of room to cable manage up here, there's not enough room to actually bring the cables up to the

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top of the case. The included fans have very nice Wow, very high quality sleing

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on them. You can't even see the color of the wires at all. This has colored wires

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inside it, guys. You can see up here, but this looks

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that's some of the tightest mesh I've seen from anything but like Murder Mod.

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It's fantastic. Okay. And I think that

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pretty much does it for the back side. Your CPU cutout is here where you would

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expect to find it on the other side of the CPU part of the motherboard tray.

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And let's go ahead and open up this side. So here you can see the modu. So

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this has like a sound dampening foam hoo-ha thing going on. You just go ahead

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and remove that and throw in a fan if you feel the desire. Very heavy as well

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just due to the uh to the sound dampening material. They have seriously

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upgraded the internals of the Define series as well. So, we still have room

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for eight hard drives. See that? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. However, they've given the

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option to completely remove five of them if you don't want to mount a ton of

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drives and you want to create more room in your case for cooling and air flow.

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See that? Now, those front 140 mm fans have lots of room to blow air from the

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vents here into the inside of the case. And you've got room for much longer

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graphics cards. So you could install a graphics card that's like I mean come

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on. It would be an entire Linus forearm and almost a Linus hand in length by the

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time it actually touched this fan which seems to be on some kind of a Oh, there

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we go. That's clipped in a little bit better now. Oh, that explains it. So it

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looks like this came a little bit loose in shipping. You know what? Let's go ahead and do some Linus Tech Tips

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investigation of uh of what's going on

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with that uh that front mechanism thing

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that's uh that's been causing problems for me. Couldn't get the front closed.

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Okay. So, we'll just pull this off. And you can see that we get access to all of

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the pieces here. So, this whole thing

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comes out. Look at that. So, you just clip the fans in here. You can remove

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the fan filter much more easily now that I've done it sort of the way that you're

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supposed to. Then you take this whole mechanism, put it back inside here, run

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your cables around the back where there is tons of room here. Come around the other side. This is fantastic. So

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there's tons of room for cable management back here. Oh, you can't reach, can you? We're plugged in, guys.

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Tons of room for cable management here. And then you just go and take the whole

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thing and clip it right into place like that. So now it

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isn't going anywhere and we're not going to have any more trouble with it.

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Awesome. Ah, another thing they've upgraded about the interior, check this

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out, guys, is that you can not only take this out and do this, but you can take

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it out and do this. Haha. So you can rotate it. That gives you more air flow

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through here if you haven't filled it up with hard drives or even if you have in

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all likelihood cuz a lot of people complain about this style. But in order

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to get enough strength once you fill this up with hard drives, you have to

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have enough reinforcement material here. But you can go ahead and put it in that

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way in order to reorient the drive cages however you see fit. Now the bottom one.

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Yep. You can remove that one as well, which is very, very cool. So there's that bottom mounted 120 or 140 mm, which

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has one long fan filter that can be taken out from the back. There we go. So

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that covers both this fan and the bottom of the power supply. You can see the

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cable management more clearly from here. You can also see the uh module vents

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that are in the top of the case. So, what have they upgraded? Removable

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cages. Both this one and this one. Although this one doesn't look like you

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can reorient it. No, I kind of doubt it.

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Although I could be wrong. I hope I'm not wrong. Ah, SSD mounts. Is that are

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is that an SSD mount on the bottom? I don't know. I don't know what this holes

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for. Maybe you can reorient it.

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Whatever. Someone will look it up and they'll make it the top comment and someone will thumbs it up and then Linus

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will look stupid but he doesn't feel that bad about it. So don't worry guys,

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go ahead, thumbs it up, make it the top comment and we'll know if you can rotate

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that or not. Can rotate this one. Two five and a quarters. All right. Right.

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What have they upgraded? So the rotating cages, the removable cages, the uh

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actually much better design for the front fans and filters. The integrated

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fan controller. So there's a Molex connector right here. And then you've

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got a number looks like three. The number three, four, I don't know, a

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number reset switch. Uh you've got a number of uh fans that can be plugged

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into that in order to control most of the fans in your case, which is very,

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very cool. You've also got USB 3

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natively, USB 2, front audio. These are all nicely black cables that'll go into

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your motherboard and look really sleek. Uh so they've added

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uh right 140 mm fan support at the back.

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I mean, yeah. So, evolutionary changes, little steps. Is this a better case than

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the Define R3? Absolutely. Was the Define R3 already a kick butt case?

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Absolutely. 100% kickbutt in spite of the lack of

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motherboard tray. That's a cheap shot, but uh cable management as well as some

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rubber grommets for Oh, cool. They include rubber grommets for the fans. That's outstanding. Look at that. lots

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of isolating ergonomics and all of the screws that you need to assemble your

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case. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Define R4

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from Fractal Design. Honestly, Defree is one of my favorite

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cases, so this only makes it better. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech

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Tips for unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. And just in case you didn't already know, it includes rubber

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isolating mounts for your three and a half in drives. And all of these sleds

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are fully 2 and 1/2 in drive compatible. Again, don't forget to subscribe. It's

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really important.