Gadgetory

excellent what's up guys how's it going welcome back to Pauls hardware today's video is very special because I have the fractal define r6 it is one better than to define r5 and it maintains their pirate-themed which kind of confuses me but anyway they also have some add-ons and accessories that go with it so I will be opening this mysterious package as well as this mysterious package I'm going to do a build in this system or in this case today and I'll give you guys a feedback review on the build process so ease of building and also of course I will go over the features for you since I have done a lot of work with the define r5 like in my epic water-cooled system back there in the backgrounds I'm going to be comparing it to that for the most part but that's enough for an intro let's get this thing out of the box I got the white one Wow yeah that's it yeah you should do you should zoom in on that a little all right first impression this is the Maggio event version 3 I believe they've been using mod you Benson the idea is that the module pet pops off and you can you can replace it with a mesh pet part doesn't seem to be curing itself quite oh okay I'll probably need to get internal here and see if there's something blocking it hey I gotta get inside here so tempered glass side panel all one piece of tempered glass and not held on with any screws just supposed to snap in there and pop off and again oh oh oh yeah oh good job rectal all right I like this basically they put a metal frame inside the tempered glass so very similar to the mod that I did not exactly similar but you have the metal frame that goes around the outside so it sticks on a little bit more traditionally there is a catch point right here at the back that it will snap this little nub right here into but oh end at the bottom rather than that you just got to kind of put that piece in snaps on that's beautiful I love it and then if you want to secure it I got a couple thumb screws also gives you an edge to hold it by so you don't get fingerprints all over the tempered glass opposite side panel very very similar in construction sturdiness as well as feels nice and quiet cuz you got a big rubber pad there to do some sound dampening yeah seems like they're sticking with the traditional fractal builds quality there as far as a nice thick steel and little just just the tiniest bit of flex not bad at all that's what it is yeah all right now we need to correct that I'm an idiot but come around to the other side it's not the side to fill through bed okay I figured out how the the module event three works up here and just to clarify the little piece popping up was more probably just happened in shipping there's a button back here actually decently substantially sized button and that's what wha actually locks it into place so little tabs right there slide in and then pushing the button and it should pop down now it's now it's staying now it's stand just like it should and if I push the button here pops up and we can remove it and again metal on top and then I got some plastic reinforcement going on just underneath that and if you want to just have the dust filtration you remove the middle by an easy process that I haven't figured out yet ah-ha-ha-ha-ha good timing Joe had the double check the manual just because I didn't want to force anything here without knowing what how it was supposed to work but let's just start on this edge and you can pop off metal piece ever so gently there we go now one thing I'm gonna say that I'm already noticing with this piece is that there is absolutely a very thin spot right in the middle which has already tried to bend on me a couple times so it's not terrible by any stretch this is just pretty much an aesthetic cover for the top and it'll block some noise as well because there is more sound dampening on there just bear in mind where these little cutouts right here it's tried to bend they're on me a couple times so especially when removing it from this piece just try not to put too much flex on that part of it nice peel sexy peel I found that very appealing was that appeal of thunder all right I've been able to give a quick once-over of some of the features and everything here so I think I'm ready to share some of that with you I wanted to start off with some of the stuff that has kind of carried over from the defined series leading up until now one is that there's dust filtration everywhere so other than the rear exhaust which is an exhaust so typically wouldn't need dust filtration so right up here at the front there's a full-length dust filter and the door by the way is also reversible they're maintaining that as well from the define are five so there's latches on the other side you can remove it if you want it to open the other direction and then right down here at the bottom you can reach in and pull out a full length filter and that covers the entire bottom of the case so it's going to keep dust from intake fans you might have down here at the bottom there's also a room for up to a two hundred and eighty millimeter radiator down there up at the bottom so if you put that if you're setting this up for water cooling you can do that as well also it's going to cover your power supply intake fan too so that is pretty nice also inside the front door right here there is another desk filter and this one does also have some slats on it and that is just to redirect some of the noise so behind that you can see the front fan mounts and it does come with three fractal design 140 millimeter fans there's double check in the manual I realized that another part of this top mod you vent cover once removed is that there's a tray underneath it the tray can also be removed and that will it's right now it's got a couple screws that are holding it in place but this of course is modular up to 420 millimeter radiators can fit up and top right there and they put a little space right here for a fill port that's something that I modified and added on to my define r5 so they're really really making this the great equalizer here as briefly distracted but the high end of that dust filter you can see a couple of the included fractal design fans they are fractal design dynamic x2 GP 14 140 millimeter fans they pre-installed 2 as intakes they're in the front and then there's a third hundred forty millimeter exhaust in the back also continuing from the define r5 is the fact that you have five in a quarter-inch Bay up here at the top five and a quarter inch base you know some cases have decided that those just aren't a thing anymore but a lot of people still use them for various things reservoirs fan controllers there's this plenty of good uses for a five and a quarter inch base so nice to have that at the top especially considering that it's very flexible if you decide you don't need it you can pretty much remove the brackets that mount it up and everything and still get access to all that now when you're looking at this case from the frontier just wanted to point out the radiator support once again you can do a 120 a 140 a 240 or 280 down at the bottom front on the front on the front front you can do 120 140 to 40 to 80 or 360 and then across the top you can do 120 140 to 40 to 80 360 are all the way up to 420 to 420 pretty nice now one of the features of this case that I was most impressed with when I first got it out of the box and just started taking it apart was how these side panels go on and basically they're held on with a couple thumb screws like your traditional side panels and then beyond that they just pop off it's got a little nubs at the top and bottom at the back go into a couple clasps here that is not the same mounting mechanism as a define r5 but it is similar and then again I really like that they've gone with a metal frame around this tempered glass piece to give you something to hold on to and make it a bit more substantial I have to imagine it makes the tempered glass a little bit stronger too maybe a little bit more structural integrity I'm assuming that so don't you know I could be wrong what's I fell off though you might notice that this is a little bit longer from front to back than last time and that is to help support the ability to have either a bunch of drives up here in the front or you can remove this panel and more on that what I actually get see removing that in order to allow you to put either a bunch of drives in the configuration that it's in right now and you can maybe see back through there some of the drive caddies that are pre-installed or it can remove that completely and just open this space up to give you a little bit more room for much thicker radiators or potentially a water cooling reservoir or pump that kind of thing now an added feature for the define r6 is the vertical GPU mount they've right here so you got to PCIe slot covers right there and this actually is listed as a two and a half slot it can fit up to two and a half slot graphics cards bear in minds as was them demonstrated by the me tree with some recent testing on hardware connects when you've got the vertically mounted GPU here there's a potential for conflict with air flow I'm not gonna be doing temperature testing today but I highly recommend check in that video out as he does some testing with various cases but it's good to know that they've listed it as a two and a half slots gap here that does potentially mean that there might be a little bit more space between your graphics card and the tempered glass to allow a little bit more air in now you will need a PCIe expansion cable ribbon cable and they have sent me along one of them this has been named the Flex VR c25 basically it's just a little ribbon cable for PCI Express and it's got a rigid mount there at the bottom and that actually has a couple corresponding mounting holes here on the power supply shroud and then of course rest of it would right up there and plug into your motherboard it's actually got a nice bit of sleeving here in the cable with a fractal design logo too so that would look pretty clean this is gonna cost you forty dollars as an add-on upgrade item which i think is reasonable for this because buying a high-quality PCI Express 6 extension cable like this will cost you about 40 bucks anyway and it's good to know that you can get one that is automatically gonna be compatible and will mount to your case and give you a nice mounting point for your graphics card and everything that should be available in January of 2018 now when I was doing the initial unboxing I already kind of showed you guys this top module event three-piece the plastic protective dust filter there as well as the metal piece that can go on top of it I like that they've added this metal piece on top I think it's a lot more classy than a plastic piece covering up there so will give you a nice enclosed feel if you leave that on however you can of course remove the metal that will give you just the airflow through and then there is a radiator bracket up here it's just held on by a couple screws you can pop that out to mount your radiator outside of the case which is very convenient and then again up to 420 millimeter rad support as well as a pre-drilled out fill port which i think is pretty nice too as it's a top of the case is a good place to put a fill porch all right let's slip around here to the back and pop the back panel off yes just like that and this will give you guys a better look at the business end so to speak first off let's quickly pop out one of these little hard drive caddy trays there you go an all-metal tray these will support 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch drives and it's got just a couple little prongs that plug into the end down there and then a single captive thumb screw to actually secure it in place it doesn't look like these have rubber damped rubber mounts on the place where the Caddy meets the drive cage but they do still have little rubber grommets to mount up your 3.5 inch drive to provide a little bit of vibration dampening there if if you do a 3.5 inch drive in there also really nice that if you are configuring a system with I would guess air cooling and lots of drive support there's just tons of these drives in here so they've included six of these drive trays but as you can probably see there's one two three eleven it looks like there's 11 actual Mouse so I'm not sure if fractal is going to be selling these drive trays individually but like if you did a bunch of 2.5 inch SSDs in there something like that there's a lot of different configurations you can do it's also nice as far as positioning goes for 3.5 inch drives which can heat up and what you often want to space out from each other a bit to have them right here right behind the front intake fans and also again just the modular positioning available so you can move those around to best suit your needs depending on where you have the other hardware in the system those are not the only drive mounts though there are two more 2.5 inch drive mounts right here and if you were to set this up in water cooling mode where you remove that front piece and all these trays that does limit you on storage space but comes with a couple of these and you can mount them behind the motherboard tray as they come pre-installed right there or if you have some SSDs that you want to show off there's actually a couple Mining points right here on the power supply shroud as well or so I am told and believe ya just slide them in like that and secure them down with the screw I also want to point out that this has a two-tone color scheme very similar to a lot of fractals cases but this is available in a variety of colors so I have the black and white version as you can see here very very distinct two-tone black and whites with the black brushed metal piece on the front versus the pretty much white everywhere else except for some black accents also available in a gun metal finish and then also available as a black with the white accents that you might be a little bit more familiar with from the define our 5 series or available in a black out version that's all black with black hardware as well so you can get the blackest black fractal case that you have ever wanted beyond that inside you've got these grommets for routing cable management and I kind of like the hex design on those they also seem pretty sturdy and like they're going to stay in place you got them at the top a couple on the sides and then one down here at the back which would be very useful for writing cables up to a graphics card for example and rounding out things here on the back cable management area I do like that fractal has continued to use a fair amounts of pretty smartly physicians tie-down points so you got a couple up here at the top couple down here on the right side and then of course you still have the pre-installed velcro straps for your main business of routing cables up the center area right here and then an add-on that we haven't seen before is this little central fan hub right there so this we get power via a SATA port and then you can route this plug over to your motherboard and that can allow you to have PWM control you actually have three PWM plugs here four PWM controllable fans and then you have six three pin fan connections for standard three-pin fans I guess I've decided to go with the open version of this I really quickly wanted to show you guys how to convert it it looks like it only takes about six screws there's a couple here at the top they do all appear to be your standard Phillips head design there's a couple more here on the front and I did up to remove the front panel just one there over here and then on the bottom these are the rails for the dust filter and a couple gaps get to the two on the buck and then it just Falls it just falls in yeah but hey look we have now removed this panel and now look how much room there is so here's where you can see like massive thick radiators push-pull configurations lots of lots of room to work with up there in the front now and that's how we're gonna leave it for the rest of the build here's a real quick rundown of the parts I'm gonna be installing guys this was supposed to be an 8700 K I can't locate my 87 or K I'm sure it's somewhere but it's an 80 400 K for our intents and purposes for all intents and purposes it's the same thing gotta cool it with a cry rag h7 quad Lumi haven't used that before got an horas Z 370 horas Ultra gaming motherboard this one I've used before for some benchmark testing does fine job I'm just going to stick with this Toshiba TR 200 SSD that I used in the H 400 I build that I did recently as well of course air Dominator platinum 32 gig memory kit and then we've got an EVGA geforce gtx 1070 TI which i have neglected to use yet so i figured this has a bit of bling enos on it and would be a good option for that's vertical GPU mount and finally for a power supply we got the EVGA 650 GQ let's get started click random shout-out for my favorite my favorite tie-down points in this case so far look at that above this is above the IO shield slot right there and I'm trying to just kind of tuck this cable for the fan back up and around so it's not visible look there's a little catch right there okay I'm not focused I need to find manual focus on this didn't really show accessories much but you get a little practical YP cloth you get a little little nut to tighten down your motherboard standoffs always convenient to have that and you have individually packaged screws for mounting the various things and a little collection that's it taste so the basics that you would expect but look extra thumb screws I like that let's do some closing notes and the first thing I want to mention is actually something I haven't mentioned yet which is the front panel IO I am happy that Fraxel has maintained two USB three and two us two USB 2.0 ports actually do like having a couple USB 2.0 ports up there so you can plug in stuff that doesn't need a lot of bandwidth like a mouse or a keyboard really quick I think that's convenient however it is lacking when it comes to the type C connection especially if you want USB 3.1 gen2 that is one of the modifications that I added on to the define r5 I've got back there so I would feel a little weird about it if my old and modified define r5 had better features in this one but if you're not fractal does have a piece that you can order from them again coming in q1 of 2018 basically replaces that entire front panel unit up there it's gonna cost you $30 so it's kind of like I'm kind of on the fence about that it's 30 bucks to add USB type-c 3.1 gen2 which is nice to have but it's 30 bucks I've seen cables itself for like 15 bucks so I don't know that's something that I do feel should have just been included by defaults now pricing on these cases is a hundred and thirty bucks if you're gonna get the non tempered glass version and 150 bucks for the tempered glass version so I do feel like the pricing is pretty fair for the case itself but I wish that type-c connector was included just for the default based price although it is nice it you can upgrade to it and I guess for folks who don't have that connector on their motherboard you do still have the option to go without it I guess now the flat PC a ribbon cable I do feel like was a good choice to make an add-on piece because not everyone is going to want to position their graphics card right here again it's very much a visual thing it might impact the cooling performance of your graphics card I haven't tested that directly in this case so I don't want to say that outright right now but again I'll link to the harbor Canucks video where they did some more testing on that it might potentially depending on where you mount amount stuff in and the front here conflict with one of those SSD mounting points you can fit an SSD in the second mounting point right there so there's some back-and-forth there then you are definitely blocking most of your PCI Express expansion slots so you know it's it's really one of those form over function things or vice versa depending on Honeywell set it up but of course if you don't want to do that just don't buy the ribbon cable install your graphics card normally but I will say at least visually it looks pretty nice having it right here and that pretty much sums up my first impression of the Defiant r6 here I do want to mention also that it supports the ATX motherboards so you can't fit a wider size but their board in there as well it might block a little bit of the pass-through grommets for your cable management's but you know it does support that I want to point out that there's a lot of blank space up here in the front right now so this is a larger case that's made for install installation of more hardware if you compare it for example to the fractal mesh if I see that case I could fit this exact same layout of hardware in and it's so good you know six inches shorter I feel like so saves a little bit more space on your desk however for people who are looking to build a system that has a lot of storage or assistant has a lot of expansion and a lot of area for adding water cooling components I think fractal has done a great job as far as the layouts I like all the radiator support going on everywhere and the only thing I think that we might have to come back to is maybe a second opinion on that all-black front panel piece right there and then also that is completely covering completely blocking the front intake so you do only have the intake via the side vents right here and a little bit at the bottom now I have not tested that directly so we'll have to come back to that in the future but time will tell if that's actually causing any detriment to the front intake and air flow on the case now I happen to know that there are probably a few other youtubers out there who also have made videos on the define r6 so I think I'm gonna hunt some of them down because I believe they might have had the other colors if you guys want to check out the gray or the black or the black with white accents so if I find some reputable youtubers I'll post links to their videos down in the comments all in all I think fractal did a really good job with this case I do think it's a little bit more expensive than it was the last time around but they've added value when it comes to the expandability there's also flexibility making this a very suitable home for a workstation for a gaming PC for or a combination PC editing lots of storage or for an all-out water-cooled build as well but guys that's gonna wrap it up for this video definitely hit the thumbs up button if you enjoyed it and I'll post links to this as soon as I can find it available for sale down in the description below thanks again and we'll see you next time