Gadgetory

the fractal define s2 Mesha v follows up on the Massif IC and its success by taking an existing case design which took an existing case design and iterating upon the iteration so the fractal define that's to match finds what we're reviewing today it has a few improvements over the existing s2 which had some tweaks to the existing r6 which uses the same base chassis and this is sort of what fractal does they find something people really like and then they just don't really deviate from it in fact just changing the front panel the the mesh front panel was a huge deal for the mesh if I see when that first came out so we are now looking at that application to a different chassis slightly different the s2 instead and just gonna see how it improves or changes versus the s2 non mattify that we criticized when it launched before that this video is brought to you by the EVGA CLC 280 liquid cooler people ask me how I keep cool during the summer with all this hair well I've tried a lot of different products and few do exactly what I need many of them cause tangles or worse EVGA CLC 280 helps keep my core temperatures lower they're in hot benchmarking sessions the CLC 280 is price competitive and focuses on performance for value offering a 280 liquid cooler at an affordable price get yours at the link in the description below hair mounting kit sold separately so intro pretty much got you up to speed this is like stated it's it's an s2 which is an r6 with some changes and if you want the full details on what the s2 is you can check our s2 review and then that review will refer you to our hour 6 review for the full details of the internals but the very basics here this is a $150 enclosure it's like 140 if you don't go with the glass panel it has a dark tint option it's got a white color paint option a black paint option and then a steel panel option but basically $150 case and all variants are this except just different types of colors and side panel so clearly it's got mesh on the front that's kind of the whole deal if you already know the s2 then you know this just it's the front is different so not really many other ways to state that I think the top still has the sort of Thayne except now it's mesh instead of a big piece of steel and this is all part of the design where fractal is trying to sort of accommodate a slightly different market and they've done a pretty good job at this with a mesh if I see two two fractals credit and it's a bit of a reach out into the airflow market without deviating too much from fractals core philosophies which very clearly seem to be no-nonsense and just about all of the the cases fractal makes it's very strictly business and that remains true with this case it's just that it's it got a bit more breathing room in the front so we have some pretty unique tests here we for example take the new lightweight filter out of the front there's a really fine mesh filter behind the steel mesh and it adds another layer of filtration we don't really like doubling up on filters because it affects their flow negatively but this one is so thin that it's worth testing separately to see how well it does there's really not a lot that I can do here on camera we typically kind of go through this segment of like walk you through all the things on the case but it's the s2 we already did that and then we did it before with arsenic so it'd be the third time we've done that now let's just let's just go straight into the testing we've got some billed notes from Patrick to talk about first he talked about the changes that have been made to the case structurally or in terms of panels things like that I'll talk through those and then we'll get into the performance testing and the conclusion we wrote this section for the define our six back in 2017 and added some additional comments with the s2 and 2018 there's not much else to say in 2019 so limit ourselves to more meaningful changes check the original r6 review or well the s2 review to read additional information on the build and the internal layout almost all of the changes are in the front panel here it's exactly the same front panel as on the mesh of IC but scaled up slightly the 50 larger s2 and when we say exactly the same we mean it other than the USBC port on the i/o panel even the decorative geometric design is identical to the measure of IC is just a bit larger that's not a bad thing but it is strange that factor would gear up to make what is it from a manufacturing point of you an entirely new panel without updating the design at all that I guess says that the design was popular the duplication means that negative features of the massif icees panel have carried over to the mesh of 5s to the i/o is built into the top edge so that removing the front panel pulls the cables with it this is sort of an old legacy way to do front panels and not something we like to see in the non mesh define s2 or see the front IO is built into a separate unit that's then screwed into the chassis since unclipping the front filter must be done from the inside of the panel and the inside of the panel is difficult to reach without removing the whole front of the case it adds a minor layer of inconvenience to cleaning the front filter one other subtle change was made from the older Meza Phi which is that the layer of filtration foam backing the steel mesh has much wider pores and is it less restrictive to airflow this foam is held against the uneven steel surface with spacers built into the plastic frame which is a thoughtful touch the top panel is exactly the same as the front but without the decorative pattern of the bends in the normal s2 the cover is a steel plate that can be removed to leave just a filter so in a way the Metro Phi's cover is less versatile but it doesn't look better than the defined s twos Bayer filter filter and exhaust is sort of counterproductive and users who don't intend to use a top intake configuration should consider stripping the foam off for this cover but it's nice to have the option of using it the springs if you can call them that on the top fan mount that lift the top cover appear to be bent upwards further than they were in the r6 and define s2 so the panel actually does pop up a bit more when the release button on the rear of the case is pressed this still is in two great systems and sit marries a nice and presumably expensive spring-loaded button with crude Springs punched out of the case material that don't work as well as they really should still we've talked about this twice already and the slight improvement in this version means that there's a chance fractal is listening to feedback we'd still like to see this mechanism work better though other than that the final minor point of interest was that the fans were not connected to the fan hob out of the box we don't use fan hubs or controllers for testing anyway if we can avoid it but users will to make sure to sort of fruit around for the fan cables and plug them in before tying everything down moving into thermal and noise testing now for additional tests we removed the mesh section of the front panel effectively removing the front panel we tried putting the seal the top cover from the define s2 on top of the case and it did fit and we did a test with the layer of foam removed from the front panel just to see if it obstructs air intake in any meaningful way when compared to just the mesh front panel without that foam we're not too enthusiastic about layering filters on top of filters but this one is at lighter weight than the original mesh if icees was and the metruff IC did fine and testing there was nothing unusual about the vertical GPU mount and Fraxel doesn't include a PCIe riser cable so we didn't really bother testing it to be honest we know how these perform at this point you've seen the numbers and if you haven't been checked almost any of our previous case reviews they're bad if you run a vertical GPU that is air-cooled it will not do well in this case if it's liquid cooled that's a different story though starting with only the relevant fractal cases on the charge the S to mattify and the r6 which use the same base chassis are within margin of error for testing without a front panel and the error here of course keep in mind is also influenced by the fans because there's some variance between fan production runs stock CPU temperature was fifty point seven degrees Celsius over ambient during the torture test which dropped down to 46 point two degrees with the front cover removed that's a significant change but we see much more dramatic improvement on cases with sealed front covers like for example the original H 500 P which went from acrylic to well being open running with the defined s twos a steel top cover resulted in a 50 degree Celsius measurement within margin of error of stock the ventilation on this top cover won't to offer any meaningful advantage unless a radiator or other active cooling solution is mounted at the top of the case for radiators obviously this is a major improvement if you had a downdraft cooler there might be some improvement there to because it's got an escape path it's going to depend on the cooler selected but for one similar to ours no meaningful benefit without extra cooling mounted up top taking just the sheet of foam out of the front cover but leaving the front cover on we saw an impressively large improvement down to forty six point one degrees Celsius over ambient effectively exactly the same as this has tooth no front panel at all we're within error here this second layer of mash is obstructing and take partially although the theoretical benefit has reduced dust and dig so it's a trade off there and the trade-off isn't so bad ultimately but it is an interesting one and if you wanted some extra performance removing that filter would assist it's just filters on the top of filters make sure you keep the steel mesh clean and don't let too much dust accumulate on top of it you should be fine comparatively fifty point seven degrees Celsius over ambient is a pretty respectable spot on the chart for a stock case overall it's it's fine especially since the mesh of icy landed at fifty four point three degrees and the define that's two was at a actually kind of uncompetitive 57 degrees keep in mind that we have some error baked in here for testing so there's variance and fan manufacturing and fan rpm run to run which is only really relevant here because we're looking at cases that use effectively the same tool in the same chassis and sometimes even the same fans but there's about a 10% variance in maximum fan rpm so if testing the same style of case from one to the next like the r6 versus s2 or the s2 burrs that's to mattify there's going to be some extra variance baked into there beyond it normal so the fans and internal layout of this s2 are the same as the older one and most of the credit overall to the improvement for the s2 mesh pie goes to the new front panel design and the lighter filter layer on the front improving the thermals overall removing the foam layer puts it on par with the age 500ms close to the top of the chart and at 46 degrees over ambience the s2 match of i stock configuration is closer to the 1/2 x the h 500 match $100 cooler master case and the 570 x corsair case from a while ago GPU torture testing is next again starting with fractal first with no alterations to the case the massif is two hits 55 point one degrees over ambient GPU temperature removing the front panel had less impact compared to the CP attempts but lowering the temperature a couple of degrees down to 53 degrees celsius is still noteworthy it's not nearly as impressive sealing the top panel had greater effect raising it to 56 point 6 degrees over ambience there's still not much outside of the range of normal variance here but it could indicate that the mesh top allow some of the radiative heat off the backside of the GPU to escape more readily again it would take some top mounted fans to really take advantage of the mesh cover and we're sort of within error here removing the foam layer didn't benefit the GPU temperature at all leaving it within variance of stock temperature at fifty five point four degrees Celsius taken together with the sepia temperatures it seems like the foam is light enough that it can do more good than harm overall again considering CPU performance but our preference generally is going to be to remove it from maximum cooling performance and then just be diligent in your dust cleaning for the steel mesh comparatively 55 point one degrees GPU temperature is just average when considering our whole database of results we're only showing a very small fraction of them here for size reasons of the chart but it's significantly better than the defined s to 69 degree results and better than the low fan count stock measure of ICS with the 7.8 degree result and also better than the define r6 is 56 point four degrees Celsius results in that context the s2 match by is a success versus its predecessors this removal of the front panel doesn't wildly improve things as we saw already it seems that the obstacle to better GPU cooling is the positioning of the fans the relatively low speed and then the proximity of the bottom of the case for instance we've seen this before as well comparatively again this case is just sort of in the lower third of our truncated list of results place it around with the level 20 MT and age 500 piece it it's really not great overall particularly for the mesh front but this comes down to static pressure fans fractal is still using fans that overall favor silence to performance and that shows here we'll look at that in the noise section as well to see if it balances out it's better than fractals previous designs are cooling but this does show us that a mesh front doesn't really mean that it's instantly good other design elements still have to line up and power supply shrouds or krantz GPU chambers do limit cooling potential even when the mesh is present you see a trend where generally larger cases with some hopefully higher static pressure fans do better just because what want it takes longer to reach steady state with that much volume and to there's less sort of well obstructions surrounding the GPU to trap or reduce air and its ability to pass through the area fire strike extreme raise the GPU temperature to fifty seven point seven degrees Celsius over ambience a couple degrees higher than the torture test that's about the same as the throne will take g21 TG a case that genuinely did have problems with multiple restrictive filters lay it on top of each other just as in the torture test though the Mastiff is - outperforms the define s - it outperformed the r6 and the metruff IC stock and it's really it's it's still bordering on bad when stock but the user is fortunately given enough tools to work with the performance right out of the box and you just have to make sure you choose the right coolers and the right fans to really bring this case to its full potential they asked to mattify set up for you to go it's just not really the best out of the box despite having a full mesh front there are better cases for a pure coin but it's a bit smaller and that does factor into the cooling abilities our blender tests are real-world workload and should be representative of temperatures that will be seen during single component load use the CPU temperature during the CPU render was thirty seven point one degrees Celsius over ambiens which compares favorably to the rest of our chart but not any better than the defined s2 and r6 we are within margin of error of both of these with the defined s to mattify ranking close bytes that divine s2 and the r6 again this is one a limitation of the reduced heat load generated by this task because it's not using the extreme heat of the torture test where the differences of well-ventilated and sealed front panels are highlighted more sharply but also it's potentially an impact from the fan variation from run to run so in this single device workload for demonstration the define s2 metruff is entrie aliy impressive in any way it's not it's not outperforming the previous cases but it's also reduced heat load and it's not bad either the GPU render a verdict Rees on the GPU again that's better than any of the previous fractal cases in turn gpo temperatures but not exceptional on the whole fractal deserves credit for improving the thermals of their existing case design and the case isn't going to do any harm to GPUs but it seems that the stock metruff is - isn't the best suited enclosure for air-cooled GPUs acoustics have the case at 37.7 DBA which is about where the SL 600m sits and that was a sort of silence focused case it's really not bad for a more open airflow oriented case fractals doing well here to balance out some of the performance numbers we saw with a lower DBA measurement than some of the other cases that are opened in the front and that's largely phan twice by fractal the company is trying to find that balance between its profile as being sort of no-nonsense and quiet and then performance which is desirable at this point this is ranking on the acoustics chart reasonably well overall it's not extremely impressive but it's got the decent balance and so for that we can give it a good mark the case overall it's really not bad it's a pretty good step for fractal it achieves what fractals set out to achieve which seems to be on average slightly at least if not significantly in some cases better performance than the original as to which we really genuinely didn't like it just it didn't have that much of a place yes it had some things that it did kind of uniquely kind of well like a bit more water cooling support but overall it was not a new case it felt very familiar to all the other cases so this improves in a lot of ways over the s2 non Meza Phi it is a modified version of the r6 which we actually quite liked so the problem we had with s2 was at the end of the day our conclusion was well you should buy either the r6 with s2 whichever one is cheaper because for the most part they were about the same yeah there's some differences and we can show some of those but overall the cases weren't all that different that remains true here but the front panel is a significant change and the thermals show that now the thermals aren't always better in low heat load scenarios like just running blender on the CPU we end up with differences that are completely within margin of error completely within variants for the fans you have to remember that the fans that come on these cases aren't identical they are all plus or minus about 10% rpm it's a pretty wide range for fan manufacturing this normally doesn't really matter all that much until you're testing cases from the same manufacturer with the same fan that are the same tooling because then it's not really strictly like for like it's pretty damn close but in cases where in instances I should say where you have low heat loads the differences don't quite emerge in the same way as in high heat load scenarios like the torture loads we do so is the case actually worth it well at $150 that's pretty fierce competition that's a high asking price it comes with three fans that's not particularly impressive on its own and the fans aren't really the best they're not bad they're better than most stock fans but they're not impressive either so that's not enough to set it apart to set it apart a mesh panel also isn't enough I guess it's the combination of things it's the combination of if fractals got a specific audience that they target and if you're part of that audience well then there's a new match case for you and if you like that there's really not much we need to say to change your opinions because fractal has that core audience and so we're we have no reason to really communicate with that core audience if you like it that's fine you can pick it up if you want if you're in the middle though it's a bit difficult because that's sort of the larger end of things you can look at maybe the H 500 P mesh which is a same priced case that on average is better in a lot of scenarios or minimally tied and it's it's a bit more space to work with it has uniquely the two 200 millimeter front fans that does kind of have some other restrictions you can check our review on that but it's bigger and that's either a positive or a negative depending on your viewpoint of those form factors other cases in the price class that are extremely competitive would be the NZXT h 700 which is actually that case up there you can get the non aversion without the smart device and it's cheaper it's about 150 bucks so it's a direct competitor to this price varies of course depending when we fill them but in terms of strict features the h 709 i then the dumb version does have more features overall than the fractal case it's got some pretty cool cable management capabilities it's more advanced in that department something NZXT specializes in the aesthetics very different so that it's going to be subjective but it kind of makes this look very just sort of standard standard issue there's not much special about it and that's fine that's practicals audience but if you're looking for flash and for flavor you're really not gonna get it with this case so to give you a firm conclusion it is fine it's thermally it's improved over the s2 on average if it's you know with the high heat load scenarios where it matters it is improved significantly it is on average improved over the r6 these are good things the acoustics haven't changed all that much it's a bit louder but not disproportionately so it is actually if you kind of wait the the thermals versus the noise it's improved in Cadi both categories reasonably with the noise not really increasing all that much so the case has done well iteratively it is just we would have no problem buying it at 150 bucks if not for the very stiff competition at this price point so this is a case that is pretty easy to buy probably in the 120 130 dollar and 150 it's it's not unreasonable you have to remember fractal there's lower volume and these other companies their MO their prices are going to be a bit higher because they're not ordering as much but yeah I mean there's just there's a lot of choices on the market so in terms of cases to consider we would consider this one among the top sort of maybe five to six in the $150 price class along the NZXT HS 700 and the coolermaster h 500 p mesh so those would be really good considerations in the same price class it's just you know once you kind of narrow it down to those three foster - maybe one more it's just up to you to figure out what you like looking at because it can be sitting next to you for the life of the system so that's it for this one is always subscribe for more thank you for requesting this review we are always open to your review product requests just of course timelines may dictate what we can do and feel free to ask for more case review specifically below we're looking for more ATX stuff right now than other but subscribe for more you get a story I can't razaaq's has done that to helps out directly and pick up one of our medium mod mats I think we're about sold out but we'll have them on backorder there shortly if not if if you can't get one and I'll see you all next time