Gadgetory

when we reviewed the Fraxel defined ckase we gave it pretty high marks overall we gave it an award we noted that we liked the build quality the ease of installation features the cable management but our one complaint was that it was quote warm and I mean it's a closed-off front case it's gonna be warmer than its competition with a mesh front lo and behold the fractal has now responded to that criticism with a mesh front version of the define C so for all of those who said or who took issue with our use of the word warm to define something which was objectively warmer than its competition looks like fractal at least somewhat agreed so this is the define the define C's counterpart the mesh of Phi C and we're gonna review it today it's the same case as a define C aside from a few smaller features and then the one major feature the mesh front so we don't need to go through the entire thing and mostly just thermals and noise before that this coverage is brought to you by our patreon backers without whom we may not have even ventured into this case review by supporting us on patreon comm slash gamers Nexus you can help out with contributing to the upcoming reviews and voice your opinion in discord to let us know what you'd like to see us test learn more at the link below the functional aspects of this case and the build process are exactly the same as described in our review of the window defined C which we gave a quality build award it's compact well made and carefully designed if you want to know more about those aspects of the case check our review of the defined C or accompanying video for more detail the only real difference here is the front panel which is black metal mesh backed by a thin foam filter and a plastic frame the foam will hopefully act as a very fine filter preventing the open design of the case from blasting all the components with dust for some reason the front IO is also a bit different rather than being attached to the chassis as it is in the define C it's now built into the front panel which is an inconvenience we experienced in our Antec p8 review the removable plastic top panel included with the define seat is now missing from the Mesha Phi but a magnetic filter is still included again there's none of the noise damping that padding found in the defined models as the target audience for this case cares more about cooling than anything else and that's how it comes down to this is basically for people who like to define look but want air to get into their case and so we have the measure Phi we're gonna run through the thermals in noise today that's really the only focus of this review if you would like more information again on ease of installation build features things like that check our define see review it's the same case aside from the features already noted just like with the be quiet dark bass pro 900 we're starting with standalone test first and then we'll look at comparative numbers our standalone testing will focus on the define C and the Mesha Phi C and the stock configuration our torture test pushed the CPU 54.3 Celsius above ambient on the Massif I see there's an unobstructed path of airflow from the front intake fan through the heatsink and out the rear exhaust but there's definitely room for improvement replacing the intake with to 140 millimeter fans for instance decrease to the Delta a full seven degrees to forty seven point three Celsius since the stock fans and configuration of the define C and mesh Phi C are identical the only advantage of the match by C is that it's got more air available in the intake area not only does this make its baseline temperature three degrees lower than it defines fifty four point three versus 57 point three but it also means that the Mesha Phi benefits more from the extra fans 140 millimeter knocked was only lower that defines at Delta four point one degrees compared to the seven for the Massif IC widening the gap even further as a sanity check we removed the front panel of defined C to make a pseudo mesh of Phi and this resulted in a CPU temperature Delta of 46 C over ambient this is one point three degrees lower than even the Mesha Phi because there is no layer of mesh to get in the way of the airflow fractal has done a pretty good job of designing a front panel that cools nearly as well as not having a front panel at all it's pretty difficult to do and they've done it comparatively we can look at other cases we've tested for the same torture workload seen a fifty four point three Celsius as a decent delta temperature competitive with the SD 40 elites and 270 are but outperformed by Silverstone's mesh fronting our l06 at 47.8 celsius this case has remained one of the best value cases for a cooling and performance oriented mid tower PC and that remains true here with the added fans however the mattify has the lowest CP delta we've yet seen but again you've probably achieve similar on many of these cases but I also put into naktu a 140 millimeter fans in them the point is just that the mesh fi has plenty of headroom for improvement and that's what you want in a case of the mesh front the GPU tortured temperature Delta was fifty seven point eight degrees and the Noctua fans only lowered this by one point six Celsius the center of the stock intake fan is level with the backplate of our GPUs so most the air is pushed over it and sucked out of the exhaust even a dead zone between the card and the shroud this is part of the price of such a compact case our 140 millimeter fans or we're as high as possible in the top two slots but users should experiment with different fan placements for instance consider putting a lower fan flush with the PSU shroud to cool the GPU you'll lose some air into the shroud but overall the GPU does need some air as we found out with these top oriented fan configuration there's also a section of the power supply shroud that can pop out to fit a third front fan of these smaller sizes particularly an either way this is still a big improvement the defined stock GPU temperature Delta is about one point seven degrees higher but worse than that it didn't benefit at all from additional fans one of the master PI's biggest strengths in comparison is its ability to scale temperature as fans are added completely removing the front panel resulted in a fifty four point five degree Delta and that's cooler but still encouragingly close to the mesh if I compared to other cases on the chart the Mesha Phi is a GPU Delta is near the bottom and even additional fans don't really give it an edge here not unless you were to relocate the center fan down to the bottom and that's what we would suggest doing we tested with a top t configuration and clearly a more optimal setup for this type of build would be one a fan at the top to direct air into the CPU cooler and one fan lower down to direct air into the GPU cooler the RL zero six is Delta is more than 10,000 so lower with its stock fans with no Changez and playing around with phantom placement using a radiator cooled GPU or maybe just differently sized graphics cards would help out here but these temperatures aren't dangerous they're just again relatively warm 3d marks a fire strike extreme tests with stock fans put the GPU close to its temperature limit at 60.3 Celsius above ambient and the define at C was the same with invariance that's just under the Antec PA to which we sort of knocked recently for its cooling more directional airflow would once again help out and you can solve that because we've now shown clearly that doing to top fans is not the optimal configuration for this type of build blender offers a realistic test for CPU and GPU workloads Delta's remained well within the limits for the CPU rendering workload we were at 40.2 celsius at delta T over ambient with the mesh of IC and for the GPU rendering workload we were at 30.3 celsius for again GP rendering without the extreme stress of a torture test the stock define C and mesh if I see you had C be Delta's that were roughly equal let's move on to noise we originally reviewed the plastic windowed version of the define C which may be louder than the original case but still has enough insulation to keep things pleasantly quiet the Metro fire has none and its stock configuration there's only one fan behind the front panel but it's directly exposed to anyone sitting in front of it as our all fans added to the front or the top this is not ask you to buy for silence that define C is 38.6 DBA is technically noisier than any of the other cases on our charge other than the Corsair 570 X and a Silverstone are l06 both of which have three front fans but it's audibly on the same level as the SD 40 elites one top and one rear fan and the defined C with the old front measured at 35 to 36 DBA just for a point of comparison we liked fractals defined C when we last reviewed it and we still like it now the difference is fractal has resolved our one complaint which is that the defines he was warm and for the type of site we are type of outlet we are warm is one of the main things we don't like in enclosures we do a lot of cooling tasks we are performance oriented and so this is a good turn for fractal it introduces them or reintroduces them into a market way oddly a lot of the competition has vanished over the past year or so as the trend in the case market has gone more towards an attempt at sleekness and attempt at following trends and things like tempered glass which of course this still does but it's got a mesh front so it's nice to see some case companies paying attention to the fact that cooling matters and you can actually lose clocks and lose FPS with poor cooling and ventilation to GPUs and things like that the real takeaway here thermally is that the mesh fic isn't inherently that much better than the define Z at least not with our configuration the way to really take advantage of this case and the conversion that fractal is done is to add fans to the front with the stock configuration in blender GPU tests we've seen about a 2 Celsius difference blender CPU tests they're effectively the same temperature 3d mark the CPU is better by 2 Celsius with the Mesha Phi the GPU is the same torch or GPU test we're two degrees Celsius better in the mesh by torture CPU test for 3 degrees Celsius better than the mattify but none of those numbers are that big of a change for how big of a change the case has gone through so to get the most out of this you have to add fans as you can see in our two fan comparisons from the earlier benchmark tables it's clear that the mesh to fight taps into the potential of those more than the defined C does which makes sense given the front configuration so for this case what we learned here of course we only have so much time to test so many configurations so the takeaway is if you buy this and if you add a fan to the front we would recommend going with one lower down so that you can direct it at the GPU it'll really drop temperatures and our testing we did one fan up here one here and obviously that ended up sort of skimming the backplate of the video card didn't help it a whole lot so that would be the takeaway there you can learn from that configuration for competition Silverstone's redline 0 6 Pro is now directly competing with this it's got three front fans it is one of the best cool the cases we've worked with lately it's a mid tower as well it comes in white and black and I think there might be one other color and 75 bucks so it's not too distant from this price there's a tempered glass version for a hundred dollars so if tempered glass matters to you keep that in mind as a whole though we hope that fractal continues to mattify if I their cases going forward a mattify ass would be pretty cool and welcomed I think by most of the community so fractal well done thank you for venturing into the ventilation focused or cooling focused case market while still retaining some of their core design elements it's nice to see a company that can try to resolve some of the criticism of a case while also not detracting from what they're known for and in this case if the only element that gets anywhere distant from sleek and flat is this sort of tessellated mesh you've done pretty well so yeah we like this case overall and if you're interested in this case where others you can check the links of the description below patrick wrote the review did the testing and yeah subscribe for more you can go to patreon.com/scishow and razaaq's establish out directly we bought this case because it was highly requested by folks in our patreon backer group on twitter and everywhere so having that support helps us to buy things like this when you all want to review and we can't get a sample so that's all for this time I'll see you all next time you