Fractal Design Define XL Titanium Grey Tower Computer Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,338 words · ~11 min read
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this thing is huge it's here it is the
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first of its kind in North America this is the fractal design Define XL so this
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is as you may or may not be able to
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guess an extra large version of the
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Define which is on its third revision so you can buy a Define R3 or a Define XL
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so let's go through the bullet points on the front really quick here obviously
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you can read them if you so desire but here's one of the big highlights boom 10
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inter internal 3 and 1/2 in hard drives that's huge that's awesome you've got
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noise absorbing material just like the Define R3 thermal chamber design we've
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come to expect their modu vent technology which I'll show you when we
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open up the case as well as an optimal air flow cooling system so two front so
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included you have 40 140 mm fan uh one
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top 180 mm fan and one rear 140 mm fan
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you can check out what you can get that is not included to add to the case over
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here on the other side we see all of the supported motherboard sizes which is
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pretty much everything although you'd have to be on something pretty good to
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put a mini ITX board in a case this size it would be like this big so don't do
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that and I'm going to just open up the box and we will
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continue this shortly now the reason I
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chose this one out of all the ones in our warehouse to unbox is that it wasn't
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labeled with a color so I figured if we unbox it then we'll also find out what
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color it is it comes in two colors black and titanium gray it also comes with a
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user manual which is pretty basic but if
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you've installed a PC and a case before you should be able to figure it out
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reasonably well so there's the packing
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material it's a cardboard reinforced
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with h well not really reinforced styrofoam reinforced with cardboard for
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some puncture resistance as well as some
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rigidity and the cardboard is pretty good you got like a dual walled uh
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cardboard going on here all right so let's get the case out of its plastic
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sheath and find out what we've got going
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on in here this is a very large case they weren't kidding when they called it
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the XL because it's not gum but it's really
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big here we go we'll use me for scale
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next to it here so you can see a person is quite small compared to the definer
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so we pull off the front and we can see that this is the titanium gray version
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of the Define XL so the black one would
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be a little bit darker it would uh be more like the finish on the rest of the
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case although you would still have that brushed look to the front of it just
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like the R3 we've got most of our
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business stuff up at the very top of the case that means you got your microphone
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and headphones EA 4 USB 2.0 ports as
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well as your power switch once you open up the door you will find Some Noise
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isolating as well as uh I assume dust
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trapping no it couldn't be cuz I'm going to go through there no the intakes are
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here so some noise isolating foam you've got four 5 and 1/4 in Bays which come
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off quite easily as you can see all you do is remove the little Tab and then you
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can also put them back in should you so desire just pull it like that that's
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kind of neat actually and then oh behind this one look at that you've got room to
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mount a 120 mm fan so because most
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people only install 1 5 and a/4 in device that makes a lot of sense so you
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can put up to three these look like 140 and then this
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looks like a 120 three fans in the front you can see the one has been included
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and I think that pretty much does it for the front so the intakes as I mentioned
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see you've got dust filters right over the fence the intakes are actually all
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along the side so when you've when you've closed the front of the
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case that's where those fans are going to get their air flow from all right
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let's take uh actually here we'll look at the back
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while we take off the thumb screws here
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uh no no we'll look at the side first wait ah modu vent I promised I'd talk
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about this this is a modu vent you see how you can't see through
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it well that's why it's modu vent because right now they've got a piece of
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their noise isolating material screwed in so you just remove that you mount a
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140 mm or a 120 mm fan there and boom
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now you've got air flow instead of noise isolation so that's what makes it mod
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you go ahead and pull off the side panel
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here I hope I can figure out how the mechanism works for the side panel on
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camera cuz sometimes I have trouble with those okay there we go it came off well
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there's our noise dampening stuff it's quite a bit thicker than what I've seen
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on the Define R2 although I haven't seen an R3 in person but uh there you go
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that's how you remove it so let's go ahead and put that away the wow the
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panels are quite quite heavy they are
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steel panels and they do have the uh the
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noise damping material on them you can see they're quite sturdy
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and we better take a break I got a phone call and here we are on the inside of
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the case so the first thing we're going to notice is our accessory so this is
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giving us a little inventory here of everything that's included I guess
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that's why that information was not in the manual we've also got a fan
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controller a 5 and 1/4 to 3 and 1/2 in bezel in case you want to install a
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floppy drive or a media card reader as well as some cable ties very nice thank
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you fractal and then what else do we have in here here's all of our front
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panel connectors which should be pretty much run-of-the-mill I think because we
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saw everything that was at the front oh this is nice though look uh all of the
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uh the switches are individually sleeved
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just like that so they're all going to be nice and black inside your case you
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won't be able to see them against the black interior we've got HD audio as
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well as ac97 two USB as well as our eata
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plug so that's all taken care of and then here is the nicely sleeved look at
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that high quality sleeving you can't see the color of the wires at all behind it
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so you got your nicely sleeved three pin connector for your front fan here are
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the 10 3 and 1/2 in drive base so these
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come on little sleds you can install a 3 and 1/2 in or a 2 and 1/2 in device on
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here quite easily so this case is entirely SSD ready you can install 10
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ssds out of the box the other six are down here now as a water cooling
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Enthusiast the first thing I think when I look down here is actually that it
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probably wouldn't be that hard to remove the rivets from these bottom cages and
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mount a radiator down there so that would be an interesting project for our
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power supply we've got four little rubber mounts so any power supply
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whether you've got bottom cooling top cooling however you want to mount it
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will be able to get adequate air flow although what I would recommend is
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mounting it with the fan on the bottom so that it can pull air up its own
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dedicated cool air through the dust filter here which can be pulled out too
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clean just like that and uh yeah so it
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can sit on the noise isolating rubber mounts and what else do we have inside
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so here this is what what is this this is interesting we've got another modu
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vent here although I'm not 100% sure
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what it's for huh okay well you can take out this
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square piece and that gives you full unrestricted access to the power supply
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there goes my other side panel which I had unscrewed helpfully for myself just
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in case I wanted to take it off for you guys and then most of the cables are
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actually going to go up through here so we've got a little rubber grommet you
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can see the quality of the silicone they're using here is very high so
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you're not going to be putting things through it and then pulling them out and have it stay in place no you're going to
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be able to Mush these around and they'll go right back where they belong and then
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you can uh yeah so most of the cables will go up that way where they're going
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to come out is a whole other ball of wax so we'll look at that when we get around
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to the other side of the case here's that 1880 mm fan that's going to be
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cooling your Moss fets as well as drawing any hot air away from your CPU
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socket area speaking of the CPU socket you have a removable cover so that you
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can access the back of the motherboard and install aftermarket CPU coolers
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without taking the motherboard out here's another 140 mm fan here in the
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back just like the one in the front we've got seven expansion slots so that
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means you're going to fit standard ATX Micro ATX extended ATX but none of those
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weird XL ATX type things we've got one extra PCI slot here just in case you've
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got a cold cathode kit or a fan controller something that you want to
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dedicate a PCI slot in the back to but you don't want to take up room to
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install things on your motherboard just go ahead and mount that right there
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here's all of our rubber grommets all along the side and up along the top so
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we can do SATA we can do uh Power we can
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do 24 pin we can do eight pin and that's all going to come up in a nice
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convenient location along there so our 5 and 1/4 in is all fairly straight
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forward here we can actually oh yeah there's the 5 and 1/4 in to 3 and 1/2 in
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adapter is actually mounted in there by default so you could just remove that or
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you could leave it in and you could install the uh adapter for the front
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panel that they include in the accessory box did we look at the back of the case
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yet I don't think we looked at the back of the case yet so there's the fan
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there's some venting there's more venting along the side panel there's two
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holes for water cooling although those are pretty small you probably only be
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able to get about 38 in tubing through there uh the power supply Mount is right
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here and then you got some more venting there so fairly straightforward very
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clean uh that what fractal is becoming known for is the designs are just clean
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everything has a purpose and there you go there's how you
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access the CPU socket look at that it stays on too so you can just put that
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back up there it's got a little thumb screw no
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problem now you do have adequate room behind the motherboard tray to Route
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cables that's been one of my biggest complaints about some of the cases I've
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seen that have you know little holes to to to Route cables but they actually
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don't have enough space back here to it so the side panel is way out here which
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means you've got like a good inch of space behind that motherboard trade
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route 24 pin ATX connectors or whatever it is that you need to Route behind the
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motherboard now there's the reset switch there's that front 140 mm fan I think
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that pretty much covers everything I wanted to say about the Define XL paint
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finish actually on the parts that are not the front looks quite adequate it's
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going to be quite fingerprint resistant it's not the best I've ever seen But the
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value of this case for the features that it comes with is just outstanding you
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get the black interior actually I'm pretty impressed so far I haven't seen
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this one in person yet I had only seen it in photos and uh it looks really good
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it looks like they've got another winner on their hands thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Define XL from
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fral design and don't forget to subscribe to Line's Tech tips