Fractal Design Define S Unboxing - The Triumphant Return!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,117 words · ~10 min read
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welcome to unboxing day we're bringing them back officially and we are starting
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things up with a product that I'm sure the
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manufacturer expected me to open in a timely manner I mean look at this Josh
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from fractal where's that label Josh from fractal sent this thing via
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International today do you have any idea how expensive that is it is now whatever
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the date is today May the 7th and I haven't even touched it yet so let's go
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ahead and open up the Define s from fractal
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design oh I sliced the handrail
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crap Intel 750 series drives feature the
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new NVMe standard for never-before seen
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performance from a consumer grade SSD click now to learn more
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good packaging they got going on
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here there we
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go all right well that's a reassuring
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sound hopefully it didn't get broken in shipping so the concept be behind the
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Define s is for fractal design to have a case that is less expensive than their
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Flagship Define r series while offering
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the same build quality the same Aesthetics and actually even better
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options for water cooling for their liquid cooling efficient AO customers so
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it looks like I got the windowed side panel version but there is also a non-
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windowed version if you're not that into the whole staring at your Hardware thing
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but I would make the argument that for someone who's into liquid cooling the
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odds of them preferring the window one is pretty darn good now fractal has done
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in recent years a much better job of packaging and the defin s is no
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exception nice thick foam it's not soft
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foam but the fact that it's nice and thick the fact that the case is heavy
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but not overly heavy means that it should be in pretty good shape by the
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time it gets to you you've got an accessory box right around there it's
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got some screws inside also Reservoir
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brackets o exciting and then a user guide which
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usually they kind of suck no offense to a fractal design but let's give them a
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chance to have it not suck oh a
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builder's guide with optional steps you don't even have to do those
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things fascinating okay actually actually not shabby all right so let's
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open up the case and find out what's uh clanking around inside
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there oh my side panels came undone in shipping so unlike the Define R5 the
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Define s does not feature the latching
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side panel mechanism however they have improved it in one regard so you can see
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here they now use captive thumb screws on both the left and right side panel
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which means that you won't lose them compared to the Define R5 it also
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features a much wider side panel window which makes sense since in the front of
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the case instead of having a whole bunch of hard drive cages which it should be
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noted on the F R5 are actually removable and reconfigurable part of why it's more
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expensive uh instead of having those you should actually have things like oh I
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don't know a liquid filled Reservoir or something like that that's got like you
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know UV glowy liquid all over the inside of it or something along those lines and
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you can see they give you a ton like a metric butt ton of options in terms of
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mounting whether you got one of those little dinky cylinder reses or one of
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those super long cylinder reses it will feel at home in here now in terms of the
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rest of the features it's pretty much open in here so you've got a large CPU
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cutout you've got seven PCI slots you've got an included 140 mm fan at the back
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and an additional one in the front you've got your power supply mounting
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complete with anti vibrational little foam bits here and at the back and then
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you've got this hard drive sled which we'll get into a little bit more later
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at the bottom you've got mounting for a 120 or 140 mm fan as well as mounting
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holes for the most popular pumps on the market so you can go go ahead and you can mount your DDC or your D5 pump
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natively here which are the only ones I'd really recommend using especially
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the D5 I'm not a huge fan of the DDC your front panel connectors are all
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black except for the blue on the end of the USB 3.0 connector and all adequately
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labeled with things like power LED positive power LED ground clearly
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indicated you've got your cable management grommets not a ton of them
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but I'd say enough so one for the eight pin one for the 24 pin and one for all
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the sick graphic cards you're going to put in there and let's go ahead and have a look at
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the front of the case we never really got to do the tour of the outside
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because it went and opened itself for
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us so at the front you've got the usual
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brushed plasticky looking finish that we've seen on the Define r series for
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quite some time except oh what's this it actually doesn't open at all so these
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vents on the side here are going to be for your front intake and they are
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actually quite spacious you can look right through them like that and other
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than that that's nothing there is no 5 and a/4 in Baye there is no opening up
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front door on the top you can see another cost-saving measure so we've got
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front audio a reset switch a power switch that is illuminated I believe
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yeah looks like it as well as two USB 3.0 ports but no additional two USB 2.0
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ports also on the top we've got the same modu vent system from the Define R5 so
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you can pop off one two or three of these depending on how many fans you have installed on that side and then
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around on the other side we find not a whole lot of much of anything and the same goes for the back so let's go ahead
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and pop off this side panel and hey look at that the fan spinning itself it's
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like a windmill oh well that was shortlived all
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right so on the back here we've got yes where that three and half in Drive
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mounting cage would have wanted to go back to at some point here if I can
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figure out yeah there we go so it goes in a little something like that no harm
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no foul fractal design I forgive you for this thing falling out in shipping
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international today do you have any idea how expensive that is so back here
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you've got your drive mounting options I said no five and a quarter but that doesn't mean that you can't actually
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mount a fair number of drives you can do three 3 and 1/2 in or 2 and 1/2 in
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drives on these cages with their connectors oriented towards this side
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that allows you to plug them into the ample Cable Management room back here so
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you can go ahead and sneak your SATA data and SATA power connector in there
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and then you can actually mount an additional two 2 and 1/2 in drives
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directly under the CPU socket area right here so these also mount on little
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removable sleds you screw them into that you pop them into the back huge
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improvement over that one case I can't was it the Define R4 I think where you
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had to actually screw the SSD in from the other side of the motherboard
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another Improvement his fractal design is now including these velcro straps for
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cable management you'll probably still need to use some zip ties but it's much
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less of a huge deal once you've got at least a few reusable ones wouldn't mind
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seeing another one here and I guess that's pretty much all there is to say
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about the back there's enough room even at the in the narrowest portion for a 24
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pin connector as long as you don't cross too many things over top of it but do
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factor in that on the inside of the side panel is that noise dampening material
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that we've seen on fractal designs other Silence optimized cases something to
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noce if you want the windowed version you do pay a little bit more even though the funny thing is I'm pretty sure that
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a piece of acrylic is actually cheap deer than the noise dampening material
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they're using so I'm not quite sure if I understand the cost structure there back
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around to the front you can put up to a triple 120 or triple 140 mm radiator
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into the uh filtered there we go let's see if we can
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figure out how to get that bad boy out filtered front
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intake come out you
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bastard
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oh right
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now this is what happens when you try and figure these cases out in real time
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H it's magnetic it's actually kind of smart so it hinges on there and then
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magnets on there so what did I say yeah triple 120s or triple 140s in the front
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and then you can actually do up to a slim triple 140 or a thick triple 120 in
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the top as well the reason for the slim requirement on the triple 140 is you're
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going to have issues with motherboard clearance since those 140 mm radiators
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are going to go somewhere over in the neighbor neighborhood of I think like heish I can't actually find the mounting
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holes I'm not too stressed about it I don't stress about things these days so
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I think that's pretty much it who is this case for well it's for water
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coolers who basically wanted to Define r five and want to save 10 or 20 bucks
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mission accomplished then fractal design mission accomplished speaking of mission
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accomplished massdrop.com they've got all kinds of great deals if you never
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heard of mass drop you should go check it out we've got a link in the video
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description we also got a link in the lower third that's presumably sitting
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under me right now but the whole idea behind it is members of their Community
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find deals and then Mass drop Works directly with the manufacturers and
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suppliers to get authentic merchandise at lower prices but there's a catch
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there's the mass so we got the drop the price goes down but the mass means the
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more people buy it the lower the price goes to a predefined limit we've
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actually got a feature dropped for you guys today ah yes we've got a Cooler
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Master V12 00 power supply for as low as
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239 shipped to the US so that's an 80
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plus Platinum 1200 wat power supply for
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a pretty significant discount so again guys if you want to
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check out that deal or anything else on massdrop.com check out the link in the
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video description and as always like the video if you liked it dislike it if you
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disliked it leave a comment if your feelings are more complicated than all of that also linked in the video
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description is a link to our Forum where you can discuss the video with the more
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civilized side of the internet a place where you can buy cool Linus Tech tips
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t-shirts not like this one this one's kind of vintage you know it's like the
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classic lonus Tech tips t-shirts uh but we have other Linus Tech tips t-shirts
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Kickback whenever you buy Define s's on Amazon or whatever else the case may be
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thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe bet you guys thought I was
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going to drop it didn't you I wasn't going to do that