Gadgetory

hello with people one case review for the month is complete the c7 100 M has been added to my wall collection but now it's time for another oh man this hair this is a delivery from Sweden with a model named nicely discreet on the side finally we have a new fractal design case come on Josh the define s - Wow this is an incredible review guide pricing and everything usually have to follow up nice here comes the peel let's do the interior one as well now the reason why I love fractal design case is because there are no surprises you know exactly what are you gonna get quality construction functionality this kind of like elegant simple / boring design and there are no necessarily new innovations within it they're all just refined iterations of the previous enclosure and that is exactly what we have with the define s - let's check it out right - this hello I'm looking for some fans well are you married yeah I have a ring what is your favorite number I would say 3 do I have the perfect fan for you this is the new thermal tech ring trio 12 fans with good static pressure for radiators it is a beautiful frame with double side and center ring illumination with soft and super bright spill with razor chrome and compatibility control it through your smartphone the RGB plus software on the PC or Amazon Alexa well I'm gonna take these home perhaps you should to check them out in the description below so good people that define us too after working with it is the combination of the original define s and the latest and greatest features from the defined r6 both of those reviews are up here you can check them out so it's a good thing and it's also a bad thing because for the price point of $149 for the define that's - it is competing with a defined r6 which you can pick up right now for the tempered-glass version for around $140 so it is slightly cheaper than the latest defined s - which doesn't necessarily bring anything new that the defined r6 does not already have however it does target slightly different audience because the define s the original was kind of like very roomy and it carries over with the Defiant's too but now we have the power supply shroud such more features for the module and covers and stuff so let's begin the analysis of what is different the case will be available in four colors just like we saw with the r6 now I have the gunmetal version which looks awesome slightly darker gray not exactly black but I was hoping it would be slightly lighter so you can actually tell that it is not black because right now it looks black and only at certain angles when the light hits it it looks gunmetal gray now I will say that while I appreciate fractals direction with keeping things in this whole minimalist realm you know the front facade is brushed aluminum the glass panel is completely flush to the case without any thumb screw sticking out from the side because that mount has been changed now with some screws at the back instead for securing while transport but also has these additional pegs for support so we don't necessarily need to have the thumb screws in there and keeping them off actually gives you easy access when you just pull the side panel off we have the same mount for the back panel and I like how they just kind of slide into the front and then they kind of close off like car doors into those pegs so it kind of compresses the cables you don't have to fight any little pegs that are usually found on both top and the bottom of a side panel awesome mount all together and it looks the way it has always looked for the define series enclosure I will say though that the gunmetal version hides the finger marks with the brushed aluminum in the front however the top is completely planed and slightly glossy so all the finger marks are visible which is unfortunate the i/o should meet all of our 2018 expectations which for USB ports all blacked out two of which are USB 2 we have a Type C Gen 2 port also on here power reset buttons that illuminate in this like very subtle white glow which I wasn't expecting I was expecting it to be blue but it looks like they've changed the LED so it's a little bit more subtle now in order to remove the front panel you have to first slide out that giant dust filter at the bottom easily accessible from the front and then behind it we have our two included 140 member of fans the dust filter no longer covers the entire face of the fans instead we have these smaller strips on the side of in the ventilation to allow more surface area and volume for the fans to intake air and I think that is actually less restrictive for the fans so that's a good thing the top of the case now has the upgraded module vent system so we have this chunky button at the back that you press to release that entire panel that gives us access to the fan bracket that can be used to mount up to 420 million radiator so you can do triple 120 and 140 number of fan installation up top now the one little detail that I appreciate that you only realize having worked in the r6 are the offset well inserts for these dual brackets because on the r6 they were right on top of each other meaning you can confuse and place the fan bracket in the top slot instead at the bottom and so now they're offset eliminating any confusion as to where the each of these brackets should sit inside the frame nice the top fan bracket also has a fill port right beside the motherboard so it's kind of this appropriate location for your water cooling needs and so this whole frame is designed for water cooling systems because it is so long so you can fit a 420 at the top and up to a 360 at the front so giving you plenty of options to choose from in terms of your fan and radiator options and you know it's kind of like expected from fractal design but then if you're not water cooling a lot of that internal space is definitely wasted but if you are installing anything up top you can disassemble the top panel into two so revealing a dust filter that has this angled ventilation potentially channeling air and noise away from the user which is nice but the problem is twofold so first it is actually super difficult to remove the solid piece away from the dust filter I had to use a knife to do so which is the exact same issue I had with the r6 so this has clearly not been yet fixed and number two is that when the filter is installed there's a big gap at the front between the frame and it so I'm not worried about dust infiltration it just does not look very pretty alright so moving inside the main thing that's been added with the define that still is the power supply shroud so it's been basically ported from the r6 I love sleek design simple fractal design text so nothing intrusive we have ventilation above the power supply you can also install dual SSD caddies in there we have dual of vertical PCI slots for vertical GPUs that rise a card and that low installation platform is not included with a defined s2 the motherboard tray is slightly recessed with EA TX support and the main thing that you'll notice is why is the case so long and that is because that entire side section beside the motherboard is meant for reservoirs and thicker radiators and all that clearance to be kind of in harmony so they don't interfere with each other we do have these reservoir mounting brackets that you can install and have a little bit of height flexibility I don't water cool but from what I've seen in terms of builds from previous define s systems is that it's quite nice to have all that space that will not interfere with the potentially long GPU and a thicker radiator in the front there's a third 140 Miller fan at the back so cooling out of the box should be just fine but the one thing that really surprised me that I was not expecting from fractal design is that there's no piece at the front in for the power supply shroud that you can remove to allow for 360 rad to go into that chamber so you can have a lot more clearance about 7 inches of space for really thick radiators in push-pull but that will cover caused me a lot of issues so we did define our six there was a similar situation but the plate simply popped off no hassle there where else here it is super tight so removing it required me to force it out almost but worse when came to reinstalling it back into the case I couldn't do it it simply would not slide onto that second little peg closer to the motherboard tray and I'm thinking is because of that corner and you know you have to almost like wedge it in and it was almost impossible for me to do it unless I cut off that little corner on the plate which I know is unconventional but it's not a good design and when I cut off that corner piece on that power supply shroud plate it simply popped in place no hassle whatsoever coming to the back we have a few new things here like a fan controller for 6 3 pin fans and 3 4 pin PWM fans so that's awesome they are powered via SATA you can also plug this into your motherboard for that rpm control for storage we have two SSD caddies that can be relocated to the power supply shroud and three new drive cages for hard drives and SSDs that look quite cool they can also help you with cable management if you want to stash some cables in that space and I do like that all the pre-installed cables are nicely routed along the side of the case however the one little weird thing is that none of the fans were connected to the hub by default so you have to do that so don't turn on a computer thinking that everything is being powered on you have to remove those drive changes and find those cables and connect them yourself we also have this handy SATA extension so you can connect all three drives via one SATA cable plugged in to your power supply nice and convenient for those three drives that you might populate into those three drive caddies the one thing I don't like is how the drives are visible from the front because of the reservoir holes whereas before there was like a black plate you put on the drive there so the drives would not be visible from the front so that is one of those little things that come with an improvement for the drive cage how they look from the back but then they compromise the visuals on the interior it's a weird it's a weird mix well now that we know what the case is capable of let's do the system built and so after the assembly all I can say is that this has been an extremely satisfying experience you know doing all the cable management hardware installation absolutely no issues anywhere whatsoever you know once you get into the groove of cable management and everything just aligns perfectly and this is like one of the easiest things to do in terms of cable management I love when things just fall into place and there are no thousand little cables floating around by default you have to also worry about these just it's just a good feeling when you look at the back and you can just slide your hand and everything is completely flat against the motherboard tray and even though we have you know there's plenty of room beside the power supply just that the back area is well designed to handle any of those exits so they're not completely sticking out thanks to those velcro straps now the one thing I absolutely love on the interior in terms of cable management are the long rubber grommets basically spanning the entire height of the motherboard and you know they're not split into like three or four like on many other cases this means that I can route my 24 pin in the exact location where my 24 pin cable is located on the motherboard and that's been kind of frustrating with many other cases but not here now obviously there's so much extra room beside the motherboard for reservoirs and radiators but that's not exactly what I'm going for here and in terms of cooling so because I recently did the cosmos see 700 M temperature results with that exact system I can compare and the defined s2 is slightly hotter on both the CPU and the GPU for my Delta T versus ambient and that is to say that these fans are 1,000 rpm so they are quieter versus what we saw on the Coolermaster case also cool master case had three fans so a slightly larger enclosure but I am surprised at how much hotter the GPU got at 2,000 rpm versus the card running much quieter and cooler in the slightly bigger enclosure alright so I want to conclude by saying that the fine s2 is a fan stick release fractal design are rolling out all the modern functional features as with their previous cases into defiant as to line and that makes me happy but I am a bit worried at how the define s is now competing with the r6 which is basically an identical spec to step spec with a little of the definer six is basically identical to the s2 in terms of respect respect for water cooling air flow the same glass panel the same module and system the same looks basically but the r6 has the advantage of having that entire front drive cage system that you can move back if you want basically the layout of the s2 or move to the front if you want a little bit more concealment and space out those drive caddies the one major critique I have with the s2 is that power supply shroud plate that in my sample would not now come out and would not be put back in until I took measures into my own hands but otherwise like all the features and everything on that are pretty fantastic for 2018 but again it is competing with the r6 and the r6 currently is cheaper it is no doubt that defined s2 is a much higher end upgraded version versus the original defined s you know glass panel margin system the interior you know realignment the power supply shroud new top IO new dust filter implementation new storage options so all those things are new and that is of course a positive we've given many awards to fractal design over the years and I feel like the s2 deserves the damn good award by default because it's basically in our six without the hard drive modular system but otherwise you know I was hoping that it would be slightly more competitive and price point and so like around $120 so that they don't isolate itself from the rest of market and be like a really aggressive competitive competitor in the case space that is over the saturated already for our Canadian audience memory Express is a place to go for home business and gaming electronics you can try before you buy especially great for peripherals by visiting one of their stores and Winnipeg Calgary or Greater Vancouver and more they do custom PCs and will beat any Canadian price guarantee but I would love to hear what you think of the define - and would you choose this over the r6 and why or why not let me know in the comments and yeah thanks so much for watching make sure to subscribe check out our boot sequence channel to you we'll see you in the next video