Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,981 words · ~9 min read
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fully private click now to learn more welcome to my unboxing of something that
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we saw for the first time at computex this is the fractal design Ark
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mini not to be confused with the ark midi Ark mini R2 so this is an matx case
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that is designed to be extremely Compact
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and accept a metric butt ton of cooling gear and hard
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drives but not necessarily at the same time so in terms of the packing material
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we've got a hard foam which is never particularly impressive but I don't
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really mind it as much with smaller cases because they tend to weigh less
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and are therefore less likely to damage the foam in transit due to their weight
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although you can see that this piece barely made it so you can see there's uh
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think this is why I don't like hard foam soft foam wouldn't have had that problem
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next up we've got the users's manual which we are going to promptly throw
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away because I have a reviewer's guide haha which is just as good as a user's
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manual if not better next up we've got the plastic sheathing that covers it and
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in theory keeps it safe in transit and
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that got boring so let's pick up on the actual case so starting on the outside
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we have that typical clean Swedish design that we get from fractal design
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which incidentally happened happens to be a Sweden based company so on the
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front we find two 5 and 1/4 in Bays although the use of these is incredibly
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optional as you're going to find out once we open it up we have this piece of
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plastic that holds this front panel in place as well as the removable fan
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filter that is to be cleaned by running water over it you know when you clean it
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anyway so it's got foam okay anyway there's two 120 mm fans of which one of
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them is included so that's their silent R2 series fans and I actually really
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like this implementation here with a nice heavy fan filter it feels very
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robust got a nice little fractal design logo here and then just a simple front
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that is very very clean very very simple and all you got to do is put in a couple
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screws to install a fan and you are done
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on the top we find The Usual Suspects in
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terms of I/O we've got a reset switch a microphone port a headphone jack a power
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switch with a power LED as well as two USB 3.0 ports and an integrated fan
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controller 5 S and 12 volts are all supported the right hand side of the
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case is completely plain as we'd expect from fral design and the left hand side
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of the case has a nice smoked window that I've removed the outside layer of
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plastic off of but not the inside layer at the back of the case we find another
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120 mm fan slot there's actually a total of seven possible fan slots IO and a
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four plus one arrangement for I/O I would have preferred to have that fifth
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one below it but it would have made the case that much taller so I understand
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why they did this the way they did you can put things like fan speed controllers and stuff here you've got a
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little padded bottom power Supply Mount that also has padding on the bottom here
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and then at the top just like on previous Arc series cases well I
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wouldn't have been funny if that slipped and fell all right let's go ahead and do
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that you've got another removable cleanable fan filter that comes off the
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entire top of the case and this serves a couple of purposes number one is
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functional number two is aesthetic because they've used an offset
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configuration for the top fan holes so you can see you can mount either a
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triple 120 mm radiator and yes it supports a thick triple 120 mm radiator
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because of the way that it's offset so the motherboard is actually over here so as long as you don't have any tall
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components it can sit right over top of the motherboard or it can support a dual
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140 mm Radiator in the top and it doesn't really matter because of the
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gaps here so you can see that because there's a lot of space here it doesn't
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matter what the spacing of your radiator happens to be I did miss one thing about
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the outside I'm sorry there was another fan filter down here on the bottom not
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my favorite implementation because it is a longer fan filter but it serves its
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purpose you know fairly effectively so it does allow filtration of both the
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power supply intake which is isolated from the rest of the system's air flow
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as well as this bottom 120 mm fan Mount
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that could also be equipped with a radiator so let's go ahead and pull the
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side panel off I like smoked side panels I think they look good it's you know
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your typical fractal design solid build quality as far as the side panels
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concerned not an excessive amount of flex by any stretch so I'll just give
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you guys a ah give you guys a little demo of that considering the fact that
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most of the the side panel is a window that's what I'd consider to be
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acceptable and it also has some weight to it which isn't always the case these
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days so inside this is where things start to get really interesting so I
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showed you how that radiator support worked up there you can do see the way
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that the 5 and a/4 inch Bay is cut out here and the way that it's screwed in
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you can do the Dual 140s without
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actually removing the 5 and a/4 inch Bays but if you want to you know step up
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to the big leagues and you want to move up to a 360 mm radiator you will have to
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pull out your 5 and 1/4 in Baye but the good news is that you can you can also
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take out your 3 and 1/2 in Baye so you
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can see right here that those front 120
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mm fans have easy access to be screwed
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into radiators so I can show you guys how the 3 and 1/2 in bays are removed so
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you can mount as I said before up to six 3 and 1/2 in drives and those will go on
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these sleds right here which have the usual fractal design vibration reducing
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rubber grommets go ahead pop that out in fact you can actually Mount these
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different ways as well so if you want to get a little bit more air flow to your graphics card from that front fan
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obviously more of air is going to be able to make it through this guy this
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way especially if you don't have hard drives in there versus this way or you
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can pull the whole thing out entirely and then just have free flowing air
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going straight to your graphics card if you only need a few fans if you do want
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to pull that one out you actually just flip it over on the bottom I love
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construction of cases that is done with screws versus rivets because it gives
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you the flexibility to do what you want to do with it it is more expensive to
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implement this like let's be let's be real clear every scent counts when it
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comes to case manufacturing but I like it when case manufacturers spend that
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extra little bit to give us threaded holes and screws rather than rivets so
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there you go that's what it looks like oh okay we got to pull out another
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couple screws on the back because I guess they're fral they wanted it to be
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you know Swedish designed so you can see this one has quite a bit less Flex than
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the window one Swedish designed and you know very solid and all that stuff I
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remember their old cases never used to uh have quite that much caregiv to the
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solidity particularly in shipping I remember the Define R2 had a couple of
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issues with that hard drive cage it wasn't reinforced enough and I didn't
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realize that when I did my original video it wasn't until I ordered a container of them at NC and uh some of
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them started getting damaged particularly when we shipped them with a bunch of hard drives in them in
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pre-built systems so there you go guys take things very seriously when I talk
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about the packaging of products because I actually do know all right so there
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you go there's that uh there's that cage out so that gives us some idea of just
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how open the inside can be so you pull this bad boy out you put a thick rad
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here thick double rad here thick triple red up here you can put another single
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120 down here you throw a single 120 in the back they've actually got adequate
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spacing here for radiators that are slightly wider than a fan and you have a
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very capable water cooling extra have a
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ganza of a case on a fairly reasonable budget so I'm impressed with this now in
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terms of the standard case features it's matx as I mentioned before there's your
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four expansion slots it uses standard screws thumb screws for those it's got
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all black internal cables which is nice to see and you can also see here there
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sorry I want to give you a better view of that you can see here that they come
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prewired through the included Cable Management grommets that Corsair made so
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popular with the release of the 800d and then on the back we find two more SS
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mounts and the way they've implemented this is much better than the way they
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used to do SSD mounts on the back of motherboard trays so they are actually
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removable using two screws here here and here well here here here and here and
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then you just Mount the ssds using the mounting holes here and pull them off
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and mount them as you see fit the way it used to be was they were holes that passed through the motherboard tray you
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actually had to remove your motherboard in order to mount ssts on their cases so
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that was h a little bit ridiculous there's ample Cable Management room in
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the back of the case so there's enough for a 24 pin connect but not a whole lot
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more I wouldn't expect to be passing anything over it and you've got a CPU
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cutout tray or cutout in the motherboard tray just the way that you'd expect on
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any modern case thank you for checking out my unboxing and overview of the
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fractal design Arc mini R2 which is not the arc midar 2 don't forget to
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subscribe to L te from unboxings reviews and other computer videos like the video if you liked it dislike it if you
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disliked it and leave a comment if you think that Josh is just one hell of a
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stud
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he