Fractal Design Array R2 NAS & Media Center Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,550 words · ~7 min read
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Now, this is a product that is going to be completely boring for some people,
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but really exciting for others because it is a miniITX case that houses six 3
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and 1/2 in hard drives and one 2 and 1/2 in drive. So, that means if you're into
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Windows home server or any other kind of uh home storage software or if you uh if
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you have a media PC that you like to keep a lot of content stored on, this is
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for you. This is an aluminum case. This is the Fractal Design Array R2 miniITX
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case. I guess I'll show you what it says on the outside. So, the case size, it
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looks like they actually uh made some adjustments to the box, but it's 250x
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200 by 350 mm, so it's quite small. It's
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compatible with miniITX boards. It has a 140 mm fan, which is also very
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impressive for a miniITX case. I already talked about all that storage space. Uh,
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okay. There's a little bit about Fractal Design itself. And then finally, I just
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want to show you what it says on the front. Oh, yes. And it does also include
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a 300 W SFX power supply. So that's
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pretty sweet as well. So let's go ahead and get this
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open. And yeah, there's something else I
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thought I wanted to mention, but I was wrong. Okay, I have not seen this one in
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person yet. Although everything that I've seen from Fractal Design so far has
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uh looked great on paper and then looked
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even better in person. So, I have a very
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very high expectations for the Array R2. I apologize for it taking me so long to
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do this unboxing, but uh just haven't
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really gotten around to it for some reason. All right. Now, one thing that I
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have on um fairly good authority, but
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you know, keep it to yourself, is that this case is actually OEM, at least in
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part, by Lean Lee. So, the finish on it, you can already see, is just
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outstanding. A beautiful black anodized
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aluminum finish all over the outside of this case. Very clean looking, which is
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something that we've come to expect from Fractal Design. Just lots of straight
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edges, ventilation holes in places where they make sense, and an overall elegant
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elegant design and look and feel to the case. So, I'm going to flip it over on
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its side. Oh, I feel terrible flipping it onto its side on the table. So, just
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looks so nice. So, I'm gonna just put down some plastic here. And there we go.
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So, you can see that it does have four rubber feet on the bottom. And uh we've
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got yet another Looks like this panel is actually removable. The assembly of the
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case looks quite modular. So, um I'm going to have to go get a screwdriver so
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we can take this apart. So, we're on a voyage of discovery about how exactly
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all of this fits together. uh right now. So, I removed the top panel and you can
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see we've actually got some noise dampening material here on the top. All
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right. So, you got to be really careful when you're handling these uh these
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anodized aluminum panels because as soon as you touch them once the oil from your
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fingers will leave a fingerprint on it that you
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can't even remove. So, you want to be really careful when you're working with
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cases like this. And uh this goes for
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pretty much all anodized aluminum surfaces and even some of the
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non-anodized aluminum cases. You just got to be uh very very careful. Now uh
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the the screws on the top allowed me to remove the top panel. And then these two
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screws here appear to loosen the hard drive cage which is here. So that's
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where we mount our six hard drives. And I have yet to figure
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out exactly how to remove uh this part.
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Oh, you know what? I figured it out. But this is going to take a little while. I think I have to remove the screws on the
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bottom. So, you can see that uh there is some disassembly required for this case.
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So, better just uh turn off the camera for a minute. All right. Well, after
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um about 20 screws and uh removing some
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completely unnecessary parts, I think I finally figured out how it works. So,
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you do not remove the screws in the side. Actually, what you do is you
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remove the four screws in the top of the hard drive cage, which slides in like
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this. And then we'll move the power supply cables out of the way there. So,
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you can see it rests on top of these black pads so that you get some
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antiibration action going on there. And
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uh so you just screw those in. And I'm just going to remove it for the sake of
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showing you guys some of the other things that are included. So maybe I can
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also figure out where the 2 and 1/2 in drive
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goes. H oh there it is. So the 2 and 1/2
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in drive mounts on the bottom of this.
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And you can see that there are four convenient screwdriver holes located
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here. So you can actually screw the drive in. And then it just sits on the
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bottom of the entire hard drive cage. So, this holds six 3 and 1/2 in and two
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well rather one 2 and 1/2 in
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drive. All right. Now, let's finally look at the accessories and what's
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inside the case. So, here we have uh motherboard screws. We have lots of hard
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drive screws and that's pretty much it. We've got one uh cable management tie
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and then we have our motherboard tray which I removed which is entirely
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unnecessary. So, what I would like to do is I'll put this back down. Get some of
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this stuff out of my way. Oh, it comes with a power cord since it does include
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a power supply. So, I can take this, put
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it back on top where it belongs. And now we can examine what the inside of the
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case looks like. So, here we go. Here is the uh SFX power supply. Uh you can see
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that it is a 300 W unit capable of providing up to 14 amps on one of the
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12volt rails and 16 amps on the other 12volt rail. So it does have two 12vt
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rails. In terms of connectors, we have a
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24 pin connector. Oh, no way. Is that a
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is that a 20 pin? No, it's a 24 pin. Good. Yeah, we have a 24 pin. So a 20 +
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4. And then we also have a 4 pin uh P4
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connector. And then, go figure, we've got a bunch of SATA power. So, how many
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of those do we have? We have 1 2 3 4 5 6
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7 SATA power, which makes sense cuz that's how many drives it holds. And
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then we have one additional Molex connector. So, this is pretty much
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designed to power your board, your
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drives, and that's it. The front 140 mm
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fan hooks up via a three pin fan connector. And you can see that the
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whole front assembly for the 140 millimeter fan is held in by three
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screws at the top. And it's also held in by a matching three screws at the
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bottom. So you can remove this whole thing, put on a different fan if you so
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desire, and it can be easily replaced that way. The front panel connectors are
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here. So we've got a power switch as well as a power LED. And that is it. The
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front of the case is very clean and uh
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they're able to achieve that by only having one switch. And then the LED is
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actually inside there. You've got space for two expansion cards. So that is you
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can install one expansion card with ITX or you can install one dual slot card.
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Although I wouldn't be expecting to install any uh any long graphics cards
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unless you make some modifications to the hard drive cage, which you could
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quite easily do now that I look at it. Although you'd have to make some
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modifications to the power supply mounting and you'd be you'd be making
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some pretty serious modifications to the case itself. Not something that I think is uh
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for the first time modern necessarily, but it does look doable actually. If you
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wanted to uh to take this out, you could probably cut out a new hole for a fulls
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size ATX power supply and then you could probably uh chop this off and do up to
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like a 12-in graphics card in here. So, that'd be kind of cool. Anyway, that is
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my unboxing and first look at the Fractal Design Array R2.