Fractal Design Define R5 Review

[FunkyFeatures]

Fractal Design Define R5 - What does it have to offer?

 

 

A few features of the case

·         The case support ATX, M-ATX and M-ITX, not E-ATX like the R4

·         Noise dampened side panels, top and front

·         Great water cooling support, 420mm top and 360 in the front if the optical drives are removed

·         Two 5.25” Bays which are removable

·         8 3.5/2.5” Drive positions, 2 2.5” Drive positions behind the motherboard tray.

·         All metal drive sleds, optimized for airflow too

·         Three speed fan controller in front.

·         New ModuVents, 1 on the side panel, and three for the top. No dust filter included for them, and no noise-blocking when taken out.

·         2 Fans included with 9 positions they can be in, 10 if you mount a 360 front radiator

·         CPU Coolers up to 180mm in height

·         PSUs up to 170/190mm with 120/140mm bottom fan installed, longer than 300mm if no fan installed.

·         Graphics card up to 310mm with drive cage, 440mm without the cage.

·         20-35mm space for cables behind the motherboard plate

·         Velcro straps for easier cable management.

·         Front door goes both ways. Done by screws.

·         Left side panel has a quick release feature, but the screws in it doesn’t stay in since they are not needed.

·         Comes in Black, Titanium and White, Titanium is only the front, the rest is black.

·         Right side panel has thumbscrews that stays in, and can’t be lost.

·         Dimensions (WxHxD); 232 x 451 x 521mm

·         Weighs in at 11.2kg

 

Aesthetics

The case is very simple, and some enthusiasts might feel like it’s a bit too simple. I like it, and since I have it under my desk, I won’t need to look at it, and appreciate that it doesn’t have to be wider because of some weird shapes. It does not look that big on the outside, but it is quite roomy on the inside.

 

Side panels

The side panels are, well, simple and minimalistic. They are very heavy since they are made out of steel. They do not attract that many fingerprints, and the way I’ve placed it, you don’t see the few fingerprints there are. The side panels are both covered in noise dampening material which is quite thin, but works fine.

 

The right side panel has threaded thumb screws, so that they won’t fall out, other than that, it is just plain. When all the cables are installed, it was actually quite hard to get the panel on, but I manage to do it, and it doesn’t push too much on the side panel, and it is not visible that it is tight.

 

The left side panel has two thumb screws, they are not threaded and do not stay in. Instead, it has a latching mechanism, so you don’t actually have to use the thumb screws. I find that when I only use the latching mechanism, that the panel wants to fall out a couple of millimeters, and I fix that by putting in the thumb screws. I would have liked to see the thumb screws threaded, but I see the idea of the latches.

The left side panel is not completely plain, and with the non-windowed version, there is a fan mount. To use it, you have to take out the ModuVent completely. That means that noise can escape with no problem unfortunately, and I think that if we are going to compromise there, why not just add another fan mount so we can mount a radiator or something (I know that a radiator might hit the graphics card, but you get the idea I hope). Anyways, it does not include a dust filter, it has support for 120/140mm fan.

 

Front

The R5 has the same style of front as the R4, except that it is not glossy, and it can be opened from both sides if two screws are replaced. But when closing it, you have to slam it, or have to push both on the top and on the bottom half of the front panel, otherwise it will not stay on as it is a bit stiff to get in place. Having it on top of a desk would be easy, but on the floor, I find that I have to actually bend down, or twist my leg in some weird way to close it.

It also has the noise dampening material, again it is thin, but it works. I just wonder, if they doubled the price, and increased the amount of foam, if it would be more silent. I am no engineer, and please let me know if it would do anything with the noise.

Behind the panel, you find a three speed fan controller, which includes three fan connectors, and one SATA-Power connector (thank god it’s not Molex). I would have liked to see it on top, as I open the front way too much just to change the fan speeds. It’s a bit inconvenient, but if it was on top, I also would have liked to see another design. If it was on top, I would probably fear that I would rip it off with my leg one day.

 

There is a nice big dust filter which is supposed to make the front even quieter, but I find that if you don’t close the panel, the dust filter actually makes the noise roomier, and more annoying. I will put up some examples:

#1 Front open, Dust filter on: Roomy noise, quite annoying

#2 Front closed, Dust filter off: Not as roomy, but still annoying roomy-ish noise

#3 Front open, Dust filter off: Not that roomy, but lets out the most noise

#4 Front closed, Dust filter on: Not roomy, not noisy, the best.

Even though #3 is the loudest, it is not overly loud, and annoying noise is way worse than loud noise if you know what I mean.

 

Behind the dust filter, there is one of the two included 140mm fans. It doesn’t push that much air, but at 600 and 800rpm, it is dead silent, while at 1000rpm, it’s audible but not annoying if you have music or something in your ears, even with open headphones.

 

There is two optical drive bays too, but the way they come off, makes the optical drive look slightly out of place, but you don’t notice it with the front cover in place.

 

The HDD led and Power led will be mentioned both here and on the top cover, since it shows both places. I find the blue to be slightly annoying and disturbing while gaming, and a layer of tape helps a slight bit. I would have liked if it was RGB, or if it was red or white instead of blue.

I am still considering pulling off the HDD led wires, since they’re just annoying and don’t mean anything.

 

Bottom

The bottom mainly has a large dust filter, covering everything. It is removable from the front, if you open up the front panel, but I found, that when I lifted the case, I accidently pulled the dust filter off, almost dropped the case with the hardware inside (phew), with the front panel closed. Not trusting that dust filter again I tell you! I might have just been unlucky and put a bit too much force on it though. I won’t blame Fractal for that, probably the way I carried it that was wrong.

 

You can mount up to two 120 or 140mm fans in the bottom, with 190 or 170mm of clearance for the powersupply with the fans installed. The 120mm fans are slotted, so you can move them around a little bit, but the 140mm fans are stuck in one position, as they are limited with clearance. I think it wouldn’t hurt to move the fans slightly closer to the left side panel, as it looks like it’s very close to the motherboard tray when using 140mm fans.

 

To mount both of the 140mm fans, you need to remove one of the hard drive cages, which unscrews from the bottom, and with thumb screws inside. I will say, I needed a wrench and a really strong screwdriver to loosen the screws up, they are really tight, and some of the paint actually scratched off. They should know that I am not Hulk, Superman or some other really strong hero, and that those are not thumb screws the first time we use them.

You still keep one of the hard drive bays though, it just floats hanging onto the front fan mount with its Hulk screws, and on the optical drive bay without screws.

 

The case stands on very nice feet, however, I do think that with a radiator on the bottom, or more fans, that the fans might be starved a tiny bit, especially on carpet.

 

Top

On the top, we first of all find three interesting ModuVents that you have to remove from the inside. You are removing the silence part of it if you remove the ModuVents, and I would have liked to see a top panel like the H440 or the Be Quiet! Silent Base 800, so you don’t completely lose the silence.

There is not a dust filter as well, and I am not even sure that you can buy dust filters that fit the top, as it not only is open where the fan mounts, but also a little bit more towards the right side panel. I am sure I saw a custom dust filter shop, and wouldn’t be surprised if they made dust filters for the R5. I don’t remember what it was called though.

Other than that, the top is solid. Near the front panel, we see the front panel IO, which actually is on top, weird that it is called front panel IO IMO.

I mentioned the power and HDD led earlier, I am not too happy with it, but its fine when you get used to it.

When the ModuVents are removed, you can mount up to 3x120mm fans/radiator or 3x140mm fans/radiator.

 

The power button is really satisfying to click, and when the computer turns off, it makes a slight click noise to kind of say “yup now I’m turned off bro!” Very nice. But the quality of it is slightly worse than it should be, it wiggles a little bit, and if you push it down on the sides, there is a chance of it getting stuck. Still very nice though.

The reset button is a reset button. It works, it’s hard to click, and it has an even more satisfying click than the power button.

The audio jacks are quite stiff, but I never use them, so I can’t talk about the quality of them.

There is two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, both are painted black, but it says with white lines and numbers, that the two on the right are black. They are solid, and easy to plug in. Some USB ports I encounter, are hard to push in, and hard to take out, these are just perfect after the first couple of times.

 

Inside

The case is very roomy inside, and is easy to work with. With an air cooler installed, it will be quite hard to reach big hands to the fan connectors on top, and I regret not connecting the 8pin CPU power before putting the motherboard in the case.

The hard drive cages are not that restrictive compared to other designs, and are still very sturdy. Cooling for hard drives should also be a bit better with improved airflow. As I mentioned earlier, it comes with Hulk tight screws, and you pretty much need a wrench or something else to loosen it up.

The other one of the two fans are mounted in the back by default, however, it is mounted so that the cable actually is closer to the motherboard, not to the grommet. I was too lazy to change it, and decided to just live with it, it doesn’t impact anything but looks, which I don’t have to see since it doesn’t have a window.

The hard drive cages can be removed or relocated. You can either have them on the top, or one of the bays in front of the power supply, which then limits the clearance to 170mm for the powersupply. When the hard drive cage is in front of the powersupply. It also limits the bottom three expansion slots to 170mm.

There are good options for water cooling when you remove the hard drive cages, but if you want to use both the bottom and the top, you have to remove all your 3.5” storage (only if you use all of the top).

 

I feel like they maybe could have a 3.5” mount like ThermalTake has in their core v51 behind the drive cages, so that you are not limited on storage if you decide to watercool.

 

Noise

It is very silent, and with the left side panel right against a desk, it is dead silent. The noise dampening material is very effective, it doesn’t eliminate the noise levels that much, but it eliminates most of the rattling, or other annoying noise.

Of course you can’t use 10000rpm fans and expect silence, but when the build is optimized for silence, the case will do the rest for you, and take the last step towards silent gaming and other workloads.

 

Behind the motherboard

I like that they included Velcro straps for the back, and I like the indentation of the motherboard tray too, but unfortunately it limits it to ATX instead of E-ATX.

Back on track: The SSD mounts are very nice, low profile, and has threaded thumb screws. I found it hard to connect cables to the SSD, but when it was connected, it didn’t seem like there was any strain on the connector.

There are cable management tie points everywhere, but I never used them since most of the cables were just long enough, and were fine by themselves.

 

Now that we are talking about cable management, what the actual fuck Fractal. Running the front panel connectors right over the grommets that are already quite small, is probably the stupidest thing I have ever seen. It made it ten times harder to cable manage the 24pin and the 6+2pins.

Also, the USB 2.0 cable barely reached, and that was when I ran it from the big grommet for the PSU, and right over the PSU. Also, with the 2.5” SSD in its bracket, the SATA-Power from the fan controller barely reached the end of my SATA-Power connector. I feel like they failed miserably there.

The length of the rest of the cables were just fine though, but it was really frustrating to cable manage this.

Also, I didn’t have time to redo the front panel cables, so the 24pin on top of the front panel cables, actually made it hard to close the panel after that.

The only good thing about the cable management was probably that the grommet for the power supply was huge enough to fit everything no problem.

 

The build inside the case

 

I7 4790k @4.4ghz 1.286v

2x4GB Kingston HyperX Fury Red

Maximus VII Ranger

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo

MSI GTX 970 TwinFrozr V

Samsung 840 Evo 250GB

EVGA SuperNova 750 G2

Define R5 

 

It was dead silent as I said, but for some reason my CPU runs 4.4ghz on all cores, which is weird. The CPU gets quite hot, peaks 86-90c when running Aida, and with the side panel off, I get slightly better temps, peaking 83-85 max. That is probably because the fans that came with the case are not that powerful. In the future I will replace them.

The GTX 970 has a little bit of coil whine, but the case takes care of it.

How silent is it? Well, the max fans are about as loud as my hard drive in the laptop next to me, so I would say, extremely silent.

 

Pictures!

 

http://imgur.com/a/8PckF

 

I recommend you watch it in full screen mode, as i accidently put it to 1920x1440, so if you dont watch it that way, it may fuck a little bit up 

 

Conclusion

The Define R5 is a refined R4. It has overall better technology everywhere. Is it worth it to upgrade from a R4? Probably not. Is it worth it to pick this case if you are looking for a good, fairly priced case? Definitely yes.

It is not perfect, as you can see, there are a lot of mediocres and cons. There is definitely room to improve, and I hope it will be a good surprise when and if the R6 comes out, hopefully improving the R5.

 

Pros

·         Can be dead silent if you optimize it properly - my laptop hard drive is making more noise than the chassis fans on max. speed

·         Noise dampened, helps eliminate small annoying noises like minimal coil-whine

·         Is quite cheap, about 80£ where I got it

·         Is very big inside, even though it is small on the outside, fits two graphics cards, a big air cooler, or even fits a custom loop if you want to do so

·         Funny pro: The case is so sturdy, that I actually can rest my legs on top of it, since it is nice and warm near the exhaust

·         Minimalistic design makes it fit in everywhere

·         Nice fan controller

·         High quality, made of mostly steel and some plastic

·         Very modular with drive cages

·         Great water cooling options

·         Huge dust filters removable from the front (both of them)

·         Front can be opened from both sides now

Mediocre

·         Only includes two fans, would have liked to see three, and possibly better fans

·         Power button may sometimes get stuck

·         Front panel audio is quite stiff

·         Some of the cables are a little too short in my opinion, as they barely reach and cannot be routed different ways because of length

·         Some grommets are also barely big enough

·         Thumb screws should be renamed the first time to “Hulk screws” – needs a wrench to take off

·         Would have liked more fan connectors on the fan controller

Cons

·         HDD led/power button led can be distracting because of brightness

·         Prerouted cables are right on top of grommets, basically really shit

·         No support for E-ATX Motherboard, unlike the R4

·         Fans doesn’t push that much air

·         No dust filters when ModuVents have been taken off

·         Will not be silent when the ModuVents have been taken off

 

Let me know what I should/could have done differently, possible things you want to know about the case, or just a thing that needs to be corrected in the review.

There is a lot of mediocre things with this case, and also a lot of cons. I am a first time builder, so some of them may be my fault. Point them out, and I will correct them.

[SuperPug]

Something important you might wanna add: Unlike the R4, the R5 is not compatible with E-ATX mobos. Otherwise i probably would have gotten one.

[FunkyFeatures]

I did not know that! Thanks, will add it now. Should really sort the review though, ten times easier to correct if it has sub-topics.

[Smooth Bunz]

Pictures are always a plus in a review  

[FunkyFeatures]

Pictures are always a plus in a review

Might try and ask my friend to bring his awesome camera over next time we game at my house! Cannot promise anything, but if I can't get him to do it within the next month or so, I will just post pictures taken by a potato!

[FunkyFeatures]

The review has now gone through a big edit, more feedback will be nice Also, let me know what you want to know about something I didn't mention or explain.

[flibberdipper]

Nice review. But you do kinda need pics. Kinda... Boring without them.

[FunkyFeatures]

I might try and do it with a somewhat decent phone camera tomorrow when it gets brighter, the LG Optimus G sucks, especially in low light.

How do I do the pictures in the roll down thing like in your signature?

[Norman_the_Owl]

Something important you might wanna add: Unlike the R4, the R5 is not compatible with E-ATX mobos. Otherwise i probably would have gotten one.

I agree, incredibly disapointing

[SurvivorNVL]

Something important you might wanna add: Unlike the R4, the R5 is not compatible with E-ATX mobos. Otherwise i probably would have gotten one.

 

 

I agree, incredibly disapointing

I would've snagged the R5 if it had E-ATX support and dust filters on the top.  I know -some- EATX fit in it like the Gigabyte G1 Gaming x99, but they're less than EATX, not true EATX.  Kind of odd that there's no dust filter up top as well.  Some people may remove the moduvents and use up top as intake or out-take, but fingers crossed for a Define R5 XL or updated Arc XL.

[Laederem]

Nicely done.

 

You guys are being cunts about there not being pictures. They're all over the internet, look them up if it bothers you that badly. 

[Faa]

Something important you might wanna add: Unlike the R4, the R5 is not compatible with E-ATX mobos. Otherwise i probably would have gotten one.

It does but it will cover a bit of the rubber grommets, case manufacturers don't always list E-ATX in their specs. E-ATX isn't an official spec, it's just ATX that's a few mm's wider.

[SuperPug]

It does but it will cover a bit of the rubber grommets, case manufacturers don't always list E-ATX in their specs. E-ATX isn't an official spec, it's just ATX that's a few mm's wider.

 

 

No it doesn't i even asked support and if you look at the case you can see that the mobo on the r5 sits in a little recess which makes it impossible to fit anything above standard ATX.

[FunkyFeatures]

I've taken 37 pictures, and might remove some of them. I might link to an imgur album instead(or what that picture service is called)

 

What would you rather see, pictures in the thread itself(i'd have to figure out how) or through imgur?

[FunkyFeatures]

Okay: Added pictures!

 

http://imgur.com/a/8PckF

 

I recommend you watch it in full screen mode, as i accidently put it to 1920x1440, so if you dont watch it that way, it may fuck a little bit up

[Horrorfull]

I want the case but i'm to lazy to reinstall all these fans and radiators.

[DildorTheDecent]

Something important you might wanna add: Unlike the R4, the R5 is not compatible with E-ATX mobos. Otherwise i probably would have gotten one.

Officially the R4 didn't take E-ATX. but the massive space between the motherboard tray and front of the case allowed cable to get around.

Boards blocked off the cable grommets just like the R5.

[STRMfrmXMN]

I might try and do it with a somewhat decent phone camera tomorrow when it gets brighter, the LG Optimus G sucks, especially in low light.

How do I do the pictures in the roll down thing like in your signature?

Like a spoiler like this?

 

Words, words, words.

 

EDIT: to get the actual pictures in your post, go to postimage.org, upload your file to them, click the image until you can right click it and copy the image URL. Then go to the little icon that looks like this and enter the URL.

This icon surrounded in red.

[handymanshandle]

I like the design of the Define R5 but in the balance I have the Corsair 780T but eh idk I'm kinda leaning towards the R5.

Quiet and sleek kinda appeals more than unique and curvy design.

[SuperPug]

Officially the R4 didn't take E-ATX. but the massive space between the motherboard tray and front of the case allowed cable to get around.

Boards blocked off the cable grommets just like the R5.

 

Yes but it did fit in the r4.. in the R5 it doesn't fit at all. You cant even install it in there.

[DildorTheDecent]

Yes but it did fit in the r4.. in the R5 it doesn't fit at all. You cant even install it in there.

You can put E-ATX into any mid-tower. It's just that the grommets will get half covered which is annoying.

[FunkyFeatures]

Like a spoiler like this?

 

Words, words, words.

 

EDIT: to get the actual pictures in your post, go to postimage.org, upload your file to them, click the image until you can right click it and copy the image URL. Then go to the little icon that looks like this and enter the URL.

This icon surrounded in red.

Already just decided to do imgur link Thanks though!

[FunkyFeatures]

You can put E-ATX into any mid-tower. It's just that the grommets will get half covered which is annoying.

The motherboard tray has a curve to it, hard to explain but i think i included a picture of it. Motherboards wider than ATX would more than likely not fit, (i am no expert) because the motherboard would be off the standoffs, and not be secure in place.

[DildorTheDecent]

The motherboard tray has a curve to it, hard to explain but i think i included a picture of it. Motherboards wider than ATX would more than likely not fit, (i am no expert) because the motherboard would be off the standoffs, and not be secure in place.

I know what you are on about. The board will fit in the standoffs. The tray will need the curved lip at the end to be straightend out for perfect fitting though.

[SuperPug]

You can put E-ATX into any mid-tower. It's just that the grommets will get half covered which is annoying.

 

FFS dude even Fractal said it doesnt work! ->

 

''Due to the angled portion of the motherboard tray, the largest motherboard form factor that will fit is the ATX.  This design differs from the R4, where the motherboard tray was flat, and if you were willing to sacrifice the cable routing holes, you could mount an EATX motherboard.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

 

Best Regards,

Fractal Support''