Gadgetory

this thing is huge it's here it is the first of its kind in North America this is the fractal design define excel so this is as you may or may not be able to guess an extra-large version of the define which is on its third revision so you can buy a define r3 or a define Excel so let's go through the bullet points on the front really quick here obviously you can read them if you so desire but here's one of the big highlights boom 10 internal 3 to 1/2 inch hard drives that's huge that's awesome you've got noise absorbing material just like the define r3 thermal chamber design we've come to expect there mod you vent technology which I'll show you when we open up the case as well as an optimal airflow cooling system so to front so included you have 140 140 millimeter fan one top 180 millimeter fan and one rear 140 millimeter fan you can check out what you can get that is not included to add to the case over here on the other side we see all of these supported motherboard sizes which is pretty much everything although you'd have to be on something pretty good to put a mini ITX board in a case this size it would be like this paint so don't do that and I'm gonna just open up the box and we will continue shortly now the reason I chose this one out of all the ones in our warehouse to unbox is that it wasn't labeled with a color so I figured if we unbox it then we'll also find out what color it is it comes in two colors black and titanium gray it also comes with a user's manual which is pretty basic but if you've installed a PC in a case before you to be able to figure it out reasonably well so there's the packing material it's a cardboard reinforced with pasta well not really reinforced it's styrofoam reinforced with cardboard for some puncture resistance as well as some rigidity and hardware's pretty good like a dual wall alright so let's get the case out of its plastic sheath and find out what we've got going on in here this is a very large case they weren't kidding when they called it the XL because it's not gum but it's really big here we go use me for scale next to it here so you can see a person is quite small compared to the defining right and we can see that this is the titanium gray version of the defined XL so the black one would be a little bit darker would be more like finish on the rest of the case although you would still have that brushed look to the front of it just like the r3 we've got most of our business stuff up at the very top of the case that means you got your microphone and headphones eSATA four USB 2.0 ports as well as your power switch once you open up the door you will find some noise isolating as well as I assume dust trapping no it couldn't because there no the intakes are here so some noise isolating foam you've got four or five different space which come off quite easily as you can see all you do is remove the little tab and then you can also put me back into kind of need actually and then behind this one look at that you've got room to mount a 120 millimeter fan so because most people only install one five and a quarter inch device that makes a lot of sense so you can put up to three 100 and these look like 140 and then this looks like a 123 fans in the front you can see the one has been included and I think that pretty much does it from the front so the intakes as I mentioned see you've got dust filters right over the fence the intakes are actually all along the side so when you've actually you've closed the front of the case that's where those fans are gonna get their airflow from all right let's take actually here we'll look at the back while we take off the thumbscrews here no no but look at the side first wait Maude you meant I promised I talked about this this is a monument you see how you can't see through it well that's why it's my event because right now they've got a piece of their noise-isolating material screwed in so you just remove that you mount a 140 millimeter or a 120 millimeter fan there and boom now you've got air flow instead of noise isolation so that's what makes it Maude you go ahead and pull off the side panel here I hope I can figure out how the mechanism works for the side panel on camera because sometimes I have trouble with those okay there we go it came off well there's our noise dampening stuff it's quite a bit thicker than what I've seen on the define r2 although I haven't seen an r3 in person but there you go that's how you remove it go ahead Wow the panels are quite quite heavy they are steel panels and they do have the the noise dampening material on them you can see they're quite sturdy and we better take a break I got them home and here we are on the inside of the case so the first thing we're gonna do this is our accessory so this is giving us a little inventory here of everything that's included I guess that's why that information was not in the manual we've also got a fan controller of five and a quarter to three and a half inch bezel in case you want to install a floppy drive or a media card reader as well as some cable ties very nice Thank You fractal and then what else do we have in here here's all of our front panel connectors which should be pretty much run-of-the-mill I think because we saw everything that was at the front oh this is nice they look all of the switches are individually sleeved just like that so they're all going to be nice and black inside your case you won't be able to see them against the black interior we've got HD audio as well as its AC 97 to USB as well as our east side of plug so that's all taken care of and then here is be nicely sleeve look at that high-quality sleeving you can't see the color of the wires at all behind it so you've got your nice lace leaf three pin connector for your front end here are the ten three and a half inch drive base so these come on little sleds you can install a three and a half inch or a two and a half device on here quite easily so this case is entirely SSD ready you can install 10 SSDs out of the box the other six are down here now as a water cooling enthusiast the first thing I think when I look down here is actually that it probably wouldn't be that hard to remove the rivets from these bottom cages and amount to radiator down there so that would be an interesting project for a power supply we've got four little rubber mounts so any power supply whether you've got bottom cooling top cooling however you want to mount it we'll be able to get adequate air flow although what I would recommend is mounting it with the fan on the bottom so that it can pull air up its own dedicated cool air through the dust filter here which can be pulled out to clean just like that and yeah so it can sit on the noise-isolating rubber melts and what else do we have inside so here this is what what is this this is interesting we've got another mock event here although I'm not 100% sure what it's for oh okay well you can take out this square piece and that gives you full access to the power supply there's my other side panel which I had unscrewed helpfully for myself just in case I wanted to take it off for you guys and then most of the cables are actually going to go up through here so we've got a little rubber grommet you can see the quality of the silicone they're using here is very high so you're not going to be putting things through it and then pulling them up and have it stay in place nope you're going to be able to push these around and they'll go right back where they belong and then you can yeah so most of the cables will go up that way where they're gonna come out is a whole other ball of wax so we'll look at that when we get around to the other side of the case here's that 180 millimeter fan that's going to be cooling your MOSFETs as well as drawing any hot air away from your CPU socket area speaking of the CPU socket you have a removable cover so that you can access the back of the motherboard and install aftermarket CPU coolers without taking the motherboard out here's another one 40 millimeter fan here in the back just like the one in the front we've got seven expansion slots so that means you're gonna fit standard ATX micro ATX extended ATX but none of those weird excel ATX type we've got one extra PCI slot here just in case you've got a cold cathode kid or a fan controller or something that you want to dedicate a PCI slot in the back to but you don't want to take up room to install things on your motherboard just go ahead and mount that right there here's all of our rubber grommets all on the side and up along the top so we can do SATA we can do power we can do 24 pin we can do 8 pin and that's all going to come up and a nice convenient location along there five and a quarter inch is all fairly straightforward here we can actually oh yeah there's the five and a quarter inch to three and a half inch adapter is actually mounted in there by default so you can just remove that or you could leave it in and you could install the adapter for the front panel that they include in the accessory box if you look at the back of the case yet I don't think we looked at the back of the case yet so there's the fan there's some venting there's more venting along the side panel there's two holes for water pooling although those are pretty small you probably only be able to get about 3/8 inch tubing through there the power supply mount is right here and then you got some air venting there so fairly straightforward very clean that's what fractal is becoming known for is the designs are just clean everything has a purpose and there you go there's how you access the CPU stuff you look at that it stays long too so you can just put that back up there it's got a little thumb screw no problem now you do have adequate room behind the motherboard train about cables that's been one of my biggest complaints about some of the cases I've seen that have you know little holes to route cables but they actually don't have enough space back here to do it so the side panel is way out here which means you've got like a good inch of space behind that motherboard trade about 24 pin ATX connectors or whatever it is that you need to route behind the motherboard now there's the reset switch there's that front 140 millimeter fan I think that pretty much covers everything I wanted to say about the define XL paint finish actually on the parts that are not the front looks quite adequate it's going to be quite fingerprint resistant it's not the best I've ever seen but the value in this case for the features that it comes with is just outstanding you get the black interior actually I'm pretty impressed so far I haven't seen this one in person yet I'd only seen it in photos and it looks really good it looks like they've got another winner on their hands thank you for checking out my unboxing of the define Excel from fractal design and don't forget to subscribe to - tech tips