Gadgetory

hey guys you're watching Jason two cents and today I have in front of me the fractal design arc mini r2 this is a brand-new case and fractal designs lineup aimed right at micro ATX board users so we'll go ahead and take a look at this and see exactly what you get from fractal design fractal design is a company that's kind of emerged on the market over the last couple of years and they are a Swedish company and they are really making a name for themselves they've been pretty much known in the past for having some really elegant looking cases with the brushed aluminum design in fact I've done a review on my channel here earlier in the year with one of their fractal our fours and RR to excel cases and I love the quality but they've listened to you guys and some of the things that people have said in general that they'd like to see changed with their cases and so that's exactly what they've done they've taken the arc MIDI r2 and they've created the arc mini r2 which is just a smaller compact version of that case and it's a they fit a lot of design in this case in a very small package it's got two five and a quarter Bay's it's got six three and a half inch bays and it's also got two two and a half inch bays dedicated to SSDs and all of the three and a half inch bays are compatible with SSDs as well expansion slots you've got four plus one PCI slots on there you've got two frontside USB 3.0 so you've got your ATX power supplies up to 170 millimeters in length graphics cards up to 260 millimeters in links so you could fit pretty decent sized graphics cards in their support CPU coolers up to 165 millimeters tall and it does have 20 millimeters of space for cable routing on the back of the case so that gives you a pretty good amount of depth to be able to stack cables on top of each other when doing your cable management necessary now for cooling that's included with this case here you have 120 millimeter silent fan in the front and 120 millimeter fan expandable on the front included so you can fit 220 mils in there you do have 120 millimeter 1200 RPM fan in the rear and you have one included 120 millimeter thousand RPM fan on the top so they're very silent operation fans they are all hydraulic bearings and then you do have expansion for either 120 or 140 millimeter in the top or you can put 3 120 millimeters on the top of this mini case which is pretty cool that that much fan space in such a small case it does have one fan controller that can control up to 3 fans 5 7 7 9 and 12 volt and which is pretty much standard for all of their cases and all of the inputs all on this are dust filtered now water cooling compatibility is one of the things that they really listen to the public on and have put a lot of radiator support in this case in fact this one mid tower case is this fairly small case can fit a front 240 millimeter radiator with using the removing the harddrive cages in the very front you can fit a 240 or 360 millimeter in the top and you can use and that does require removal of the optical drive cages by the way you can fit a 120 millimeter in the bottom as well as a 120 millimeter in the rear so you could really fit a lot of rads in here if that's what you want to do now we're gonna see how well they pack this because FedEx kind of did a number on this we've got some caved in on the top bent in corners all of these are ripped up the bottom looks a little bit soft soft we're going to see just how well they pack this because UPS or FedEx is did some FedEx this time of year just does quite a number on these cases so let's just go ahead and get in here and it does it is packed with hard foam and this hard foam on this case is cracked as you can see right there but it does look like the foam took the brunt of the abuse and not the case which is very loud and annoying no which is very important so looks to me like our case is intact I don't see any damage on here over there so you got a product manual right here all about the case check that out later but the design on this case is very very it's very elegant but yet it's it's still gamer one of the things that I like about this case is that it does include a smoked side window as you can see right here go ahead and take that off so when you get a look at the inside it's a nice very rigid side panel it is slightly smoked as you can see right there the motherboard side will check the depth and see if they lied or they told the truth on that 20 mil mic line to believe they told the truth and yeah it is it's pretty deep I mean I can get my finger down in there and I have a snausage finger so but as you can see right here these are your SSD supports and what's nice about this is the way that these are mounted on there the screws come in through the back rather than the front some cases in the past had you had to screw them in below the motherboard then put the motherboard on which made upgrading your hard drives or changing out your hard drives a lot harder but this is they change the design you have two SSD cages right here you can see you have nice wire management that's already zip-tied here and ready to go for you got your box of fractal hardware and on the front we've got this nice simulated brushed metal front panel this is plastic but it's simulated brush you have your front grille right here which you just click comes right off and it is a foamy mesh material so it's nice and easy to clean that and here is the 120 millimeter fan that's included with the expandable slot right there I really like how easy it is to get these these off that's really really quick and easy so you can see here you do have the one two three four five six expandable three-and-a-half inch drives now what you can do is you can remove the hard drive cage as mentioned this is very similar to the other hard drive cages you can remove this one altogether if you want for better air flow so you have direct airflow from that fan through the case or you can take it and turn it sideways so if you are having optical drive our hard drives in their data storage it flows more smoothly through the case now what you're also able to do is you can remove this lower hard drive cage completely which gives you access to 240 millimeter radiator support in the front and then on the top here this is one of the really cool designs for the this fractal case and how they have great radiator support on such a small design if you slide this panel off you can see once again it is all mesh filtered so you're not getting all kinds of dust in there but look at this they have an offset design so instead of centering the fan intakes here on the center of the case they've pushed them towards the front which is where the window is that way you don't have it interference with the radiator and the fans hitting the motherboard vrm heat sinks which is really common when it comes to small case form-factor now as mentioned you will have to remove the optical bay drive cage here if you want to go with a 360 millimeter radiator and they are all screwed in everything is screwed on this it's not riveted so you have nice easy removable cages and things giving you full customized solutions here for going with a small form-factor that's also water-cooled so overall I think the design of this case is very sturdy it's not flimsy I mean I can't twist it it's all metal design the only plastic that I see here appears to be the lower filter which is right here for the power supply and the front bezel right here which also houses on the top all of your front panel interactions with the case your USB 3.0 and your fan controller which is right here is a little slider switch so there you go oh and last but not least all of the cabling that comes included with the case is all sleeved black so it's nice and stealthy looking overall it's a very fantastic design I'm very pleased with it it doesn't appear that there was any damage on this and shipping it's a great case go and check it out at fractal designs website I'll put it down in the description if you're looking at building a small form-factor that uses a micro ATX or maybe a mini ITX this is definitely a great solution large motherboard cut out couldn't ask for a better case for the money at this size so there you go guys fractal designs mini r2 the arc minute r2 check it out thanks for watching as always if you enjoyed this video you know what to do you know which button to mash if you didn't you also know what you can do with the video and hope to see you guys next time on J sees us