Gadgetory

welcome to my boxing at the fractal design define mini-computer case once again this is a belated unboxing I probably should have done it quite a while ago but here I am doing it now so this is interesting yeah stop before returning any product please contact fractal design most issues can be quickly and easily solved to our North American support team neat really easy to contact support they just put like an actual phone number on there oh there huh their phone number is pretty awesome eight five five I go frac frac nice ah so anyway let's go ahead and open this baby up this is the little brother of the define r3 have a revision R and a number after it because this is the first mini version that they did there was no mini version of the define R - oh it has a few of the features of its bigger brother including Maju vents which basically means that you have the option on the yeah hockey material there you go I never do miss it so there it is try not to break too many things here while I quickly get a case out of a box which is more challenging than you guys would think there we go so mug events which gives you the option of either having maximum silence so you can see they're covered right now or you can remove the covers and have maximum cooling with a 120 or 140 millimeter fan installed in the side panel over the graphics card or a 120 oh and a 120 or 140 millimeter fan installed in the top above the CPU so in terms of the default cooling options they are fairly straightforward there's your manual at him dual 120 s in the front just like its older brother it comes with 1 by default and then you can add another one right there sound dampening foam on the inside of the front panel cover two five and a quarter inch base these are very easy to remove nice one of which is compatible with a three and a half inch device should you require one in this day and age I can't I gots a card reader would be a legitimate reason to have a three and a half inch made device other than that I can't really think of a good reason not these are actually a little bit tricky to get back in there we go okay fixed um what else was there on the front oh yeah this is cool so these are these are filtered fans I did forget to mention that also the reset button has been located here the original define r2 didn't have a reset button at all I think this is a brilliant addition because it's really hard to hit by accident but at least you have one in the event that you do need one here on the top of the case we've got our microphone and headphone jacks we've got our power button with a blue ring around it indicating that the system is on as well as a blue LED right here in the front two USB 2.0 ports one USB 3.0 port so yes this is a USB 3 ready case the finish of the case is actually slightly different from the define our 3s that I've seen so uh yeah it's more of them it's more of a matte finish it looks really good actually hey gum slick got a close-up good work slick okay we've got a 120 millimeter cooling fan in the back io ports four PCI slots this stands to reason it is a micro ATX case but you've also got an auxilary one which you can use for like a fan speed controller or something like that we've got foam padding around the bottom mounted power supply as well as filtered intakes on the bottom so there are up to two 120 millimeter fans whoops including there we go the one that goes on your power supply that you can use down there so let's go ahead and get the side panels off I'll be back in this moment so we've taken the side panel off you can see the inner workings of mod you vent that is the noise dampening material on the entire panel and then the noise dampening material on a square of plastic that goes on the part of the panel that you remove so there you go mod you vent is a very simple technology one that honestly someone probably should have thought of before fractal but did not that seems to be the secret to success doesn't it so there's the noise dampening material on that side think of something that you know should be obvious but no one else and do it first and then you win so anyway let's keep on now actually okay I made that sound a lot simpler than it is it's hard to do that so let's go ahead and have a look at the internals here so pretty straightforward case if you've seen a define our three before we've got all of our cable management and the expected places so there's your bottom mounted power supply there's your huge cable management hole for where the bulk of the cables are going to go through then you have smaller ones positioned for bottom front panel connectors video cards anything up here like drives for example any other connectors at the top of the board your 8 pin power connector all positioned sensibly we've got a medium sized CPU cut out it's not as big as I maybe would have liked to see but I can see what they're doing here with these bends in the motherboard tray they're actually reinforcing it making it stronger in spite of the cutout and I mean most micro ATX boards the CPUs within a ferry fairly narrow range because all of this is your PCI slots and then the board only goes from here to here so there's not a whole lot of variants in terms of hard drive mounting options we've got six either three and a half inch or two and a half inch drive sled so you can see the three and a half inch ones have rubber grommets and the two and a half inch ones do not because most of the two and a half inch drives you'd mount in a case like this are going to be SSDs and you're not too worried about vibration with those because we don't have any moving parts fractal design accessories boss let's have a look shall we actually no I'll save that for later I'll take all the stuff out now just to tell you what the devil interesting nope nope don't look at it closely we're just taunting them right now only taunting haha you can't see the doll anymore alright internal connectors we've got our front USB - we've got our front panel HD audio or PC 97 audio they go - just our AC 97 rather they gotta just stop including that front panel headers for your power switch your power LED all that good stuff USB 3.0 front panel header so yes this is using an internal header rather than a pass-through and check this out you can actually remove now I'm not actually going to do it I don't think but you can remove this entire cage so if you want to install a super long graphics card in here and have it be directly cooled by the fan at the front and then use this siphon as an exhaust you can install a beastly graphics card set up inside this case in spite of its small size so that's a very cool thing as well oh hey it's something I didn't show you guys because I keep thinking in terms of like you've probably already seen a define our three but maybe you haven't so where those front fans actually get their airflow from is right here so there's our vents along both sides and we're going to go ahead and switch over to the backside of the case vents along both sides so when you close this door they aren't actually starved they are getting plenty of airflow which is good because fans need that all right the back of the case probably just barely enough space to squeeze a 24-pin back there I wouldn't call it ample room for cable management but they were going for small size here and it's already not that much smaller than a fine r3 but it is smaller so if you have a cabinet you want to stick it in or something like that you're not probably about this much off of the size of I define our three by going with the define mini in terms of cable management at the back besides the the ones sort of small niggle about the room there's also the fact that it is very easy with all the included cable management loops to at least keep your cables lying flat which is one of my big complaints you got to either have a ton of room at the back of the motherboard tray or you have to have really smart cable management so that you can keep the cables flat because if you don't have the cable management they end up when you go to close a side panel they're all sticking out like this and they cross over on each other then you end up with that bulge on the side panel but here we've got them positioned all over the place here here here here here here here here here and here so you should be able to get them nice and flat fan cable so only two included fans here one in the front one 20ml one in the back one honey melt should be fine for most systems unless you're building something really high-performance in here and I think that pretty much covers it as far as the internals go there was that 120mm fan mount that I talked about before when I accidentally pulled out the filter incorrectly there we go now it's in properly cool okay let's show you the fix all I never showed the finish and panel cry alone okay there you go brush finish on the front panel beautiful as we've come to expect from fractal design and then the accessories so here is our five and a quarter to three and a half inch front panel adapter you can put that in there if you want to install your card reader a couple reusable cable ties however these work sure they work some way there we go and you can anchor these and tie it into the case really neat two of those you've also got all the screws that you need for everything including it including a Phillips head ziplock bag that isn't sealed um oops including a Phillips head so it looks like you have pretty much everything you need to install your computer if you don't mind using like a ghetto screwdriver like that interesting um motherboard standoffs and it included fan controller that controls up to three fans hence the reason for them putting in this spot right here which is just suitable for a fan controller that has a nice long fan control knob on it imagine that being designed exactly for fractals on product too often you see companies come out with products that clearly don't work together in spite of the fact that they make both of them so there you go that is pretty much it for the define mini don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech touch from unboxings reviews another computer for you