Gadgetory

what's up guys you're watching Jays two cents and I'm bringing you what is going to be the last review of 2013 what we've got right here is one of fractals biggest cases that they make the fractal design arc XL and man is this thing extra-large just like me you know fractal design is one of those companies that I really really have liked this year they've made a huge presence in the gaming and computer building industry this year and they've really come to the market with something I feel is unique whereas a lot of case manufacturers over the past have really kind of gone flashy bling and lights have you wear crazy designs all over the case funky window designs and just a lot of it looks really really gaudy and just ugly but fractal design has really looked at the approach of less is more when it comes to aesthetics so the design of their cases really seems simple on the outside but they put a lot of effort into what goes inside the case now the XL has a lot of compatibility in it in fact you know rather than talk about what's on the box I'm just going to go ahead and open this thing up and we'll just we'll get right into it I don't care a whole lot about talking about the box because who cares now this thing is going to look a lot like the rest of the arc series obviously they are committee the arc mini and this just takes those cases and just stretches the crap out of them so that you can fit in all kinds of components if you're building yourself a custom water loop or going full-on gaming or maybe you're just overcompensating I don't know it doesn't know Who am I to judge that's up to your designer to decide if you're overcompensating I've got a 900 D right let's not go there now until you're knocking this thing we ate off the table I think I just broke my closet that's okay I don't keep anything important in there anyway except the closet monster now the foam that they pack this in is pretty brittle so I wouldn't go see it just kind of broke right apart there I wouldn't go ship in the system in this I would certainly repack it with computer-type packing material so all right here it is in all its glory and this thing is pretty big I mean this is certainly a full tower now a lot like the ark mini and the ark MIDI you've got the same style window here with your protective film on there and this smoked out which looks pretty damn awesome now the features that are on this case are very very similar to the other cases that we've already looked at so rather than go individually over each feature on this I'm going to talk about some of the main features and then we'll talk about what you could fit in this case now on the top it's a lot like the other cases where you have a completely removable top screen here that has nice soft filter in there for dust filtering the entire top now you have some interesting stuff going on here when it comes to the top of the case now you have 140 ml 2 x 140 millimeter compatibility and you have 3 x 120 millimeter compatibility here on the top now what makes it interesting is the 140s are offset you can see they've already included 1 140 millimeter fluid bearing fan in there but if you want to do a triple read it is in the center but that looks like there's plenty of depth here to where you won't have any interference with your motherboard which is like on the arc Mini where they offset that that way you can go with a full sized radiator and push pull and not have any issues so they've done that here with the 140 if you want to put a dual 140 millimeter rat in there with push-pull fans there's more than enough room for it on the top here you have your 5 7 and 12 volt fan controller that is built in your a reset power button there you have your microphone and headphone output and input 2 USB 3.0 2 USB 2.0 now moving around to the front of the case you've got your your same brought a full brushed finish it looks a lot like it's brushed finish but it's just plastic I think it looks good at it keeps costs down but giving you a nice design to take a look at on there we're going to take the front panel off on this bad boy and expose the guts of this case now it is a steel construction so the case does have a little bit of heft to it but I think that's good because you I don't like flimsy cases you know that a real thin stamped steel with plastic on there this is really rigid I mean it is riveted together there's very little on here that's actually screwed together so it's going to be harder to take apart in mod shouldn't stop any hard core matters but look at the inside here you've got your hardware - for hard drive - times for hard drive cages here so you have total eight hard drives you can mount there you've cut what looks like one two three four five and a quarter expansion bays plenty of grommets here to get all your wiring through again all black sleeves wiring exactly what you come to expect from fractal design sleeved wiring here on the fan and it does look like you have one 140 millimeter in the front one exhaust on the back and one exhaust on the top that's included but plenty of expandability I mean you can fit another 140 in the front and you can fit all those fans on the top that we've already talked about now let's go ahead and talk about the back of the case and let's see what comes in there they've been pretty good about supplying SSD mounts that way you don't have to use up hard drive cages to mount your SSDs and this case is absolutely no exception as you can see right here you have two SSD mounts so you can put your SSDs right there there little offset but who cares are in the back you're not going to really see them anyway you've got all black cables sleeping which we've already mentioned and they're already twist tied to the back of the case to give you an idea of cable routing but you've got a lot of little cable ties on here to give you adequate places to mount your cables to so you can have really organized cable management now looking at the bottom of the case you can see you do have a full length filter for your power supply and you do have a 120 and a 140 millimeter fan mount on the bottom so you can put a bottom rat in there or a bottom fan which I don't recommend bottom fans personally but that's just me but what you can also do is you can remove the the hard drive cage right here in the front and you can put a 120 millimeter fan or a Sudan 120 millimeter rad in the front a 240 rad in the front it may or may not natively support 2 x 140 we'll check that out but we're going to do right now is we're going to go ahead and stick some radiators in here and see just how well they fit to give you an idea of how crammed it gets once you start filling this thing up with some water cooling components putting water cooling in this case was extremely easy there's really no other way to say it I mean take a look inside this case right here do you see how open and expanded this is inside this case right now I have a triple rad on the top a triple alpha cool radiator on top with three fans I have a dual 120 millimeter fan in the front with fans on there I have the light tower with the pump and the reservoir attached to it and look at all this space that you still have in here this took probably 20 minutes to put together and I'd say half that with finding the screws for the radiators and fans because have so much crap I couldn't find it so one thing I forgot to show in the beginning of the video is the front filter and how easily it makes accessing the front fans I mean as you can see out there we've got the alpha cool elope fans in there and I mean look there's the top with the triple rad and the three fans in there I mean look at this you see and the pump is flopping around it's not actually mounted down but look at the amount of space we have in this build here we could have put a taller rez in there if we wanted we could have gone push pool on all of this and still had plenty of room I mean you can see the amount of space you have here before you even get near the bottom of the rad because the fans are up on the top the 140 and the fact doesn't come anywhere near the radiator yes I could stick my whole hand in between the radiator and going getting close I want people to see this the amount of space that there is in this thing I mean look at this do you see the upper rad right here you see the amount of space you have in the back of this the radiator here look at the front right here there are fans on the front of that because the case has an indented spot for the France two fans to mount in the front giving you plenty of room for radiator here and to go push pull or even go as thick as an 80 millimeter radiator if you want and still have room to use your hard drive cage and you still have room right here for a full-size power supply even a modular one now you have to be mindful of the depth of that if you go with like a 1200 watt PS a PSU or something but you everything in this is just so well thought out and everything is so easy to build in this case fractal design I kind of hate you and I want to tell you why I'm an old school mater and you've really taken a lot of the fun out of making this stuff fit in these cases where you have to get creative with it and start cutting and Dremel ingen and and welding or making panels just to make everything fit look at that everything is in here and it looks as if it was native and all came with the case to begin with fractal design you're taking all the fun or should I say the headache out of coming up with custom cooling solutions in a case like this so guys this has been the fractal design arc XL it certainly lives up to that XL name check it out down in the description remember guys we are going to be going to CES in two weeks that's going be January 6th through the 10th bringing in just the latest news when it comes to all of your favorite piecee companies make sure you check that out make sure you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any of that coverage follow me on Twitter because when we're doing a lot of tweets and stuff while we're there and as always I will see you in my next video