Gadgetory

excellent hey what's up guys how's it going welcome to Paul's hardware I first should apologize to you guys because I haven't posted much in the past week or two actually decided to take a little bit of time off right after CES but I'm refreshed and rejuvenated and I'm back with an unboxing and first look this brand new case from fractal design this just arrived on Friday this is the defined nano s mini ITX case comes in at $65 in a non windowed version or $70 for the windowed version I have here it's going to be available in March and I'm just going to take it out of the box give it a first look and show you guys some of the features so after removing everything from the box you can see this is a fractal defined series case so you'll see a lot of these stuff that you might have come to expect it looks very much like a define R 5 redefine s this is a define nano s so it's going more for the define s sort of aesthetic as far as support for water cooling also having a big window not quite as much drive support but again lots of water clean support so looking at it next to the define R 5 that the Arctic Panther is in you can see it is definitely smaller it's about 50% of the volume if you're just considering volume although it is still pretty substantially sized for a mini ITX case this is definitely not an ultra compact it still takes up a good amount of space and it's definitely still wider which actually like because it allows for taller CPU coolers as well as more air cooling support looking at the the case itself and just to give you guys here a quick 360 view of it you can see again a lot of the same kind of construction look aesthetic that you saw from the define r5 the define s of course you have this nice big plexi side window here I've left the plastic on for now so that as I main handling it I reduce the possibility of causing any scratches of that sort of thing there front panel here is again made of plastic but it's got a brushed aluminum look which means it looks pretty cool it also doesn't pick up fingerprints too badly there is a blue LED that's right here at the top front I do still wish the fractal would switch that over to a white LED the blue I don't think matches with the black and white aesthetic of the rest of the case but there you go the front door here also doesn't swing open so bear that in mind there's no five and a quarter inch bays in here so in order to get at the 280 millimeter dust filter that's behind here you actually remove this entire front panel you do have support for air filters or for dust filters so here the front you can remove this entire filter that covers the entire bottom of the case I really like this feature on the definer 5 and the define s makes it super easy to clean although apparently getting it back in there is sometimes a challenge here's a more straight down look at that's a dust filter so again just pulls out just like that and here they've actually used part of the the feet to hold that in which hey it's kind of unique it's got that and a couple of track pieces there to also hold that on covers the entire bottom which means you're going to get a dust filter for your PSU intake as well as anything else you might put up here at the front let's actually flip this around so you guys can see the top again real quick well I'm looking at it so you have a mod you vent panel as frackle calls them right here so you can pop that off if you want to add some exhaust or some additional cooling at the top or leave it on it'll block some noise and keep dust from falling into the case front panel IO right here USB 3.0 a couple of those so you do lose the USB 2.0 that you get on the define r5 and the define s power burn at the top again with blue LED reset button mic and headphone jacks as for actual dimensions it is a wide case again although not quite as wide as the define r5 so it is 203 millimeters wide it's one three point three centimeters that means just over eight inches whereas the define r5 is just over nine inches for height you had about 13 and a half inches tall and metrics that is three hundred and forty four millimeters for thirty four point four centimeters and then as far as depth 412 made it millimeters or forty one point two centimeters weighs four point six kilograms and a twenty six point eight liter case volume let's go ahead and remove these side panels so we can take a look at the inside they do come with captive thumb screws so I already went ahead and loosen those and here's a look at one of the first removable side panels again if you get the non windowed version both of the side panels are going to be just like this it's got that sound dampening material inside that we've all come to know and love with the define s and the different I've defined our five does a great job and also happy to say well this does have a little bit of flex you can tell the fractals still using their heavier gauge steel side panel material for that so makes it nice and sturdy let's remove this side panel to again I have not removed that plastic the covering on the plastic plexi because I'm just paranoid about scratching it I will give you guys a shot of that before the end of this video with everything removed so you can get a look at the entire thing speaking of there's a look at the interior it does come of course with some accessories which are still wired up in here since this is literally my first time opening up and checking out this case here's a look at the included accessories of course get some zip ties this is a pretty common these days fractal has individually wrapped all of your screws so thanks rectal for doing some sorting for us you also get a nice little add-on here which is a three pin fan splitter so a lot of mini ATX motherboards don't have enough fan headers on them since they're tiny so this will allow you to at least if you have a single fan header plug in both of the included fans the 14 millimeter and 140 millimeter and 120 millimeter they also get these two metal strips these are actually meant to mount a pump or a reservoir to the vertical area here in the case so those vertical strips you can mount those metal pieces to and mount yourself up a pump and reservoir okay before I continue on here let's just skip this thing strip down the rest of the way so after moving that Front's dust filter you simply grab underneath here and as is typical with lots of cases give it a Yank and it will rather unceremoniously detach this front panel piece front panel piece again is made pretty much entirely plastic which isn't a big deal it's pretty sturdy plastic more sound dampening foam right there up front so that's nice to have and other than that it's pretty straightforward your air is going to be coming in via the sides here so that's why the front is is actually pretty much solid and then behind this you do have a dust filter so nice that all of the potential intakes on this case are filtered apart from potentially the top although that's usually an exhaust and you'll probably now get a better look at that included 140 millimeter fractal fan so that is definitely nice to have it's a dynamic GP 14 to be specific and then at the back you've got a dynamic GP 1220 millimeter I've used these fans from fractal they're there the more bare-bones versions compared to the venturi series that you can get but they do a great job they stay very quiet and they've got some unique fractal design going on in there so two of those included and then apart from that you also have some pretty fancy features that I have really seen here so well I guess I've seen a little bit first off down here at the bottom it was just pre mounted to the case you have a mount that can fit either a 3.5 inch drive down there at the bottom or it's actually got multiple mounting locations for different types of pumps so D D D D C or D five pumps a lot of the different variations that are available from water cooling manufacturers like ek and Swift Tech and that kind of thing will drop right in there and the manual has a full list of compatibility it's also got this week's continuing drive support you've got a 2.5 inch mountain right here which I've never seen I don't maybe it's been done before but I've never seen it two 2.5 inch drives can mount straight onto this little guy that pops off just like that although you'll probably be using SSDs and then it mounts over your cutout for the CPU backplate so nice that you have that CPU backplate cut out and you have the option to mount drives there as well via this removable thing which again removes with a captured thumb screw so that's pretty nice too you've also got another 3.5 inch mount right here and that pops off like so it's pretty much only going to go in that single position right up there at the top because that's where the mount is for it but that gives you support for up to like two 3.5 inch drives into 2.5 inch drives which for a mini ITX build is very nice you can also get a better look at the vertical slats right here for mounting your pump or reservoir or pump / reservoir again there's just a bunch of those so you can position it wherever best suits your needs depending on what your water cooling setup looks like so all told a pretty nice configuration for water cooling here and then if you can see the side panel right here that's off you can get a better look at the space that you have for cable management which is pretty deep right here and then where the motherboard area is it's a little bit thinner but you still a little bit of space and fractal hose puts a little conduit again here with some velcro ties already wrapped in for your front panel connectors and that kind of thing and I like these kind of caps captive velcro straps of fractal has so you can tuck away some extra cables back here or there's lots of space over here beneath where that's a hard drive would potentially be also flipping around to this side you will notice probably you've got lots of nice grommets here especially on this angle portion when you're looking at radiator support for this you can fit up 280 millimeter radiator up at the front that's pretty sizable and you can do up to 240 at the top although bear in mind that you don't have quite as much vertical space at the top so depending on what motherboard you're using and depending on like your vrm support or like how big the VRMs are or the heatsink you might run into some conflict there so I'm guessing that the front position here is going to be more popular popular for radiators although you can't fit one they at the top just bear in mind your Maya your mileage may vary depending on what motherboard you're using here's a module bent I just popped it off the top again a little bit more sound dampening material on there and then as you can see on the top of the case here which has become much lighter since I've removed a lot of the components the channels here for your well your fans or whatever you might want to mount up there they are slotted so again you'd have a little bit of wiggle room with where you might want to position that but just bear in mind although you can do larger fans so they do have some slots here for perhaps doing 140 millimeter fan or 140 millimeter radiator they are only officially supporting 240 s so it is positioned further away from the motherboard tray just a little bit although again just bear in mind space wise I'm sure as these become available you'll have people saying this motherboard worked this motherboard didn't work my main concern is going to be some of those motherboards from like Asus that has the riser rounding out our look at the internals of what you can fit you'll notice there's two expansion slots here for graphics cards fractal is not recommending anything wider than a two slot card although lengthwise you do have plenty of room up to 315 millimeters long which means you could fit like a tower 90 to 95 X 2 in here if you're really ambitious but that's plenty of room lengthwise for graphics cards but as far as the thickness again stick with two slot cards at minimum or maximum and then here for CPU cooler support if you're going with an air cooler you have up to 160 millimeters of clearance which is going to fit a vast majority of these taller CPU coolers on the market I believe like a hybrid 212 was only 150 five millimeters tall so plenty of air cooling options in there as well if you're going that route you also have support for up to a hundred and sixty millimeter long power supplies so more power supply lengths down there at the bottom and also nice to see that fractal has not skimp out on stuff like providing a little bit of extra foam protection here around the power supply the exit area as well as little rubber feet for the power supply to sit on also I wanted to point out that all of the cabling inside the case here is all black so even your front panel HD audio and front panel on-off connectors there's a little bit of blue on the plug for the USB 3.0 but when plugged in you and see that but very nice the fractal has also kept things very clean inside so even your fan cables and everything else is all blacked out no ketchup and mustard to be seen so there you have it guys a first look an unboxing of the fractal define at Nano s new mini ITX chassis with sort of an emphasis on water cooling possibilities speaking of articling possibilities I need a new water cooling project for this year and I'm strongly considering doing it in the define now s so let me know in the comments down below if you think I should build in this case I'm probably if I do do a build in it gonna do something for my wife she's a fan of the color orange based on these facts let me know what you think I should do with this case what type of build what platform all that good stuff now in the comments below also maybe hit the like button if you enjoyed the video check out my store for shirts like this one as well as mugs and glasses and all that good stuff thank you all so much for watching as always and we'll see you next time you