Fractal Design Core 1000 mATX Compact Computer Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,656 words · ~8 min read
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Welcome to my long overdue unboxing of the Fractal Design Core 1000.
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Sorry about that. I forgot my knife. Core 1000 microATX computer case. Now,
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they call it a computer case, but I because I guess it's hard to call uh a
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microATX case like a a gaming case or anything like that. And honestly, this
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case is very, very popular with our B2B sales guys uh at NCIX where I work. So,
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um maybe I'm just being completely
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irrelevant when I bring up gaming at all, but Fractal is more known for their
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enthusiast class of cases. So, I'm pretty excited to have a look at their
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core series because the core series is, as the name implies, more of a
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Oh, okay. The documentation is there. Users manual. more of a barebone style
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case. Now, it's quite small, which is one of the reasons it's gotten chosen
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for some of the uh for some of the designs, uh some of the system builds
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that we've done because it's very very compact and fits, you know, fits in well
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in like an office environment, something like that, just because of its size. I
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know we had one guy who u needed like 20
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of them because that was this was the only case that he could find that fit
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the dimensions of the cabinets that it had that they had to fit into
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other than getting like a Dell or something. And that's what he did last time. And based on his experience with
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it last time, he decided he wanted something from NCX, not something from
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Dell. So there you go.
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All right. It's fairly small, fairly lightweight. I wouldn't have minded
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seeing slightly thicker foam packaging, but it's probably not the end of the
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world because once again, it is fairly small and it is fairly lightweight. The
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user's manual, I'm just going to tuck in there and let's go ahead and get this
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baby opened up. So, everything we look at about this case, it's important to
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bear in mind the price of it. This is a very, very inexpensive case. On the
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bottom, we find like rubberized grippy things on the four feet, which you
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usually actually don't see in a case at this price point. Okay.
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Let's flip it over here. So, this case uses positive pressure in
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order to achieve its cooling. So, you can see we have a filtered front 120 mm
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fan in there. We have up to two 5 and 1/4 in bays. This uses their same kind
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of uh meshed filtered. So, the the mesh
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that we have on here does a couple things. It's a fan filter, but it also
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reduces the overall noise output of the case a little bit. We've got a Fractal
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Design logo right about here. and front
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outputs are all done on the right hand side here. So we have power, two USB 2.0
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headphones, microphone, a reset switch that is recessed, so it's difficult to
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hit actually at all, but especially difficult to hit by accident, hard drive
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indicator, as well as a power LED.
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Now, why did I say this case uses positive air flow? positive. Remember,
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positive, sorry, positive pressure air flow is good because what it does is it
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reduces the amount of dust that can settle in your case. Uh, actually, here,
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can I get you to move a little bit that way? Cuz I think we're going to need this light there. Um, so what that means
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is that if you have a filtered intake that is pushing more air into the case
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than you're actually removing, it means it's very difficult for dust to get
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sucked into the little gaps around the edges and the and into um unpopulated
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fan holes and things like that. So in the back we have a 92 mm uh fan spacing
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that is actually considered optional. It does not have a fan included with it by
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default. So, by using just the 120 mm in
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the front and the power supply fan, you will have positive internal pressure,
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which keeps the dust out. If, for example, you were to install only fans
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that suck air out of the case and that
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and they don't and you didn't have any filtered intake fans, that would mean
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that all these little holes, these ones and these ones, would be sucking in
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unfiltered air and allowing dust to settle in the case. So, I know I've
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blathered about that for an awful long time now, so don't worry. We will at
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some point actually open up the case.
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If you guys watch enough of my videos, you'll probably know this. I'm a bit of a Fractal fanboy at this point. I do
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really like their overall design. Uh they're great at taking sort of a a well
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a lowish price point for the features they deliver and then delivering
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features that are difficult to deliver at a given price point. So, I'm pretty
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interested to see what we find inside here. So, that's a 92 mil. In the back
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is either an 80 or 92 mil. And then that one we saw at the front was a 120
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millimeter fan spot. Like I said, fairly low-end case, so don't expect, you know,
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too it to be too overbuilt compared to something from their Define series or
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their Arc series. Okay. On the inside, we find a very, very, very
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straightforward internal layout. So, you got microATX compatibility. That means
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four expansion slots as well as your IO shield here. Top-mounted power supply.
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Bottom mounted power supply is totally unnecessary for microATX. uh just
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because we're not talking performance machines that have huge huge old power
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supplies that need to be isolated from the rest of the system in terms of their
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air flow. So, your power supply goes right in the top and it'll also easily
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reach, you know, your graphics card or whatever else cuz it's really just not
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that far away from anything. Okay. Motherboard tray is reinforced
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using the bending technique.
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So, that makes it a little bit more stiff and that is important for a case
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like this.
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Front panel connectors are amply long, so you can actually manage those cables
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fairly easily. And you can reach even the furthest away front USB ports or
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front HD audio ports, which on some stupid motherboards are located like
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here, right? So, you'll have no problems with any of those things as well.
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Now, here's something that's actually kind of neat. I mean, totally unnecessary, but kind of neat. Check
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this out. So, okay. Well, first here, let me remove this.
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And check this out, guys. So, you can actually remove with this thumb screw
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right down here and these two thumb screws up here the 3 and 1/2 in hard
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drive mounting. So, what that means is that you could actually install the
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longest possible graphics card in here. If you really wanted to build a tiny,
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like tiny, look how small this case is for context, right guys? tiny microATX
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gaming system, you could do it because it would be receiving direct air flow
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from that 120 millimeter fan in the front, right? And uh you'd have all the
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space that you need. All you have to do is throw a 92mm cooling fan on the side
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panel, exhaust some of that hot air coming off the graphics card, and you're
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in pretty good shape. So, there's your two five and a/4 in phase. There's your
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um hold on a second.
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We figured it out. So, doing a little bit of research before I started my
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video might have helped make this easier, but check this out. That is how the hard drive mounts. So, you can
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actually have your longass video card, in this case, I have a GTX 590 in here
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installed, and you can have a 3 and 1/2 in hard drive because the whole hard
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drive mounting thing is just on this one strip. So, you see these rubberized
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ones, that's for your two 3 and 1/2 in drives potentially. And then you see
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these non- rubber ones, these guys right here, those are for SSDs. So, you can
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either do a single hard drive and then an SSD or you can do two hard drives or
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you can do uh three SSDs. So, cool,
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right? And then, oh, look at that. There's another 3 and 1/2 in uh up here
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as well. Actually, that looks like Hold on. Yeah, that better be 3 and 12 in.
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Yep. And then it looks like there are mounting holes on here for an SSD as
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well. So, you can install an additional drive here. So, you can do two hard drives and an SSD by doing it that way.
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So, this is a fantastic little case in terms of the design that allows them to
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cram in hardware even tighter than I have seen in the past. Not a lot of
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cable routing options, guys. It's a very narrow case, so there's pretty much no
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room between the back panel here and the motherboard tray. But, you know, kind of
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get over it, I guess, for like 40 bucks. What are you expecting exactly? So,
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thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look and uh actually fairly
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impressed first look at the Fractal Design Core 1000 series case. Don't
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forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.