Gadgetory

we finally got our fractal s2 vision RGB case in that we bought for $240 plus shipping is about three hundred bucks total to review so this case came in and it's a modified version of the s2 clearly by name which is a modified version of the r6 so the chassis are very familiar with in fact if you have seen our s2 or r6 reviews you already know everything about the internals of the case the changes have been the glass the fans the RGB LEDs or the blackout versions just glass everywhere that's blacked out with no RGB LEDs and today we're gonna be reviewing the implementation of RGB LEDs and fans and glass on this case that's the primary change and there are actually some pretty interesting notes there and then the thermal performance and acoustic performance of the solution that fractal has provided before that this video is brought to you by the gigabyte ARS ad 27 QD gaming monitor the ad 27 QT is a 27-inch 1440p gaming display with 95% of dcpip three color saturation for high color accuracy accompanied by a one millisecond response time 10 bit IPS panel and display HDR visa certification additional features include fluid adjustment and slide RGB LEDs for personal Flair and firmware features like cooldown counters at reticles and adaptive noise reduction learn more at the link below so basics here first the chassis is the same as noted the button the back remains so if you want to use the push button to get the panels out the glass panel comes stock or you can swap it out for a filter that's provided which is recommended for use for things like radiators that are exhausting through the top we wouldn't necessarily recommend it for a positive pressure setup with intake because more likely the air will just escape out the top from that top fan having a mesh hole in front of it but those are the options it also comes with a few other things like new fans and it comes with RGB ones at that if you buy the $240 model further it's got a small controller I guess that's attached to a SATA cable we'll be talking about a lot more for the fan control for the RGB LEDs on the fans and beyond that not a whole Lots change so some of the positives we pointed out on the s2 remain here it's got decent water cooling support the plate and the bottom front has changed talk about that in a moment and the front panel although it's blocked off it's got a reasonable exposure to the fans it could always be better but this is kind of similar to the rows we'll call in an approach where you've got your glass panel but you can still breathe a little bit through the sides and I believe in the s2 review I probably said you can have your glass and eat it too and then probably said something about don't do that for liability reasons so yeah unlike some of the cases we've reviewed in the past like one of the aged 500 variants that we saw ages ago this one does push the mesh intake on the sides out past the fans so you don't have the issue where half of the fan is sitting between that mesh and the body of the case which would make it a pure like there's more airflow than there is no this actually does that reasonably well so fractal has done some things decently but they did those a while ago on the r6 and s2 so it's not really new to this case so let's get into the things that are new talk about the RGB LED implementation on why we think it's a lazy one for at least the price that this case sells for 240 bucks and I think go through thermals and noise the build section for this case review will focus exclusively on changes to the s2 vision if you want full details on the s2 chassis check our previous s2 review it's the same body as the s2 vision and that review will probably tell you to check our six reviews so it's like a choose-your-own-adventure of reviews because fractal keeps releasing the same product the fractal s2 vision comes in two forms there's the RGB version that we bought probably at $240 before shipping or thanks to Newegg about 300 after we expedited it for the review and then there's the fractal s2 vision blackout for $190 the s2 blackout has the same fan count at for 140 millimeter fans and the same glass panels but drops the RGB LEDs from the fans and RGB LED strips from the case immediately establishing that the buyer is paying about $50 just to add the LEDs to the fans and a single strip to the case each fan comes with two cables one plugs into the motherboard or the included fan hub for fan control and power and the other one is an RGB LED cable that split the split allows ability to daisy chain the LED cables together which might prove useful if trying to use it mother controls rather than an external controller seeing as few motherboards will have a total of five RGB LED headers available for each of fractals RGB LED components daisy chaining the fans is a good solution to allow users to consolidate cables but does create more of a mess with additional cable lengths and an unused cable end in the backside of the case the downside to glass on the right panel is of course that cables are exposed so builders have additional motivation to try and clean up the cable management that becomes hard with this many RGB LED cables and it gets harder if adding a third party RGB LED controller to the case the vision s to RGB doesn't come with any led hub or controller but does come with the cheapest possible solution a SATA powered RGB LED switch with three buttons findable on aliexpress for a couple of dollars that would likely end up inside of the system anyway so it's not very useful as you'd actually better off using motherboard software or a third party controller that has a remote control or software we'd rather see an RGB LED hub than a bunch of cable extensions and then an option to power that hub by a single motherboard header or by molex or SATA power if not one of each this would reduce cable length as the needs daisy chain would be eliminated it should be designed precisely like the fan hub ideally just for RGB LEDs instead that single terminating connector would plug into the board for better control and the included three button switch would have to be routed as it stands now out of the power supply cut out in the back but that becomes difficult given that most of the wires are in the front of the case like the LED strip for the case which routes towards the front so really it'd be best to eliminate this solution replace it with something else that's controlled through the front panel or through an RGB LED hub of some kind otherwise you're taking the panel off just to push the buttons on that switch Fraxel did all of this out of laziness or cheapness the company is trying to reuse as much of its tooling as possible as is illustrated plainly by the at least six iterations or skews of the r6 and s2 cases on the same chassis it's okay to stretch tooling to get ROI but this is beginning to be a bit much not retool in the front to accommodate an RGB LED button is insulting to those who pay $240 for this case and it's about the level of quality we would expect from cases three years ago back when just adding glass and LEDs was enough to get attention the game has been stepped up since then but fractal is left floundering in the past while charging up modern prices for a subpar implementation of a feature that has proliferated every case on the market it's not special anymore the saddest thing is that fractal wouldn't even have to retool the front panel some cases repurposed the reset button which we thought was the laziest solution to become an LED control button turns out it's not typically these would cycle through different LED patterns or colors you get kind of one of each or either and that's just done by changing that reset button to do something else and not everyone uses the reset button anyway so it's not a major sacrifice Fraxel would only need to real able the reset cable to turn it into an LED cable and that more or less do it the fraks will define r6 is about $140 right now the s2 is about 130 to 140 they're roughly the same case and our review of them was by whichever is cheaper the s2 vision blackout is $190 so you're paying $50 for the glass and the fan change which actually isn't terrible comparatively the s2 vision RGB is $240 so $100 more than the s2 rr6 base and it's still 50 more than the $190 s2 vision blackout version so now you're competing with the H 500 M the C 700 P and it's more expensive than the H 700 i its battling the fan tax evolve X without the upgrade kit there's a lot of competition in this price range these days and it's not easy to stand out as far as things that have changed with the case the radiator plate in the front bottom of the case has more holes in it to better accommodate water cooling components which is a good upgrade it also has the extra rails for mounting liquid cooling components and a cutout to fit a third fan on the bottom front these are good things as well the case further comes with a filter for the top panel the same as in the s2 but without the metal and that can replace the glass if you wanted exhaust instead this is only really recommended if mounting the radiator up top as positive pressure setups would not be benefited in general from a top filter unless you're actually using that top for mountains a small attention to detail thing that Fraxel did well was the blackout coverage on the side panels which hides the seams and connection points of the steel to glass plate where they are bonded together so this brings us back to the thermals let's get into thermal testing and noise this is the biggest point of interest for this case that's the biggest change with the extra fans and different fans will run through these numbers and then talk conclusions at the end starting first with CPU tortured thermals featuring only the s2 vision the s2 vision RGB manages a results of 52 point one degrees celsius over ambient for fall stock results that places it as better than the original define s2 marked at 57 degrees over ambient and not distant from the s2 massif i removing the front panel illustrates the degree to which air is obstructed bringing us down to 45 degrees from 52 this actually isn't all that bad considering we've seen cases recently with drops in the 10 plus degree range from changes to the case all of those fans in the vision RGB are able to somewhat level performance out by pure brute force and this is something we've seen work in the past it does make it louder but it also sort of overcomes the front panel comparatively the vision s to RGB stock results end up in the top half of this truncated results charge it's within error margins of the Evolve X and not distant from the H 500 meshes at forty nine point nine degree results although the s2 vision is limited by about seven degrees in our chart by its front panel it's still able to force enough air to perform reasonably we wouldn't call this performance good especially not with the number of fans present but we would call it acceptable it's just that the price doesn't justify the performance you're really paying for the glass and RGB LEDs here however there's still a big story to be told with the GPU thermals that we'll get through over the next few charts looking next at G B thermals for the s2 and r6 cases which all share the same chassis the s2 vision ends up at 49 degrees stock which is the best of the stock results for fractals new cases the s2 mesh of five falls behind by way of its fan positioning and quantity and quality something we discussed in the mash fight review removing the front panel entirely gives us a slight improvement to forty six point six degrees over ambience we have a more over the s2 original case which was ranked at 59 degrees over ambience comparatively the Fraxel s2 vision RGB ends up at 49 degrees over ambient roughly tied with the Roseville Cullinan of similar design this is also within error margins of the Helios the PMO 1 and H 500m match the vision RGB ends up in the top half of the truncated results and once again performs reasonably well 3dmark testing is typically stressful on the GPU but less so on the CPU providing a real world gaming stand in thermal benchmark under this workload the s2 Massif I ends up toward the top of the truncated chart not distance in hard numbers from its torture performance but the absence of heavy CPU workload seems to benefit the s2 vision disproportionately the case actually does well here once again proving that brute force fans can work have provided sufficient air pathways this is a large improvement over the stock s to mattify but that's because the s2 metruff I didn't have as many fans and lacked some of the positional advantage that the s2 vision fans offer blender GPU results but the s2 vision toward the top of the chart at 23 degrees over ambient for GPU temperature this ranks it as just behind the SL 600 M which had some of the best GPU cooling we'd seen last year but the vision manages better CPU performance than the SL 600 Adams compartmentalized layout blender CPU testing positions the s2 vision less impressively than the GPU result ranking it more toward the halfway mark or slightly below and within margin of error of the NZXT H 500 stock case noise levels plant the fractal define s2 vision back into the realm of reality showing that no thermal gain comes without a consequence whether that's a visual one or an acoustic one the vision ends up being the loudest stock case on our chart measuring at forty nine point one DBA at a twenty inch distance far overpowering the native system noise that's produced by the rest of the fans in the system this is tested the same way as every other case on the chart and so all these numbers are directly comparable perceptually this is about two times louder to the human ear as the eight seven hundred I stock case and that's just because decibels are logarithmic at the end of the day then it's it's difficult the price directly in this case it's really not just objectively bad or anything it's just it's considering the money argument it does feel a bit lazy this is a refresh of a refresh of which there are several other skis now they're at least five to six other skews of the r6 / s2 body and so it does sort of it's not particularly exciting from the chassis standpoint it's not a bad chassis it's just you got to give me something new especially at two hundred forty dollars or have a really good implementation of everything at two hundred forty dollars if you're reusing tooling or at least large parts of it and going with just glass and LED upgrades it's really got to be good like it has to be one of the best on the market because it's a really competitive market these days at $180 plus that wasn't always true just in the last couple years it's gotten flooded with good cases and a lot of bad ones in that price range so Fraxel needs to stand out more than it presently is doing and this is even really just a lot of it's reminiscent of the Roseville Cullinan which if you don't know it's just a Jones bow case nose hole doesn't even make it so Joan's bow is a common supplier in the industry used by like store brands like Rosewill or other small brands like an ADIZ made the AI crystal made there in quotes as well because it's also a John spoke case so the point of going on that tangent is that that Jones bow case although in other ways not as impressive as this case was cheaper so it was a hundred twenty bucks it came with a good amount of fans it wasn't as RGB crazy as this stuff because you have to remember it was a couple years ago which actually surprisingly it was a different enough time where things have changed an LED land and it achieves a lot of the same things from a pure looks external standpoint could be better we're not saying necessarily that that case is worth buying over this one this case the chassis we think is advantaged in several ways but the price Delta there and the time gap is what's kind of absurd because you're looking at a couple of years time which in the world of tempered glass and LEDs is significant and still a cheaper solution maybe again it's they're not saying like they're mutually exclusive not saying buy that one because probably well not the best suggestion either but the point is that fractal could have done something hopefully more impressive even just changing the buttons on the top of the case so that you end up with instead of a reset button maybe like an LED change button like we've seen elsewhere that wouldn't have required retooling it would have just been a change the labeling on that cable labeling get rid of the the reset icon there on the top and plug the cable in to control your LEDs and that would have been a lazy solution that's still better than the internal cable but anyway the case itself to be very clear here is fine like in terms of the enclosure so the r6 the s2 at $140 they're not terrible they're really not the case is sturdy it's reasonably well built and there are design elements that we like and check those reviews to learn more about that but at $240 is simply too much for what you're getting and it's not new enough from fractals line to really justify it there's it's just not a clean enough implementation so that's it for this one that's huh that was an expensive review to do because thanks to expedited shipping I think we were at like $300 or something to get this case and but it was worth checking out because we know it was popular so thank you for watching you can subscribe for more as always and go to stored I camera's nexus net to pick up a shirt like this one the original gamers Nexus logo shirt or patreon.com slash games Nexus to get access to our new behind the scenes videos by the time this goes up we'll have another one online about the fan testing 3d printed stuff we did so check that out thanks for watching I'll see you all next time