Gadgetory

this video was brought to you by NCIX great technology selections and service hello everyone this is Dimitri with her broken axe and the core series from fractal design is there value concentrated line they remove some of the features to hit a specific price point but they've always been able to stick to their core formula of uncompromised cooling ease of assembly and outstanding build quality and their less-is-more foundation here is fitting so this is the core 3500 windowed the latest line of fractal case is priced at $89 and $10 less for the non windowed model that follows that simple Scandinavian design that we've come to love from the company so in short the 3500 utilizes the same internal frame as the defined our committee and the definer for just with a few modifications this is the first chassis from fractal with an angular front panel as we usually see curves they have maintained the brushed plastic that looks excellent without the messy characteristic of the brushed aluminum as you see the panel is mainly closed with ventilation on each side with built in dust filters a single 140 mm er fan is included at the front and you can put a second intake fan for improved thermals up top we get two USB 3 ports audio jacks and PR buttons and dual 140 and 120 mm fan mounts with 120mm fan holes offset to allow better compatibility with radiators and fractals and has always been great to consider such an important element Auto to cut down on the price the core 3500 does not have a top dust filter coming around to the back a standard seen here with a 140 mm air exhaust fan seven PCI slots and a fan controller that has now been relocated to this middle section it is molex powered with three fan headers but you'll have to deal with this obvious wiring that I'm not a fan of they are black cables so that's appreciated although the exiting tips are not sleeved that would have been nice and as you can see how to route the molex below the power supply for appropriate connection and I really would love to see the hub relocated behind the motherboard for any future models the key stands on top feet plus we get a large dual dust filter at the bottom for the power supply and the optional fan mount so with our 170 memory units or below both 140 and 120 member fans will fit in just fine and I really love fractals approach towards windowed side panels especially the tint and the styling that has become sort of their staple just like the brushed plastic on the front and for the internals aside from the V located fan hub not much has changed as their core equation for the frame and layout is excellent to begin with what we have here is a minimalist approach so only one drive cage is present here with excellent opening for direct air delivery and 11 half inches for your GPU clearance for the bottom three PCI slots I love their metal drive caddies when centered SSD mounts that are sturdy with rubber grommet to prevent any vibration noise of course taking into account additional water cooling options the drive gauge can be relocated slightly behind allowing a 240mm radiator to fit at the front this of course comes with some compromises for example the drive gauge blocks the bottom vent intake and GPU clearance for the bottom three PCI slots drops to 10 inches also with the drive cage in the second position at 280 memory radiators will not have clearance due to the width of the frame of the drive cage however everything is well laid out at the rear with such a set up for routing and I also love the small considerations to include cutouts for the front fan cables that are also sleeve by the way so clean routing is almost an expectation and the rear we have many cable type points plus almost an inch for cable routing and a small sleeve at the bottom to talk cables there are also two SSD mounts but even despite the lower price tag I really would have liked to see SSD brackets instead as removing the SSDs would require entire disassembly as you'll have to get behind the amount of I would say double-sided tape is your friends until we can see similar brackets as we saw on the arc mini r2 also you can notice how small the CPU cutout is and I'll definitely would like to see that enlarged but if any bigger and we would see even more unstable motherboard tray as there's practically no support on the right and it does exhibit a lot of flex as you can see and finally looking in the finished build as expected it cleans up well plus we've had plenty of experience with this frame in the past as the highly popular definer for and the arc MIDI r2 are practically identical with a few minor differences same story of the rear with controlled cable mess and just a joy to build inside the core 3500 a small gripe over is the length of the front panel audio cable it is very short and doesn't even reach the motherboard on our sample now we do have just two inches of clearance up top but as mounting holes are offset closer to the side panel that shouldn't really be an issue and for the conclusion it's easy to see why fractal hasn't done much with the layout as they've got a great frame with excellent cooling flexible water cooling options with relocation of the drive cage without compromising on storage capacity proper cable management and ease of assembly and at this price point it's great to see rubber grommets and a fan controller and an awesome side pan window however it lacks top dust filter I'm not fond of the fan how placement also appreciate its presence front panel audio cable is too short plus no brackets for SSDs and rear and while these are all features we usually see in more expensive cases it's definitely direction I'd love to see fractal to go to compete against likes of fan text and latest NZXT offerings so make sure to check out the following reviews to get a good sense of how competitive the sha C's market is becoming and why all these tiny details we're mentioning now are going to be sort of your main deciding factors and what case to purchase for your future bill so as always thanks for watching make sure to subscribe and like for more similar content I'll see you in the next one