Gadgetory

excellent what's up guys welcome back to Pauls hardware today's video is going to be a quick review and a quick build in this new case from fractal design the define mini see this is a micro ATX case and at first glance you might think well that looks exactly like the define s or the define r5 so exterior yeah you probably get that but interior fractal has done some updates they've made some changes that I actually really like they've included like a shroud now for the power supply and that kind of thing in this case at least in this size is going to be selling for $79.99 US dollars for the windowed version here and there's also a non windowed version that has sound dampening material as this entire case does throughout that's coming in at $74.99 now you might have noticed that I already built the system in here so why do we jump back to last night for a quick rundown of the new features so I took a first look at the define mini C and I thought wow it's a define s or may define our v just a micro ATX version which would be pretty cool in and of itself but there's actually some updates that they've done that are quite nice I have to take the side panels off to see that first though but just to round out features steel construction plexi side panel two USB 3.0 on the front mic and headphone a plastic faux brushed aluminum cover right up there in the front and I've already loosened these thumb screws captured thumb screws by the way ammaji vent pan along the top that you can pop off if you want to add like an exhaust there or radiator support it can support a 240 millimeter rat up front does come with a sorry kind of blown out magnetic dust filter that you can pop on up there which means you have dust filters for pretty much everywhere top front has a removable one I'll show you in a sec as well as the bottom one that you can pop off down here I can get a hold of it like so voila and that covers the entire bottom of the case going all the way back to the power supply finally on the outside there's a removable panel here for the power supply or like a power supply bracket you can remove with thumb screws so you can flip it if you want that's possible that's not good don't worry it survived okay so the biggest changes here is probably going to be this lovely bottom area here that's kind of blocked off a power supply cage or cover or whatever you might want to call it there's a little bit of detail there in the fractal logo the touch x-gen to the side and there is some ventilation on top of that too which is pretty nice it does mean that you could put your power supply fan up I guess if you really wanted to miss the airflow worked out other than that a pretty standard lay out interior for micro ATX build 120 millimeter fan at the back and 120 millimeter fan included at the front back does have a little slighty points right there so you can slide that up and down if you want to and then on the front you actually do have support or a few different radiator types actually what you can do is remove this panel just this part of this cage and that's actually really cool that it's fans a lot gives you full access to the front area for mounting of radiators of fans so you might have already noticed grommeted covers for all your pastures for cables and then for drive mounts you have a three SSD mount here which you can remove so you have to remove the whole thing to mount the SSDs from the other side with screws but you can't fit three there all next to each other I don't know if that's going to cause any like extra heat for since it's going to be right behind where your CPU would be but it seems at least like a good use of space also lots of cable type tie-down points back here and then this sort of channel where most of your cables are going to run as you bring them up here for like a 24 pin and cables for graphics cards you do have to drive mounts down here at the very bottom on little cages with the whites accents as fractal is known for and then you know rubber feet for the power supply mount and that kind of thing I popped off the front panel so we can get at this last dust filter it's not meant to be removed with one hand huh hold on okay I got it alright so that shows the mounting area here at the front where you can do it looks like and again I haven't read the manual or any of the documents so maybe I'll correct myself later on but it looks like I can do 360 or even at least - bye bye - bye bye 140 here so um that's a 280 yeah it looks like maybe a 360 or a 280 good fit here because even though at the bottom here you don't really have much intake for those those hard drives which is actually my one concern about this case its airflow for the hard drives you can push that cage over it is on Rails so you can slide it this way depending on how large your power supply is over here and possibly give yourself room to keep that cage there and have like radiators and fans mounted up here at the front if you remove this piece right here which just has a couple screws right there that you can pop out to remove it and again that gives you I guess a little bit more airflow from the top to the bottom as well as again space right there for vertical stuff like radiators and fans although I will point out that when you put fans on this side of this panel you do lose the ability to use this dust filter alright so the system on the left there is my htpc it's in a fractal node 805 and I know 804 I'm sorry and I'm going to transfer that system into the define mini C for a few reasons mainly I want to clean it and it's very dusty also I think I should get rid of the stock heatsink fan you so thankfully I was able to clean all the dust out of the HDTV see build that stays on like 24/7 which is why it was so freakin dusty in there however I would like to point out that I have a couple items in this system that don't run the fans for instance the power supply down here it's a big overkill I will admit for the system in RM 850 i from corsair fan doesn't spin up unless it uses a more juice and that fan I don't think was running at all because there was no dust on the filter down there also the zotac video card won't spin the fan of unless it's being used so that's cool too but you know what I haven't actually done yet is turn this this darn thing on so I'm gonna remove the side panel here and hope that nothing goes terribly wrong and flip the switch and hit the power button I flip the switch the wrong way oh there it goes I don't know why I don't know why I had to hit the switch twice so it works cool and honestly the thing that I can hear the most right now is the mechanical hard drive down there in the bottom but it is an 8 terabyte drive so I don't think that's going anywhere anytime soon other than that this thing's really quiet fans are just not spinning up of course I have no idea what's going on in the background and this system is booting into Windows 7 right now but let's talk about some of the things I liked about this case like the design updates for sure like the shroud down here at the bottom that gives you a lot more flexibility with different power supplies you might be able to purchase you go with a really budget power supply get 80 plus bronze and get a decent manufacturer of course always and then even if you have ugly cabling down there you can get some extensions or something to make things look prettier here up top speak of things looking pretty since this is an HTTP see I wasn't really going for the whole aesthetic thing overall but still doesn't look too bad I did try to keep the cable management as tight as I could and I will say that just like the defined nan OS the grommet position for these pass throughs here for the cable management position are really well placed very easy to get to and I was able to just kind of poke the the cables out there and plug them in where they were necessary and everything everything worked out just fine I also like the fractal has now given you dust filters for pretty much everywhere on the case except the exhaust right back here but that typically wouldn't need a dust filter it has been lacking the top dust filter and it's magnetized and everything you would want to take it out of the plastic bag before you actually use it but that will keep dust that you know that'll that will make it much easier though to clean off dust that might fall down on top of your case if you remove that module bent top cover and put a radiator or something like that in there other than that what else do I like I like the side window I like the little fractal design etching here a little bit of branding there but it doesn't stand out too bad and then I like micro ATX in general and I thought this was a good example of a system to put in this case simply because I'm taking advantage of some of the expansion that's available so whereas what's mini ITX build you could only do like a graphics card I also have my seat and infinite TV capture card down there which I use to get over-the-air well not over-the-air cable broadcasts which are all recorded to a terabyte drive and this has been a very effective HTPC for me for a little while so I'm happy to continue using it in its present state now other were a couple cons that I noticed that going through the build one and this is purely for my purposes of using this as an HTP see a windowed side panel probably wouldn't have been the best choice I probably if I was really using this for an HTTP see build would have gone for the solid side panel it has a little bit more sound dampening on there although again it's really quiet the other thing it's kind of missing and this is again very specifically for an HTTP see I realized after I put the build together is I don't have my blu-ray drive in there anymore the note 804 has a tucked away little blu-ray drive thing that's in the front that's kind of speculating maybe I could hack the front of this case up somehow and still put that blu-ray drive in there to get that I don't know we'll see we'll see that's maybe a possibility the other thing and this was probably my most legitimate complaint although I haven't had the chance to test it is that you've got to drive cages down here right at the front they're kind of enclosed by that shroud and there's no direct fan blowing air across them so if I was really stacking like a couple 3.5 inch drives in there I would be a little bit concerned I want to keep an eye on their temperatures simply because they aren't getting active airflow and if your power supply is back here there's really nothing pushing air through there and then that's also where a lot of the cable management happens so just try to keep things clear down there I guess is what I would be saying especially if you're using some mechanical drives that might get warm because mechanical drives can get pretty stinking warm the last complaint I can think of and this is really kind of reaching but I was comparing this to like what NVIDIA has been doing with their reference design or Founders edition graphics cards for a while they've kind of stuck with a very similar design for them and that fractals has been doing the same thing now granted it served them pretty well and if you go back from like the define like the r4 and r5 up to the define asks and other variations that they've made on it it's obviously an appealing design because it is scandinavian minimalism and all that good stuff but I would say that it'd be nice to see frak what kind of branch out a little bit maybe maybe do something a little bit more dangerous or something a little bit more out there granted everyone would probably hate it but you know it would at least be something different anyway the good things though are the radiator support I love that you can fit a 240 in the top as well as up to a 360 in the front or a 280 in the front I really liked that they added that extra panel here you can remove from the power supply shot so you can still access those front areas while still giving you access to the drive bays down there and the ability to ship those so you could even have the drive bays and radiator I will say if you're considering really packing out this lower section down here get a small power supply the silverstone power supply that I used on the my wife's build the hot box build is very short it's only 140 hundred 50 millimeters long I think that will give you a lot more room down here especially if you're planning on putting radiators and fans up in the front that will push that cage back or if you're not going to use that cage you've got three SSD mounts up there at the back too so you know you could completely go without that cage as well and I'm imagining that there's going to be people doing water-cooled systems in here whether remove that panel put the rads up front and maybe have like a reservoir sticking up out of there something like that who knows the possibilities are endless but guys it's gonna wrap it up for this video once again this has been the fractal design define mini C I'm told this is also going to be available in different sizes so I recommend going to Kyle's channel as well as the other tech youtubers cuz I have a feeling there might be a few other people with videos out on the different variations of this case the fractal is launching right now just in that time for the holidays at 80 dollars and 75 dollars respectively again at least for this model hit the thumbs up button if you enjoyed this video leave comments in the comment section let me know what you want to comment about also links down there to my store where you can buy shirts and mugs pint glasses also some new winter gear down there so check it out right now thanks for watching guys and we'll see you next time yeah it works just like it did before sweet okay I have one more complaint about this case fractal if you're listening make the LED white please light LED and of against blue but white just matches a lot better