Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Fractal Design Define R4 computer
case. As you can see, this case has a
very ugly box. But I'm going to hope
that this is more of a story of the beauty within than a story of the beauty
without. And see the funny thing is that
the whole Oh, for crying out loud. Give me a sec, guys. Sorry about that, guys.
Had to fix the uh the TV there. So, you can see we have a Fractal Design logo on
the TV behind me, which is of course appropriate for a Fractal Design case
unboxing. Very appropriate indeed.
There we go. All right. So, what is I mean, what do they say about themselves
on the So, they've done away with the silver case color. So, it's available in
black, white, and titanium. Supports ATX, microATX or miniITX cases, uh,
motherboards. It's minimalistic, elegant, and that's something we've come
to expect from the define series. Patent pending modu is something we've come to
expect. So, basically, what is this? This is an evolutionary change, not a
revolutionary change. Fractal is going
for h
just the define R3 plus I guess. So they've
updated the internals in a big way, but I'm not expecting the outside of the
case to really look very different at all. Packing material wise, it's I'd
prefer to see a soft foam, but more and more we're seeing manufacturers go with
hard foam because they do present a bit of a better value.
um on the manufacturing side. So, well,
they're going with them. Included is a user's manual. Define our four computer
case users manual. Very good stuff. As
well as a plastic cover. So, from the
outside, sort of any immediate
similarities that you might notice between the Define R4 and the Define R3
are obviously not present. you know,
this doesn't look anything like a Define R3, which clearly didn't look anything
like a Define R2. And of course, I'm being very um sort of very very ironic
here. Um so, it looks pretty much like a Define R3 from the outside. For front
IO, we've got our power indicator. We've got our microphone, headphone, and reset
button. That's not a headphone button, that's a jack, but that's a button.
Power button. Did I mention that before? with cool little concentric circle
finish on it. USB 3 super speed ports. Two USB 2 not super speed ports. Two
front panel 5 and a/4 in bays. Sound
dampening material inside the front panel here. This is actually very
important for sound uh sound dampening.
H. Oh, cool. Built-in fan controller. 12vt, 7 volt, 5vt. Awesome. Those are
the only things you really need. Any fans that'll go all the way down to 5V,
fantastic. the uh hydraulic bearing fans that are included should do it. There's
a 140 in the back and a 140 in the front. They've updated this a little
bit. So, that's kind of interesting. So, now instead of being on a swinging door,
this is actually this actually swings
down, does it? Or Hold on. I think it's uh H. There we go. Oh, no. Give me a
sec, guys. Okay. So, yeah, we got had a bit of a clearance issue there, but I
just kind of tucked this in. So, there's a removable fan filter right here, which
sort of comes out somehow. Um,
sure. Like that. That's probably not how you do it. Dual 140 or 120 mm fans.
These are their R2 fans with the hydraulic bearings that I mentioned
before that are included. And uh, so I
talked about the filter already. Talked about the ah, yes. So, there's a grill
here. And then they also have access to air through the vents that are on the
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
sure this isn't how I'm supposed to do it, but I'm just kind of like bending it
in. So, if you do it my way, then sort
of you're doing it wrong, but uh I'm trying to film an unboxing here and not,
you know, paint the Mona Lisa. So, maybe I don't do things the most elegant way.
I'm very, very sorry. Moduvent. This is a cool technology. The first time I saw
Moduvent was with the Define R2. And basically, see these? These are fan
holes, but there's like nothing that goes through them because there are
actual pieces of sound dampening material that are screwed in. You can
take these screws out. You can put a couple of 140 mm fans up there and it is
off to the races. On the side, you've got another modu vent. So, this one
supports either a 120 or 140 mm fan
directly over where your graphics cards would be if you had graphics cards in
your system. Uh, in the back you see a 120 or 140 millimeter fan mount mount,
more just general venting holes. Seven PCI slots with one auxiliary one that
you could use for like a fan controller or something like that. Bottom mounted
power supply with sound dampening material. The Defined series is all
about quiet computing. So, let's go
ahead and get it opened up and I'll be right back.
Now, Define R3 is a little on the heavy side for its size. So when you open it
up, you realize it's because they spent money on the sound dampening material.
So the side panels are phenomenally heavy because they have this thick dense
material here that helps to deaden the noise that gets made inside your case.
So that combined with the sound deadening material that's built into the
front panel means that any sound usually gets kind of projected out the back or
out those vents on the side and you're not as likely to hear it. They have
seriously upgraded the cable management room in the Define R4 compared to the
Define R3. There is enough room that you can easily route a 24 pin cable back
here. Lots of cable management um
anchors so you won't have any difficulty routing things wherever you need them to
go outside of the holes here. They've also put in a larger than usual bottom
power supply cable grommet. And what that means is that all the cables that
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,
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
top of the case. The included fans have very nice Wow, very high quality sleing
on them. You can't even see the color of the wires at all. This has colored wires
inside it, guys. You can see up here, but this looks
that's some of the tightest mesh I've seen from anything but like Murder Mod.
It's fantastic. Okay. And I think that
pretty much does it for the back side. Your CPU cutout is here where you would
expect to find it on the other side of the CPU part of the motherboard tray.
And let's go ahead and open up this side. So here you can see the modu. So
this has like a sound dampening foam hoo-ha thing going on. You just go ahead
and remove that and throw in a fan if you feel the desire. Very heavy as well
just due to the uh to the sound dampening material. They have seriously
upgraded the internals of the Define series as well. So, we still have room
for eight hard drives. See that? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. However, they've given the
option to completely remove five of them if you don't want to mount a ton of
drives and you want to create more room in your case for cooling and air flow.
See that? Now, those front 140 mm fans have lots of room to blow air from the
vents here into the inside of the case. And you've got room for much longer
graphics cards. So you could install a graphics card that's like I mean come
on. It would be an entire Linus forearm and almost a Linus hand in length by the
time it actually touched this fan which seems to be on some kind of a Oh, there
we go. That's clipped in a little bit better now. Oh, that explains it. So it
looks like this came a little bit loose in shipping. You know what? Let's go ahead and do some Linus Tech Tips
investigation of uh of what's going on
with that uh that front mechanism thing
that's uh that's been causing problems for me. Couldn't get the front closed.
Okay. So, we'll just pull this off. And you can see that we get access to all of
the pieces here. So, this whole thing
comes out. Look at that. So, you just clip the fans in here. You can remove
the fan filter much more easily now that I've done it sort of the way that you're
supposed to. Then you take this whole mechanism, put it back inside here, run
your cables around the back where there is tons of room here. Come around the other side. This is fantastic. So
there's tons of room for cable management back here. Oh, you can't reach, can you? We're plugged in, guys.
Tons of room for cable management here. And then you just go and take the whole
thing and clip it right into place like that. So now it
isn't going anywhere and we're not going to have any more trouble with it.
Awesome. Ah, another thing they've upgraded about the interior, check this
out, guys, is that you can not only take this out and do this, but you can take
it out and do this. Haha. So you can rotate it. That gives you more air flow
through here if you haven't filled it up with hard drives or even if you have in
all likelihood cuz a lot of people complain about this style. But in order
to get enough strength once you fill this up with hard drives, you have to
have enough reinforcement material here. But you can go ahead and put it in that
way in order to reorient the drive cages however you see fit. Now the bottom one.
Yep. You can remove that one as well, which is very, very cool. So there's that bottom mounted 120 or 140 mm, which
has one long fan filter that can be taken out from the back. There we go. So
that covers both this fan and the bottom of the power supply. You can see the
cable management more clearly from here. You can also see the uh module vents
that are in the top of the case. So, what have they upgraded? Removable
cages. Both this one and this one. Although this one doesn't look like you
can reorient it. No, I kind of doubt it.
Although I could be wrong. I hope I'm not wrong. Ah, SSD mounts. Is that are
is that an SSD mount on the bottom? I don't know. I don't know what this holes
for. Maybe you can reorient it.
Whatever. Someone will look it up and they'll make it the top comment and someone will thumbs it up and then Linus
will look stupid but he doesn't feel that bad about it. So don't worry guys,
go ahead, thumbs it up, make it the top comment and we'll know if you can rotate
that or not. Can rotate this one. Two five and a quarters. All right. Right.
What have they upgraded? So the rotating cages, the removable cages, the uh
actually much better design for the front fans and filters. The integrated
fan controller. So there's a Molex connector right here. And then you've
got a number looks like three. The number three, four, I don't know, a
number reset switch. Uh you've got a number of uh fans that can be plugged
into that in order to control most of the fans in your case, which is very,
very cool. You've also got USB 3
natively, USB 2, front audio. These are all nicely black cables that'll go into
your motherboard and look really sleek. Uh so they've added
uh right 140 mm fan support at the back.
I mean, yeah. So, evolutionary changes, little steps. Is this a better case than
the Define R3? Absolutely. Was the Define R3 already a kick butt case?
Absolutely. 100% kickbutt in spite of the lack of
motherboard tray. That's a cheap shot, but uh cable management as well as some
rubber grommets for Oh, cool. They include rubber grommets for the fans. That's outstanding. Look at that. lots
of isolating ergonomics and all of the screws that you need to assemble your
case. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Define R4
from Fractal Design. Honestly, Defree is one of my favorite
cases, so this only makes it better. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech
Tips for unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. And just in case you didn't already know, it includes rubber
isolating mounts for your three and a half in drives. And all of these sleds
are fully 2 and 1/2 in drive compatible. Again, don't forget to subscribe. It's
really important.