Gadgetory

what is going on everybody J here and we're going to take a look together at the brand-new Core 500 Mini ITX chassis from fractal design the note 304 was one of my favorite ITX chassis zuv all time but it had some things I didn't like about it the core 500 very well may have solved that so don't go anywhere the new z170 classified motherboard from EVGA features 8 phase PWM 4 Way SLI support along with top notch components to offer gamers and enthusiasts more of what they want badass motherboard with no compromises click the link below to learn more I'll be honest when I say I'm surprised that they launched this chassis under the course student name brand this really feels like it could have been in the note series and let me tell you why it's very familiar to the note 304 it's very very similar a lot of of characteristics of this case share note three or four features for instance it's got a single shell that you undo four screws the whole shell comes off yet access to three sides of the case very similar to the note 304 the power supply orientation and the way the power supply plug plug plug incorporates with the rear again just like the note 304 the layout of the ITX motherboard the placement of the fan in the rear all identical to the note 304 however they have made some serious changes to this that to me make it feel like an upgrade to the node 304 so I'm a little surprised that they put it under the core name this could be an attempt by fractal to really boost their core presence when it comes to the core line of cases that they make and maybe it was also a move to kind of keep the pricing down just a little bit now starting with an external tour of the case the front here is a faux finish where it's plastic but it's made to look like a sort of a brushed aluminum design and you have some vents here on the side which really are for show because there are no fans in the front of this case in fact there's not even any direct airflow from these vents to the inside of the chassis so they're really just more of an aesthetic breakup to give some detail to the front of the case but you can also see one of the major differences between the coat that I keep calling it the code core node code but as you can see it does include a i expansion beyond here which is good for people who wanted an optical drive or a fan controller or whatever else you might put in that slot I mean you can there's lots of things accessory-wise that you can stick in there on the top here you have this is one of the major changes from a note 304 where you had a power button on the side and then your input jacks on the side that was pretty much it where they moved it to the top here you've got a power reset you've got a hard drive indicator light headphone jack mic jack and two USB 3.0 now by tilting it forward like this you can see another major design improvement over the note 304 is you have a top vent which will actually incorporate with two 140 millimeter fans or 120 millimeter fans giving you much better airflow in this thing than you were getting with the note 304 the note 304 had two 90 millimeter fans on the front for intake and one 120 or 140 millimeter exhaust fan on the back which is creating in my opinion kind of havoc for airflow especially when you had a lot of stuff obstructing that the 90 millimeter fans especially with the hanging hard drives on the left side of the case here you have a big giant vent because this is going to allow better airflow for your graphics cards now I would still recommend a blower style card in this chassis here that way the graphics card is not relying on any of the chassis airflow to keep the graphics card cool it can pull in its own fresh air from the side and exhaust it out the rear giving it a lot much lesser impact to the cooling environment of the chassis where the GPU acts a little bit more independently if you were to put in some sort of a atmospheric design where the hot air is exhausted into the atmosphere and then the chassis has to exhaust the hot air you're going to find that you're going to heat up other components in here namely your CPU on the back of the chassis you can see you have your exhaust fan and then you have your GPU mounting brackets right there and then you've got the power plug for the PSU which is an extension cable that plugs in to the front mounted power supply on this again just like the node 304 and then lastly on the left side you've got your vent right here for the exhausting of the power supply unit now moving on to the bottom of the chassis you can see you do have a filtered intake here for your power supplies so it's going to pull the air in the bottom and exhaust it out the side once again allowing the power supply unit to not really affect the atmospheric condition of the chassis so there's a lot of there's a lot of thought in this chassis where you're going to keep things from interfering with each other especially when small form-factor cases like this cooling is everything okay so let's go ahead and take a look at the inside of the chassis and to do that you guys are going to have to scoot in and get a little bit closer I promise I don't smell too badly I took a shower before doing this video not really but I just wanted to you know make you feel a little better so like I mentioned from the start all of the sides and the top are covered by this single shell of a of a cover here which fits very very snug so exactly the easiest to get on and off but okay it gets the job done now right away you can see on the top of the chassis here we have a bracket for two 120 millimeter or two 140 millimeter fans now obviously this could also accommodate all-in-one water cooling which is a major improvement over the note 304 now the way you accomplish that is you pop off the front panel which will give you access to some screws so that you can actually remove the if I can get the stupid thing off already done it like five times should be easier than this so by removing these screws right here you can remove the five and a quarter bay which is attached to the radiator / fan bracket and then you can install an all-in-one water cooling loop in there or extra fans or whatever the only thing you need to keep in mind though is to use the 140s up front right here you are going to have to well pretty much give up the expansion bay because they're going to interfere with these little tabs that are kind of sticking out right here what you're kind of a see if you guys can see that right here which are kind of a guide track for a you know an optical drive or whatever may go in the front right here now as you can see you do have a pretty good amount of depth right here and they have lined up the five and a quarter and the bracket on the top here in such a manner that if you are using something like an H 100 or a 120 millimeter size fans for your all-in-one cooler like an H 100 I or a - 20x or something like that you could pretty much use this with the five and a quarter bay not having to be removed but if you want to go with something thicker like the predator and I think I mentioned the two 20x a second ago which is also pretty thick those types of all one coolers you would want to remove the bracket and then install that now all of the cables on the inside here are black which is very very nice all the way to the end you've got ribbon cable here for all the front panel connectors so unlike the note three or four you're not going to see any rainbowed colors on the end of that here's all your front panel connectors here again black all the way to the end and then of course you do have your fan now the standoffs are pretty much pre mounted here where they are a part of the floor board of the chassis so you don't to worry about trying to screw any of that in but because as you can see here there is no cutout to the bottom of the motherboard tray area if you're going to install an all-in-one cooler or an aftermarket a heatsink of some sort you're going to have to pre install that on your motherboard otherwise you are not going to be able to access that it would have been nice if fractal design had put some sort of a removable plate on here where maybe you could unscrew you know a couple of screws take the plate out have access to the back of the motherboard tray and stick that back on I don't think it would have cost them a lot of money to do that that would be something that be nice to see it lacked any sort of access to the bottom of the motherboard in the node 304 I kind of hoped they would have taken this opportunity to address that however once again they have not now on this side of the case you can see you have room for two three and a half inch drives or two two and a half inch drives now if you include these two here a three and a half inch drive access right there as well as a front-mounted SSD mount on the front you could technically have four hard drives in this thing I mean that's having four hard drives in this three of them being three and a half inch compatible that's a lot of hard drive space in such a small chassis now because I know a lot of people are going to ask and I pretty much need to know for myself especially if I'm going to use this chassis for say my PDX build we need to see whether or not the all the one cooler is going to fit in here transition you you okay so as you guys saw I decided to try and put the predator 240 in here and it just it's not going to fit the tubing is too long now one of the cool things about the predator is I could put different fittings on there and shorten the tubing up or whatever I wanted to do and I might still try that but at least the way it fits out of the box into this case natively it doesn't fit hey guys me again editing J I'm not really correcting recording J on anything this time that's kind of nice right it's sort of a change of pace but I want to mention something that I thought I mentioned in the video that apparently I didn't and that is the fact that I can't turn the radiator around the other way I'm sure people are like well why don't you just turn the radiator around so the fittings are towards the front you'll get some more slack and then everything is fixed well remember the power supply goes up front and the fittings hang down too low there's just simply not enough room I tried but it didn't fit and I'm still sad about that alright recording J go ahead and take it away now I'm starting to think that maybe all in one water cooling wasn't really the focus with this because there's just not enough room between the top of the bracket here and the socket and that holds true because I tried it also with the Corsair H 100 I and even though this is a much tinier k-dub cooler compared to the predator I still couldn't get it to fit because again very rigid tubing and it just put like crazy kinks and bends on the the tubing here to where I just couldn't get it in there comfortably it was putting way too much force on the socket because the tubing was wanting to straighten out which was pulling up on I just wasn't comfortable with that whatsoever but that's not to say that this case that's really a flaw because I mean let's be honest here ITX cases that are big enough to accommodate water cooling typically are too big to make sense as ITX cases so an ITX case like this really did show the improvement where it's intended to be which is better airflow and that is the fact that you can put intakes on the top exhaust on the rear and you can really keep your components cool which the note 304 did an okay job at but wasn't fantastic now you could still do an all-in-one cooler on the back you can do it 120 on the back you're just not getting a 240 on the top you can get a 120 or possibly note you not getting 140 on the back there's just not enough room between the top here I mean you could remove the top bracket but then you basically turn it into a node 304 so you could do a 120 all the one water cooling unit in the back and then maybe have an intake fan up front you probably would not get a 120 on the rear and a fan right here in the front it's probably not going to fit I don't have any 120 all in one water coolers hanging around otherwise I would I would give that a shot but again I don't have one but anyway I think the core 500 is a pretty good step up from the node 304 in my opinion simply because of this the five and a quarter bay the relocation of the buttons and the air flow honestly it's what's most important all right so tell me what you guys think and if you have any ITX chassis as you think I should try out that maybe fit that kind of a niche group of needing an all-in-one water cooling unit compatible and still being small form-factor without being you know too big like the case labs x2m yeah fits water cooling but then again it technically could fit an ATX case in there we just rearranged some things so it's way too big for an ITX travel case like I'm looking for but it's good for like a small desktop ITX build that can soak that water cooling so that's why I'm not using the x2m anyway guys I'm gonna get out of here thanks for watching today's video I think practical design did a fantastic job on this case I'll find a use for it I definitely will just so know exactly what it's going to be I'm disappointed because I wanted to do a water cooling build in this and take it to PDX plan I don't really want too much to cannibalize my predator and take it apart I mean that's an option but I don't really want to do that I don't know we'll figure it out alright guys thanks for watching and as always we will see you in the next video