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FRONTPAGE Fractal Design Define R5 Case Review

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Another excellent write-up Ed. Fractal Designs have been building great products for a while now and the R5 seems to be no exception.

I'll add it to the sticky right away.
 
It seem they did a good job improving over the R4 without ruining the good parts like I've seen many times before.
 
It seem they did a good job improving over the R4 without ruining the good parts like I've seen many times before.
Clearly, it's evolution in action.

Has anyone seen a removable 5.25" bay on another case?
 
Clearly, it's evolution in action.

Has anyone seen a removable 5.25" bay on another case?

No, that's pretty awesome. As water gets more popular and ODD are less needed we'll start seeing a lot more of this.
 
i just got my rig moved into a define r5 tonight and it's really nice. i thought the cooling would be worse than my arc midi but it's a ton better. i have all of the top covers installed for quiet and 3 140mm fans pushing in from the front and bottom with one 140mm rear exhaust and one 140mm in the side panel exhausting out. i can't believe the door actually fit with the fan installed with that big thermalright 140mm tower cooler in there but it just barely made it. the temp in heaven on my 980 ti amp extreme is 9-10 c lower with this setup than with the arc midi. it's got to be the side exhaust. also worth mentioning is the fact that my card just barely squeezed in without having to remove the hd cage. very nice to work in. i'm still deciding whether i believe in the "silent" aspect since the door seems to be resonating. this seems to be a thing with fractal for some reason. i'll have to find a way to dampen vibrations even more. still totally worth it just for the temps and the room.

EDIT: Sorry for the disinformation my testing was flawed. i was running heaven and prime 95 at the same time for maximum heat but for some reason this causes gpu utilization to drop to 14% hence the super low temps. if i test the same way as with my other case with just heaven by itself and all case fans spinning slow i do still get an improvement. gpu temp is a couple degrees lower and the gpu fan speed is spinning about 15-20% slower. if i force it to 80% it dros another 5c. that's the speed it was leaning towards in the old case on auto. the sound dampening helps a little but i can still hear stuff.

EDIT 2: If anyone else has problems with side panel fan vibrations check these out. They seem to work. http://www.coolerguys.com/840556026...nnelid=FROOG&gclid=CI-Xp4HZqMcCFUVlfgodyd4Gdw

EDIT:3 After owning it for a week i can honestly say this is the closest a case has come to perfection for me. With the exact configuration I have it in, all of the incoming air is filtered, it gets plenty of flow, and the problem of aftermarket video card coolers dumping heat into the case is finally solved. Every other case I've liked either had no side fan or it was over the cpu/too high on the door and too close to also fit with a tower cooler. If anyone else gets it I recommend leaving the top panels on and just having the front and bottom fans push in while the rear and side fans blow out. Having the side fan hole open does let out a little noise but this is countered by the cards fan spinning slower because of the extra cooling. The heat from card just flies out instead of swirling around and getting recycled by the card again and by the cpu cooler above it. The amount of room inside is ridiculous and everything just makes sense. I give it a 9/10 because true 10's don't exist. Very happy. Just remember you can't use an extended atx board. This seems to be the only flaw but i couldn't care less.
 
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