Gadgetory

hey what's up guys Jays two cents here and I have in front of me the successor to the extremely popular and extremely successful defying r4 from fractal design and this is the fractal define r5 this is now one amazingly silent amazingly water cooling friendly beast of a case other company is gonna have a hard time beating this one so don't go anywhere EDG a is a CX 2.0 cooler with its three phase six slot motor 11 swept fan blades and double ball bearing design offers reduced power noise and thermals for the optimum gaming experience click the link in the description to learn more okay so the define R 5 what's different well you know when it comes to the aesthetics in the outside of the case it really has that pretty quite essential define look to it but there are a lot of changes both on the outside and the inside that you don't want to be fooled by you don't want to look at this and think oh it's just a slight change of the defined series no this has been pretty much completely redefined now we'll go ahead and start with the front panel the front panel is where you spend a lot of your time looking and most people complained that they didn't want a door that opened this way now I kind of agree with that because most people if they have a window on their panel on this side most people put their computer on the right side if you're right-handed the three tend to put it and that's where the door opens up incorrectly the opposite direction but there are actually hinges here on the side that you can simply unscrew screw the door on the other side and it will then open up up to the right which is absolutely fantastic now taking a look at the inside here you can see that they've also increased the air flow to the front air filter but now we have a very open louvered filter with a mesh dust filter that does a fantastic job at keeping the 140 millimeter fans which are also compatible with 120 millimeter fans in the front nice and dust free now they've also changed the fans a little bit they're a little bit more sy a little bit more noise optimized and you do have room to add another 140 millimeter or 120 millimeter fan in the front now when it comes to five and a quarter it our tool is removable for the little covers on there which is pretty much normal for fractal and then you have on the top your headphone jack microphone jack a reset button power switch two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 and then again on the front the simulated brushed finish on the front this is plastic it's simulated brushed but that it looks very fantastic now one way they've also increased the airflow to the front is as you can see we have nice thick louvers nice open air flow so air can come in and all the way around the sides of the front of this case getting nice optimized air flow I mean the define our four was great at giving you silence it didn't have the greatest airflow now they have taken a lot of time with this case all the way going down to super silent you know sub silent rooms I guess if it's even possible measuring all the different silence and and different designs of this case to get it truly noise optimized and that's what the defined series was about it was all about silence and noise optimization I mean in fact their whole campaign was silence redefined get it redefined and corny I know so on oh whatever thing on the front I forgot to mention is it does have a full length dust filter that removes from the front all the way back to the power supply so none of that really silly half of a filter comes out the front and the other half comes out the back nope you can clean the entire bottom of the PC filter right from the front it's very easy to get in and out of there as you can see it just snaps into place there you go now when it comes to the side here instead of having the cover on there which they used to have that you could cover up the side fan that had that piece of noise reduction foam on there and you can see this the hex cutout they've gone away with all of that and they've done you know nice paneling both on the side and on the top when it comes to removing the fans slot if you will they found a way to really integrate it into the case without making the aesthetics look like crap either one other thing I do like about the side panel is they now have basically a thumb latch locking mechanism on the back so once you take out the thumb screws you really don't even need these in there because now you've got this latch on the back and now you can just take off the side panel and there you go it's absolutely easy to access so if you didn't even want to put those thumb screws back on you don't have to because it actually holds very very tight it's not going anywhere it doesn't rattle doesn't move so you could actually if you go in and out of your case a lot you don't even have to remove that or take off those thumb screws or put them back on just leave them off and use the latching system as you can see here on the inside of the side panel we do have the sound deadening material and this is what really gives a lot of aid to the silence of this case it's really known fractals really known for using this material in all the defined cases now taking a look at the inside here you can see have a nice large motherboard cut out giving you really easy access to air coolers and water cooling back plates and whatnot so you don't have to worry about there being any issue with compatibility and ease of installation the motherboard tray is compatible with ATX micro ATX mini ITX but EA TX unfortunately is not supported on this case like it was on the arc XL the reason for that is you can see here on the front where you have the grommets here for your wire pass-through instead of being flat it is slightly angled now that's going to make for a lot easier a lot cleaner cable management but unfortunately unfortunately you lose that V ATX compatibility but that's okay because e ATX is not a really big player and the ATX standard when it comes to motherboards that I mean they're out there like my z97 classified as an e ATX but most people are running standard ATX or smaller motherboards so I don't see that being a huge issue we've got a massive rubber cut out here on the bottom for your power supply cables to work their way through cable management on this case is super easy and before we talk about the hard drive cages and some of the radiator support its go ahead and take a look at the back of the case to see exactly how much room we had back there now what I do like is you can see I undid these thumb screws but they don't come out so you're not going to lose them and I'll about you guys but I hate undoing a thumb screw and not catching it before I get to the last thread and not the whole frickin side panel on myself we're gonna leave that in there because that's just classic but anyway the screws won't come off the side panel will attack you that's normal that's actually a feature fractal design put that even right in their own manual but anyway same sound-deadening material on the back panel behind the motherboard tray taking a look at the back you can see we have two again tool lists it's kind of a coolest thing going on here you guys notice I have not busted out a single screwdriver yet we have a tool list SSD mount removal system here mount your SSD put the little tabs in there tighten it down boom SSD is mounted just that quickly velcro straps here on the back again for cable management you know I wasn't planning on building anything in this case but I'm really starting to feel like I need to now holy crap this case has just got it all figured out the fan controller is a SATA cable thank goodness for that I really hate when case manufacturers give you a molex a 4-pin molex cable to power things I mean most things are going SATA now and that is a standard I like to see but you can see you have well over an inch of space back here I would say well let's see I passed a J's first knuckle so we're going to say about an inch and a quarter of space on the back here nice rounded edge so you're not going to cut any of your wires by routing them around right here and then now we're going to go ahead and move on to the bread-and-butter on this case okay so disclaimer I started to do a big portion of this review and I stopped and I went okay you know what this deserves a teardown because I was talking about all the water cooling options and there was just so freakin many there was no way I could actually show you without tearing it all apart so if all of a sudden the computer just kind of like disassembled itself really fast on camera that's why now that define are five guys it's pretty much just a metal shell and the reason for that is they're giving you more radiator support and more options than most cases on the market I'm going to say all there are other cases that are geared specifically towards water cooling but none of them are geared specifically towards water cooling as well as silent PC if you want it you can choose to have a completely airtight watertight wall yeah we're not going to fill it up with water we're not doing like a mineral PCE in this but you could have a silent air-cooled PC named a silent water-cooled PC and not have to compromise on your radiator support now let's go ahead and talk about them I've taken the hard drive cages out here to prove a space point on this it's nothing really new when it comes to the hard drive cages other than they are thumb screws I already mentioned that come out without losing them and you can rearrange these to get maximum space like you could take the front one and move it back still have room for a standard link power supply and room for a front radiator up to 60 millimeters plus fans on there and stuff plenty of room for airflow no problem whatsoever so we're going to go ahead and set these aside there's not a whole lot to talk about with the drive cages typical sleds you know same thing they've always used the five and a quarter bay up top comes out without tools well I guess technically you need no actually take that back these were completely thumb screw list the bottom cage required a Phillips because those are real screws on the bottom but everything to this point that I've taken out with the exception of the bottom cage is completely tooless now if we go ahead and move all of this junk out of the way we take a look at the raw cage that is to define our v you can see radiator support on this thing is freaking massive all right let's start with the top if you're running 120 millimeter fans on the top you can do a 120 a 240 and a 360 check it out like we've already showed they have opened up the entire top of the case for 360 rad support now what they've done is just like they've done on their Arc series they've taken the 120s and they've pushed them instead of being centered on the kasich everybody does they've moved them towards the side of the case away from the motherboards you could run extra thick like monster ads 60 millimeter ads without any problems mounting it it'll mount and not interfere with your motherboard so you can get extra thick radiators in there now if you're going to do the 140 millimeter you can do a 140 a 280 or a 420 but unfortunately you're stuck with 55 millimeters of clearance including the fans that means you can run a fan which is a 25 millimeter fan and a 30 millimeter rad and go all the way up to 420 now when it comes to the bottom of the case you can fit a 120 or 240 as well as the big radiator up top and then if you want it on the bottom here or on the front you could fit and open up that door you could fit on here a 120 a 240 or a 360 millimetre radiator that's just insane that you could fit on this thing a 360 on the front a 360 on the top and a 240 on the bottom now you couldn't fit them all at the same time there is going to be some interference on there like for instance you couldn't run a 240 or 360 on the front here and still have a 240 on the bottom they're going to interfere right there but you know the fact that you could do a 120 here and a 240 here and a 420 there you're going to get much more radiator space than you need and that's perfect because cards like the r9 290 and 290x run extremely hot the 780 s and the 780 Ti is and Titans although they're not as hot as 202 9s and 290x they are still pretty warm but you could take care of all of that in this case and because of the increased airflow on the sides you get an awful lot of airflow through the front so the front radiator and fans are not choking the rest of the case you're actually getting the air that it needs now cable management on this thing is fantastic the angled motherboard tray all of the radiators support the tool lists the extremely toolless options and the only reason they didn't put tool list screws on the bottom I'm pretty convinced of is because if you had the screw sticking out with the thumb head on there it's going to interfere with the filter other than that this is by far a homerun as far as I'm concerned when it comes to fractal design now they don't give you a whole lot of fans there's no top fan there's only one front fan so you've got a one in one intake in the front one exhaust in the rear but you could fill this up again with just as many fans as I mentioned when it comes to radiator so if you wanted to run a ton of slow rpm fans on this you could do 140 in the front 140 or - 140 s on the fret you could do a 140 or - 120 s on the bottom arm sorry - 120 s on the bottom you could do 3 140 s on the top and a 140 on the rear and run those puppies at like 600 rpm you get tons of airflow little to no noise so guys that fractal design r5 as far as I'm concerned is an absolute winner if I had an award I would get it right now I've always been a fan of the fractal design cases I've in fact I've been running an arc XL on my test bench for a long time about a year now and I've just never had any issues or complaints to fractal design in fact this case is available in black white and titanium and they do have a window side panel available for it as well so guys tell me what you think about this case what would you put in this thing you know I'll be honest I didn't fill it up with radiators right now because I don't have enough to fill it I don't have that many radiators in my inventory first world problems all right guys tell me what you would build in this thing and as always follow on Twitter if you guys have any questions tell me about your PC's on Twitter or Facebook I love to hear about your guys's PC's keeping the PC community alive and well as always guys see you in the next