Fractal Design Define R4 Case Unboxing - Silent & Elegant - Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,385 words · ~11 min read
0:07
Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Fractal Design Define R4 computer
0:12
case. As you can see, this case has a
0:15
very ugly box. But I'm going to hope
0:18
that this is more of a story of the beauty within than a story of the beauty
0:24
without. And see the funny thing is that
0:27
the whole Oh, for crying out loud. Give me a sec, guys. Sorry about that, guys.
0:32
Had to fix the uh the TV there. So, you can see we have a Fractal Design logo on
0:37
the TV behind me, which is of course appropriate for a Fractal Design case
0:42
unboxing. Very appropriate indeed.
0:47
There we go. All right. So, what is I mean, what do they say about themselves
0:51
on the So, they've done away with the silver case color. So, it's available in
0:55
black, white, and titanium. Supports ATX, microATX or miniITX cases, uh,
1:01
motherboards. It's minimalistic, elegant, and that's something we've come
1:06
to expect from the define series. Patent pending modu is something we've come to
1:10
expect. So, basically, what is this? This is an evolutionary change, not a
1:14
revolutionary change. Fractal is going
1:17
for h
1:21
just the define R3 plus I guess. So they've
1:27
updated the internals in a big way, but I'm not expecting the outside of the
1:31
case to really look very different at all. Packing material wise, it's I'd
1:35
prefer to see a soft foam, but more and more we're seeing manufacturers go with
1:40
hard foam because they do present a bit of a better value.
1:44
um on the manufacturing side. So, well,
1:48
they're going with them. Included is a user's manual. Define our four computer
1:52
case users manual. Very good stuff. As
1:56
well as a plastic cover. So, from the
1:59
outside, sort of any immediate
2:03
similarities that you might notice between the Define R4 and the Define R3
2:09
are obviously not present. you know,
2:12
this doesn't look anything like a Define R3, which clearly didn't look anything
2:17
like a Define R2. And of course, I'm being very um sort of very very ironic
2:24
here. Um so, it looks pretty much like a Define R3 from the outside. For front
2:29
IO, we've got our power indicator. We've got our microphone, headphone, and reset
2:34
button. That's not a headphone button, that's a jack, but that's a button.
2:38
Power button. Did I mention that before? with cool little concentric circle
2:41
finish on it. USB 3 super speed ports. Two USB 2 not super speed ports. Two
2:47
front panel 5 and a/4 in bays. Sound
2:51
dampening material inside the front panel here. This is actually very
2:54
important for sound uh sound dampening.
2:58
H. Oh, cool. Built-in fan controller. 12vt, 7 volt, 5vt. Awesome. Those are
3:02
the only things you really need. Any fans that'll go all the way down to 5V,
3:05
fantastic. the uh hydraulic bearing fans that are included should do it. There's
3:09
a 140 in the back and a 140 in the front. They've updated this a little
3:13
bit. So, that's kind of interesting. So, now instead of being on a swinging door,
3:18
this is actually this actually swings
3:21
down, does it? Or Hold on. I think it's uh H. There we go. Oh, no. Give me a
3:26
sec, guys. Okay. So, yeah, we got had a bit of a clearance issue there, but I
3:30
just kind of tucked this in. So, there's a removable fan filter right here, which
3:34
sort of comes out somehow. Um,
3:38
sure. Like that. That's probably not how you do it. Dual 140 or 120 mm fans.
3:44
These are their R2 fans with the hydraulic bearings that I mentioned
3:47
before that are included. And uh, so I
3:52
talked about the filter already. Talked about the ah, yes. So, there's a grill
3:56
here. And then they also have access to air through the vents that are on the
3:59
side. So, you can go and have a look at that vent while I figure out how to get this filter back in place. I'm really
4:06
sure this isn't how I'm supposed to do it, but I'm just kind of like bending it
4:10
in. So, if you do it my way, then sort
4:13
of you're doing it wrong, but uh I'm trying to film an unboxing here and not,
4:17
you know, paint the Mona Lisa. So, maybe I don't do things the most elegant way.
4:22
I'm very, very sorry. Moduvent. This is a cool technology. The first time I saw
4:25
Moduvent was with the Define R2. And basically, see these? These are fan
4:29
holes, but there's like nothing that goes through them because there are
4:33
actual pieces of sound dampening material that are screwed in. You can
4:36
take these screws out. You can put a couple of 140 mm fans up there and it is
4:41
off to the races. On the side, you've got another modu vent. So, this one
4:45
supports either a 120 or 140 mm fan
4:49
directly over where your graphics cards would be if you had graphics cards in
4:53
your system. Uh, in the back you see a 120 or 140 millimeter fan mount mount,
4:58
more just general venting holes. Seven PCI slots with one auxiliary one that
5:02
you could use for like a fan controller or something like that. Bottom mounted
5:05
power supply with sound dampening material. The Defined series is all
5:09
about quiet computing. So, let's go
5:13
ahead and get it opened up and I'll be right back.
5:17
Now, Define R3 is a little on the heavy side for its size. So when you open it
5:20
up, you realize it's because they spent money on the sound dampening material.
5:25
So the side panels are phenomenally heavy because they have this thick dense
5:29
material here that helps to deaden the noise that gets made inside your case.
5:33
So that combined with the sound deadening material that's built into the
5:36
front panel means that any sound usually gets kind of projected out the back or
5:40
out those vents on the side and you're not as likely to hear it. They have
5:44
seriously upgraded the cable management room in the Define R4 compared to the
5:48
Define R3. There is enough room that you can easily route a 24 pin cable back
5:53
here. Lots of cable management um
5:57
anchors so you won't have any difficulty routing things wherever you need them to
6:02
go outside of the holes here. They've also put in a larger than usual bottom
6:07
power supply cable grommet. And what that means is that all the cables that
6:12
need to come up here will actually be able to fit. I've seen cases that have ones that are only about this size. So,
6:16
while you've got lots of room to cable manage up here, there's not enough room to actually bring the cables up to the
6:21
top of the case. The included fans have very nice Wow, very high quality sleing
6:25
on them. You can't even see the color of the wires at all. This has colored wires
6:29
inside it, guys. You can see up here, but this looks
6:33
that's some of the tightest mesh I've seen from anything but like Murder Mod.
6:37
It's fantastic. Okay. And I think that
6:41
pretty much does it for the back side. Your CPU cutout is here where you would
6:44
expect to find it on the other side of the CPU part of the motherboard tray.
6:49
And let's go ahead and open up this side. So here you can see the modu. So
6:53
this has like a sound dampening foam hoo-ha thing going on. You just go ahead
6:57
and remove that and throw in a fan if you feel the desire. Very heavy as well
7:02
just due to the uh to the sound dampening material. They have seriously
7:06
upgraded the internals of the Define series as well. So, we still have room
7:11
for eight hard drives. See that? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. However, they've given the
7:17
option to completely remove five of them if you don't want to mount a ton of
7:22
drives and you want to create more room in your case for cooling and air flow.
7:26
See that? Now, those front 140 mm fans have lots of room to blow air from the
7:31
vents here into the inside of the case. And you've got room for much longer
7:36
graphics cards. So you could install a graphics card that's like I mean come
7:39
on. It would be an entire Linus forearm and almost a Linus hand in length by the
7:45
time it actually touched this fan which seems to be on some kind of a Oh, there
7:50
we go. That's clipped in a little bit better now. Oh, that explains it. So it
7:54
looks like this came a little bit loose in shipping. You know what? Let's go ahead and do some Linus Tech Tips
7:59
investigation of uh of what's going on
8:02
with that uh that front mechanism thing
8:06
that's uh that's been causing problems for me. Couldn't get the front closed.
8:11
Okay. So, we'll just pull this off. And you can see that we get access to all of
8:15
the pieces here. So, this whole thing
8:19
comes out. Look at that. So, you just clip the fans in here. You can remove
8:22
the fan filter much more easily now that I've done it sort of the way that you're
8:26
supposed to. Then you take this whole mechanism, put it back inside here, run
8:31
your cables around the back where there is tons of room here. Come around the other side. This is fantastic. So
8:36
there's tons of room for cable management back here. Oh, you can't reach, can you? We're plugged in, guys.
8:41
Tons of room for cable management here. And then you just go and take the whole
8:45
thing and clip it right into place like that. So now it
8:51
isn't going anywhere and we're not going to have any more trouble with it.
8:55
Awesome. Ah, another thing they've upgraded about the interior, check this
9:00
out, guys, is that you can not only take this out and do this, but you can take
9:04
it out and do this. Haha. So you can rotate it. That gives you more air flow
9:10
through here if you haven't filled it up with hard drives or even if you have in
9:13
all likelihood cuz a lot of people complain about this style. But in order
9:17
to get enough strength once you fill this up with hard drives, you have to
9:20
have enough reinforcement material here. But you can go ahead and put it in that
9:23
way in order to reorient the drive cages however you see fit. Now the bottom one.
9:29
Yep. You can remove that one as well, which is very, very cool. So there's that bottom mounted 120 or 140 mm, which
9:35
has one long fan filter that can be taken out from the back. There we go. So
9:40
that covers both this fan and the bottom of the power supply. You can see the
9:44
cable management more clearly from here. You can also see the uh module vents
9:48
that are in the top of the case. So, what have they upgraded? Removable
9:52
cages. Both this one and this one. Although this one doesn't look like you
9:56
can reorient it. No, I kind of doubt it.
9:59
Although I could be wrong. I hope I'm not wrong. Ah, SSD mounts. Is that are
10:04
is that an SSD mount on the bottom? I don't know. I don't know what this holes
10:07
for. Maybe you can reorient it.
10:11
Whatever. Someone will look it up and they'll make it the top comment and someone will thumbs it up and then Linus
10:16
will look stupid but he doesn't feel that bad about it. So don't worry guys,
10:19
go ahead, thumbs it up, make it the top comment and we'll know if you can rotate
10:23
that or not. Can rotate this one. Two five and a quarters. All right. Right.
10:27
What have they upgraded? So the rotating cages, the removable cages, the uh
10:31
actually much better design for the front fans and filters. The integrated
10:36
fan controller. So there's a Molex connector right here. And then you've
10:40
got a number looks like three. The number three, four, I don't know, a
10:44
number reset switch. Uh you've got a number of uh fans that can be plugged
10:49
into that in order to control most of the fans in your case, which is very,
10:53
very cool. You've also got USB 3
10:56
natively, USB 2, front audio. These are all nicely black cables that'll go into
11:01
your motherboard and look really sleek. Uh so they've added
11:06
uh right 140 mm fan support at the back.
11:09
I mean, yeah. So, evolutionary changes, little steps. Is this a better case than
11:13
the Define R3? Absolutely. Was the Define R3 already a kick butt case?
11:19
Absolutely. 100% kickbutt in spite of the lack of
11:23
motherboard tray. That's a cheap shot, but uh cable management as well as some
11:30
rubber grommets for Oh, cool. They include rubber grommets for the fans. That's outstanding. Look at that. lots
11:34
of isolating ergonomics and all of the screws that you need to assemble your
11:38
case. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Define R4
11:42
from Fractal Design. Honestly, Defree is one of my favorite
11:46
cases, so this only makes it better. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech
11:49
Tips for unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. And just in case you didn't already know, it includes rubber
11:54
isolating mounts for your three and a half in drives. And all of these sleds
11:57
are fully 2 and 1/2 in drive compatible. Again, don't forget to subscribe. It's
12:00
really important.