Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by mod mic modular mic you can fix to any set of headphones for the best of both worlds high-quality voice audio superb noise cancelling and the option for wired or Wireless models are just a few reasons I've been using their products for years mod mic is a great no compromise solution for gamers who care about sound click on the link below to learn more welcome welcome welcome back today we're doing a case review this is the fractal design define s2 vision and it's going to come in two flavors the vision RGB which is what I have here today and the vision blackout editions so the RGB comes with three no four Prisma a RGB fans those are very very new very new to the fractal lineup they're all 140 millimeters you can see there's three in the front and one at the rear exhaust the vision RGB also comes included with a pre-installed RGB LED strip at the top of the case and one of their adjust r1 lighting controllers that's if you don't have the proper headers on your motherboard to connect the fans or if you just prefer the controller now if you go for the blackout Edition you actually exchange all those fans for their dynamic x2 140 millimeter fans which are perfectly decent very very high quality and they're all black to fit the blackout theme but there's no RGB I don't think you get the RGB strip obviously you don't get the the lighting controller either and there is a $50 price difference between those two cases so 189 for the blackout edition and then that jumps up to 239 for the RGB so let's go ahead and talk about the outside of the case and we'll work our way in starting with the glass there's just so much glass on this case the front the sides and the top are all tempered glass they're tinted as well which may be a pro or con for you they're very easy to take off there are two thumb screws holding the side panels in place I wish they were captive though you would think for the price point and being 2019 all that these would be captive maybe there was a weird design choice they had to make but there are two thumb screws on either side panel and once they're removed you can sort of unclick the back of the panel in order to remove the rest of it so you'll notice that there are no bolts on the side of the panels which i think is a pro I think it definitely cleans up the look overall having all the screws behind chassie at the front of the case you've got air intake on either side and you can actually see they've recessed the fans deeper into the case to give them more clearance between the fan blades and the front tempered glass side panels so there's actually a bit more breathing room for fresh intake to come through the ventilation gaps have their own dust filters as well you can simply pop the front panel off by reaching from underneath it and just sort of yanking it kind of like we've seen in the past although you do have to remove the dust filter at the bottom of the case first so there's an extra step there but once that's off you can actually remove either of the dust filters on the sides of that front panel by simply popping out the little inserts cleaning them off it's a really straightforward process with the front panel off you can see that our prism fans are very cleanly presented with the mounting strips behind them as opposed to in the front like previous defined cases this is really important now that there's a see-through tempered glass panel at the front of the case it definitely cleans up the look a lot despite there being two cables that come off each of these fans they're all routed very neatly thanks to the help of some cutouts just to the right the front i/o panel which is at the top of the case includes two USB three two USB to ports power and reset mic and headphone jacks and a USB 3.1 gen2 type-c port for data transfers up to 10 gigabits per second also looking at the top of the case we have again that very nice tempered glass panel which is removable there's actually a button behind the case that's supposed to pop up the top panel slightly ously you can lift it out that way but for some reason the sample wasn't working all that right for me it wasn't elevating the panel like it should and so I couldn't get a really good grip on it I ended up having to run my hand through the back of the case through the i/o shield cut out propping it up and lifting it out that way hopefully it's just an isolated incident now while the top glass panel looks really nice it doesn't really do much functionally maybe apart from keeping acoustics a little bit more in check but if you're gonna have the glass panel installed you can't mount any fans any radiators there's no ventilation at the top it's simply just a slab of glass but if that's not what you're about fractals also included a mounting bracket and a ventilation plate that you can swap out with just four easy screws and that gives you up to 360 or 280 millimeter radiator support same as the front and a fill port which is really nice if you're doing custom water cooling and you have a hard to reach reservoir it's going to make that process potentially a lot easier now it's worth pointing out that when the glass panels installed it actually sits inside of a removable bracket where the pre-installed LED strip is adhere to with some like 3m adhesive unfortunately you have to remove that bracket if you plan to swap in the mounting bracket so you kind of have to choose between LED strip or fans and radiators at the top of your case it would have been nice to see a magnetic LED strip or at least have it packaged separately inside of the accessories box for more flexibility at the back of the case we get a better look at our fourth prism fan which you can see is on flexible mounting strips for either a 120 or 140 millimeter fan you get 7 horizontal expansion slots and two vertical ones in case you want to mount a GPU vertically but that does require that you purchase a PC riser card separately at the very bottom you get a removable power supply bracket that does have captive thumb screws hooray now a final note about the power supply dust filter that I showed earlier which is really dust filter for the whole bottom of the case because the bottom can also support up to 240 millimeter radiators is that while it pulls out very easily whoo I did have some trouble finding the channels to actually get it slid back in properly so I found it easier just to put my head down and look for the the grooves myself and get it in that way as opposed to fishing around for it for a minute or two that pretty much covers the exterior of the case so let's talk about the inside of it and what it's like to build in the internal layout here is pretty straightforward for starters the motherboard goes in really easy there's a race to understand off to help with that process the case supports up to e ATX motherboards but bear in mind if you go that route you're gonna partially cover up the cable grummons that are on the right side however you should still have plenty of room to pass cables through there is a good number of cable routing grommets in here they're all placed in very smart locations and they're large so you can easily pass cables through all of them even the ones at the bottom on the power supply shroud and at no point did any of the rubber pieces pop out of their cutouts when passing cables through to the right of the motherboard area you'll find a relatively blank space that I've been referring to as the reservoir all these years ever since the original define s came out that's because it's essentially a mounting area for pump res combos that you can kind of just stick to the wall of the case looks really nice kind of gives it a floating effect and you can see they're mounting strips so you can actually adjust the height of your unit as well now you actually have an alternative mounting location for your pumper res on the power supply shroud this is one of the smartest additions to the s2 vision in my opinion they still have the removable cutout at the front of the case that you can take out with three screws two of which are behind the motherboard tray one is underneath the front panel it's a little tricky to get to but typically you're only doing it once in a blue moon but if you look closely you can see the same mounting strips on the removable tray as you see on the reservoir meaning that you can actually mount the pumper res straight to the power supplied basement which is pretty cool also on the removable plate you get a rubber grommet for routing cables as well as two holes for routing your water cooling tubes which is super smart especially considering that you can again support radiators at the bottom of the case but that's not all for this little plate no you can actually mount an SSD tray to it so there's actually three locations on the power supply shroud now where you can mount an SSD tray so apart from having an SSD at the front of the case you could also mount one smack-dab in the middle or one more or less straight over your power supply which is my least favorite location because the cable routing grommets just aren't very ideal there's no grommets or cutouts that are directly behind where the SSD would go there so you'd have to kind of route it either to the right or the left which might not look as clean as time goes on it seems like case manufacturers keep trying to find new things to do with their power supply shrouds to make them more useful and more functional and I think this is the smartest execution that I've seen personally from a mid tower case here in 2019 now just the side note here I have a three hundred and sixty millimeter radiator installed at the top of the case that's from our asus rog ryojun AIO and i just wanted to point out that there's still maybe about i just did a measurement about an inch in three-quarters of space for a radiator assuming that you're just keeping the front fans here you're not trying to do push-pull or anything like that you could probably fit around a forty 45 millimeter thick radiator at the front whether it be two forty to eighty or three sixty without running into any clearance issues with this top radiator here it's actually not too bad now the backside of the case behind the motherboard tray we have quite a bit going on starting from the left side we have three two and a half inch or three and a half inch drive trays these are primarily for hard drives mechanical drives they are removable with a single thumb screw and if you're not using them you could remove them completely for a ton more cable management room or you can leave them installed for still a ton more cable management room I almost kind of like leaving them installed even if I don't have any I have to populate them because I can shove the cables into them and have an easier time closing the side panel when all is said and done the trays also come included with some rubber pieces for reduced noise and vibration near the top right in the middle you'll find our Nexus 9 P pwm fan hub as the name suggests this little hub supports up to nine four pin PWM fans and I actually have one two three four five six seven seven fans all seven fans that are in the system right now are connected to that one hub and it is very quiet it's keeping them at a relatively low rpm but it definitely feels like there's air moving through the system as well now earlier I said the Prisma fans have two cables coming off of them obviously one of those cables you've just seen is a four pin pwm connection the other cable is a 3 pin addressable RGB connector but it's actually two connectors because you can daisy chain these fans together it's such a simple but incredibly useful feature that fractals come up with here because you could just link them all together and then have a single connection that plugs right into your motherboard RGB header of course it has to be a three pin or you can plug it into the single connector on the included lighting controller never having used the Prisma fans before I was kind of apprehensive going into this build thinking that I was gonna have to spend a bunch of time linking up all these RGB devices when in fact this was one of the quickest and easiest setups that I've seen the adjust r1 lighting controller is pretty straight forward I'm very happy that it's powered by SATA and not molex that would suck but it's pretty basic it doesn't have a whole lot of different lighting effects or modes I think there's probably like six or seven if you want more flexibility in that sense you should probably plug it in straight to your motherboard assuming that's an option but you know it does the job it's small and discreet it does have a magnetic back so that you can actually stick it anywhere to your case although it's a fairly weak magnet so I could see any stubborn cables back there giving it a hard time and pushing it out of place to the right of the fan controller you'll find a very generously sized CPU cooler cut out and just below that you'll find the two pre-installed SSD trays these are their default locations of course like I said they can be moved to the power supply shroud or a mix of both they each have a single thumb screw and two little feet that dig into the mounting points to help them stay in place to top things off you have a couple sturdy velcro straps and about 15 or so tie-down points for making everything nice and neat of course I didn't spend a whole lot of time here it's why it doesn't look quite as clean as it could but with a little time I did spend it doesn't look half bad now this is a relatively high-end case starting at 189 u.s. for the blackout version but fortunately it's incredibly versatile you can do pretty much anything you want with it it's very accommodating to custom water coolers and enthusiasts alike seems like a great environment to work in if you're looking to build your next show rig or simply just a system for your room naturally there are a couple little shortcomings that I pointed out but they were mostly just nitpicks because of the price you know the more expensive a case is the more picky I'll get with little things like captive thumb screws and stuff like that but I think this case is going to serve most people well assuming that it ticks all the boxes for their hardware requirements their aesthetic preferences and so forth so that's what I think of the fractal design define us to vision RGB you guys let me know what you think down below is it hot or is it not thank you guys so much for watching this video toss a like on it before you go and get subscribed for more tech stuff coming at you really soon have a good one guys I will see you all in the next video