Gadgetory

welcome to an unboxing that took me a little while to get to the fractal design art MIDI was actually out a very very long time ago the first time they showed this was actually CES 2011 but better late than never as I always say I don't always say that but in this case it makes sense better late than never I'm gonna be having a look at the fractal design arc maybe mid tower case so Frank the designs cases are all about simplistic looks the first one that hit the market was redefining r3 so the default was kind of an ultimate compact silent case it took a lot of them it took a lot of cues there's no denying it from the enttec p18 x-series however what it did also do was add a few things of its own such as the mod units which were a way to choose whether you want an optimal airflow or silence it also added us a sort of a different way of doing the noise dampening that was lower cost and that's resulted in the less expensive case at the end of the day they dramatically altered the interior layout which is what's entirely their own design and one thing that fractal is really good at with all their cases is a good balance on the interior design so fractal ops for using the space in a way that is beneficial to the user rather than sort of going with the status quo they were one of the first ones to take a case and instead of filling the front of it with five and a quarter inch base and then doing some three and a half inches in the bottom they just do a couple five and a quarter inch base and fill the rest of the case with three and a half inches because most users are putting in not six DVD drives but more like eight hard drives that is that is a more likely scenario so let's have a look at the outside of the Ark this is more like I guess a second-generation fractal case it has a better internal layout than the define our three and here we go so we've got see this this is cool so we've got a honeycomb mesh on the for the case with a noise dampening as well as dust filtering foam on the inside of it so what that means is that even though this is an ultimate airflow more of a gamer style case than a define our three you can see that same foam here tons of airflow you're still not necessarily going to totally give up on the noise the noise compromise that usually comes with a more like a gaming case the front uses that brushed plastic that I'm actually a huge fan of because it looks really good you guys can you see it in the in the camera it looks great the fingerprints don't mark it's much easier to clean and I add the cost less it's like win-win-win in the front you see a single whoops oh I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to check what sort of a fan that is it looks like a 140 but I could be wrong it could be a 120 look at that no it isn't 140 okay so there's a single 140 there and probably mounting for another one we're gonna get it open I'm not that familiar with this case front panel IO so we've got huh looks like there's a little bent piece of metal there but we can probably fix that with a needle so front USB three two front USB two power switch headphones microphone as well as a reset switch the sides are pretty straightforward so you got your standard black side panel over there you got your standard rear so you can either mount a 120 or 140 it comes with a 140 there's your i/o there's a couple of water cooling tubing grommets most people don't use those but they're there we've got seven plus one PCI slots if you have like a fan controller or something you can put it there obviously you can't actually install an expansion card there but seven standard slots bottom power supply which can either be mounted one way or the other way you can see all the holes are present and then you can either use the filtered bottom that's a removable filter and mount it that way so it draws air from the bottom you can see we've got nice tall rubber feet here so you're not going to be restricted in terms of airflow this is smart to look at this it's a nice touch it's really really wide at the front it's easy when you're putting it in or you can flip it around the other way should you prefer that on the side we've got what looks like a 140 or a 100 and something something bigger than that hold on a second yeah that's 140 or 180 millimeter on the side so it doesn't come with a fan there but you can install one should you see fit so here is my screwdriver and let's get it opened up big fan of fractal cases I might as well just say that up front here guys I love the define r3 and pretty much everything they've released since then has lived up to my expectation that was set back then with the define r3 here we are on the inside so if you if you have a define r3 or if you know the define r3 this will look pretty similar but they upgraded some significant things so these front fans are 120 or 140 s now which is awesome because the define r3 is only 120 s this hard drive cage can actually be rotated if you prefer to mount the cables in a different whoops sorry about that guys this is not a magnetic screwdriver which is what I'm used to using there we are so it can be rotated this way or actually removed completely if you have a long graphics card or if you want to mount like some kind of weird accessory here and then this these plastic pieces can actually also be removed which is very very cool not only that but it also gives completely unrestricted airflow access to the video cards from this front 140 millimeter fan so you are taking sort of your ultimen airflow case removing obstructions if you're only gonna have four drives and what kind of drives you use doesn't really matter because the the included hard drive sleds are a little bit stuck right now hold on that's funny oh look at that they're screwed in on this one so on the define are three there aren't screws here to hold them in but on this one there are so you can either use those and that will give you more safety and chipping or you can not use those and they do clip into place and they won't come out until you do this so compatible with either two and a half inch using these holes oh this is cool look at that the holes are centered instead of being off to the side so they don't interfere with the rubber grommets I've seen this overlooked time and time again whether it's grommets or whether it's those those little pokey pieces from the side you know the ones where you bend them open to put the drive in a lot of the time the SSD mount is over here and it interferes with it you can't even put it in without removing the hard drive mounting piece so that's very very smart so there you go so they're compatible with whatever you want so if you have like two SSDs in raid and then a couple hard drives in raid you can take this whole thing out and get better airflow and more space inside what is already a fairly compact and efficiently laid out case I'm just gonna remove this bottom one so that you can get out the accessories there I'm gonna have to find that through I dropped at some point as well so let's shake things up a little bit and I'm gonna have a look at the accessories before we continue looking at the inside of the case and they're all pretty much laid out here but I've actually never used this case before I only knew it from sort of looking at it and going yeah that looks nice those look like cool features but I've never seen one in person yet all the screws are here so you go out all your fan mounting screws all your thumb screws your little speaker they include a speaker which isn't part of the case but hey if you want one then you have one they include a five and a quarter to three and a half inch adapter also the nice brushed plastic a couple of reusable cable ties okay fan controller that can be mounted here that is connects to up to well you got three fans cool hey can be powered either by molex or by a fan connector and there you go that's pretty much it have the included accessories so let's finish up with the inside here we've got our five and a quarter inch base one of which actually includes a three and a half inch adapter inside it I don't know if you're gonna be able to get a good angle but you can take that out by removing these thumb screws it's also got SSD mounting on it or hard drive mounting so that's some pretty cool thing there so basically your options are as follows you can do dual five and a quarter three and a half external three and a half internal five and a quarter three and a half external or three and a half internal times with a bobcat on what I said but you've got all kinds of options with the included adapters and lift included pieces oh wait no you can't do that okay okay okay okay so this goes on the front with the adapter that's bolted in here already to make it a three and a half external there we go no I got it we have a CPU cut oh not the biggest one I've seen in the past but I think they've made a reasonable compromise here by putting cable management loops here instead of expanding this because you should still be able to reach from the back if you need to they've also reinforced the motherboard tray just by putting in these bends that does make it stronger cable management is a fairly strong point with the define r3 and it looks like a fairly strong point with the arc as well we've got nice flexible rubber tons of space in the back that looks like plenty of space for a 24 inch connect our 24-pin connector nice flexible rubber here here here and here these are a little bit less flexible than the bigger ones but they should still look okay even after you run something through them dual 120 millimeter fans supported in the top or dual 140 s you see you've got a lot of different fan mounting options here which is really cool so we have full support for a dual 120 mil rads which is a huge one for me that is very very important for me and in a chassis this small there aren't too many competitors where you're going to have room to do that so very very cool now let's have a look at it from the other side so I might use my screwdriver again from the factory these are pretty tight although you don't have to put them back in that tight yourself so it'll be easier to remove without using a screwdriver later there we are like I said lots of room for cable management here in the back there's the screws and I'll also show you guys the front panel connectors so we've got an internal header USB 3 USB 2 I'm gonna be another USB 2 somewhere in all likelihood Poe no there isn't sorry USB 2 front panel audio power switch power LED hand got to be a recent hard drive LED and reset switch right there only the USB three one is blue everything else is black which is nice to see and I think that pretty much covers it so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the arc MIDI and the reason that I'm unboxing this now is actually so that I can use this case for an upgrade to my wife's PC so she's gonna be going from socket 1156 to socket 1155 and getting a 2600 K going on in there so should be good I'm looking forward to using this case I'm actually replacing the 800 D because it's there's not as much space in our computer room anymore now that I have my tech table in here so we wanted to get things a little bit smaller so we're gonna be going with the arc MIDI very exciting don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips from unboxings reviews and other computer videos sorry guys I'm already outfitting it with its sexy matching PC power and cooling power supply for awesome black and white internals but something I forgot to mention is how to get at the front fan so you just do the clips here 1 2 3 and then pop off the front so the fans are installed just by clipping them into place and then running the cables into the rest of the case very very very very straightforward and easily compatible with a number of different kinds of fans so that you can see one that's empty very very easy to clean as well because it comes off even with one end and the other hand trying to hold a camera steady