Thought I'd start a new thread for this, as some people may be interested in what this case is like.
After much deliberation (see this thread) I finally took the plunge for this case, to transfer a matx build from a silverstone FT03B. On that note, this is the first non-silverstone case I have bought in 5 cases (those being TJ07, SG01, SG03, SG04, FT03), and I was not sure what to expect quality wise especially considering what I've read about fractal design cases arriving broken, or with defects.
Excuse some of the poor image quality, did my best under the circumstances. Tissue over the flash was a necessity as well!
Anyway box inspection - relief to see no damage.
Look at this... like gambling on a budget case... Heavy risk, but the priiize.
(I hope at least some of you will get the reference)
Filter for PSU and lower intake fan. Blue mounts are some old ones I had lying around. Note, to soft mount the lower fan these had to be cut because of the thickness out the back:
The FT03, almost like a test bench!
Comparisons.
More FT03.
Board in place.
No sound damping material in the roof apart from the moduvent cover:
GTX 260 (10.5") fits with the hard drive bay in place, although I decided to remove it later anyway.
Lower fan mounted. A bit of a challenge to fit the plugs into the power supply, and they need sharp bending to go around the fan.
From Fractal's manual included with the case:
"The motherboard mounting plate has rubber covered holes in which you can easily route the cables to a compartment behind the motherboard, which has more than ample storage space."
... yeah right.
5mm more would have made life a lot easier; there's just about enough room for the thickness of the 24 pin cable, but folding extension plugs gets difficult.
This pic shows only a few cables and the side panel fits ok now, but later on I have a real hard time trying to squash them flat and get the right side on.
The USB 3 pci-e card and the xonar are going to be problematic for hiding the cables... :/
Excuse the dusty cards!
Front panel hooked up:
Now it gets tricky...
Removed the second hard drive because it was too noisy (caviar black 640). Just the 500GB F3 now, which I may end up bungee modding.
- remember there is the damping material to fit as well!
Well the panel went on. Case in place now.
And another one.
Sealed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today:
Oh look, the FT03!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All in all I definitely feel it was worth it; I like that this case is sealed on the sides, top, and front, and considering it is steel+plastic versus steel+aluminium, I think it looks very good too.
Did you know the upper hard drive cage can be rotated 90* to act as an air guide for the graphics card? Mind you it wouldn't fit like that with the GTX260, so only really useful for 10" cards or below.
Of course, the quality of the FT03 is like most silverstone cases - hard to describe, but it just feels better than the fractal.
However practically, the fractal is far more suitable, with more options of how to do things inside. Having said that, it is considerably heavier than the FT03 - do not buy this to transport around, because I imagine it will be mildly traumatic. Mind you, the FT03 was also not really a portable case, not so much because of the weight, but because of the size and shape of the case.
Minor quality issues with the fractal:
- cloth on the sound damping material was/is peeling off at the edges, but a little glue should fix that
- lower front vent cover door is not a perfect fit - it does not latch cleanly.
- some screws were a little awkward to remove, but no real problems.
Design issues:
- seriously not enough space behind the motherboard to route cables. I don't know why it is so tight - less than 5mm would have made all the difference. As it is, removing and refitting the right side panel requires a lot (really. a LOT
) of effort. Having said that, there is no noticable flex or bowing in the panel which is quite amazing considering how I jammed it on. Seriously, cable management in the SG03 with an H50 cooler was on par with, if not easier than this!
- the 5th expansion slot cover gets in the way of removing the screws for the other 4 expansion slots - the screwdriver is at a slight angle. Manageable though.
Minor annoyances:
- The hard drive mounts are not particularly soft, and don't do a great job of cutting out vibrations (hence me having to remove the caviar black), but it is better than nothing, and better than the vibration against the right side panel in the FT03. In the FT03, the top hard drive would be ok, because there was space between it and the panel, but the lower horizontally mounted drive would touch, and creat a horrible hum, meaning I had to run the case with that panel off most of the time.
- It's not that silent. Granted I need to properly configure the fans - at the moment I have 3 apache blacks on the cpu pwm header - bottom intake, rear exhaust. The front fans aren't hooked up. But what it shows is that you can't indiscriminately chuck in anything you like and expect the case to do the job at silencing; component choice is still crucial. I will change the entire fan setup, which should deal with this issue, and maybe bungee the hard drive or simply use a some 2.5" drives and get rid of 3.5" drives altogether.
- Raised vents on the top and the left side - just looks a bit ugly. I'd rather have them flat like on the R3, but no big deal.
But I really can't complain. For the price this is a great case - a sealed off static piece of furniture for those who like to tinker, but only with minimal components/smaller builds.
I am pleased!
After much deliberation (see this thread) I finally took the plunge for this case, to transfer a matx build from a silverstone FT03B. On that note, this is the first non-silverstone case I have bought in 5 cases (those being TJ07, SG01, SG03, SG04, FT03), and I was not sure what to expect quality wise especially considering what I've read about fractal design cases arriving broken, or with defects.
Excuse some of the poor image quality, did my best under the circumstances. Tissue over the flash was a necessity as well!
Anyway box inspection - relief to see no damage.
Look at this... like gambling on a budget case... Heavy risk, but the priiize.
(I hope at least some of you will get the reference)
Filter for PSU and lower intake fan. Blue mounts are some old ones I had lying around. Note, to soft mount the lower fan these had to be cut because of the thickness out the back:
The FT03, almost like a test bench!
Comparisons.
More FT03.
Board in place.
No sound damping material in the roof apart from the moduvent cover:
GTX 260 (10.5") fits with the hard drive bay in place, although I decided to remove it later anyway.
Lower fan mounted. A bit of a challenge to fit the plugs into the power supply, and they need sharp bending to go around the fan.
From Fractal's manual included with the case:
"The motherboard mounting plate has rubber covered holes in which you can easily route the cables to a compartment behind the motherboard, which has more than ample storage space."
... yeah right.
5mm more would have made life a lot easier; there's just about enough room for the thickness of the 24 pin cable, but folding extension plugs gets difficult.
This pic shows only a few cables and the side panel fits ok now, but later on I have a real hard time trying to squash them flat and get the right side on.
The USB 3 pci-e card and the xonar are going to be problematic for hiding the cables... :/
Excuse the dusty cards!
Front panel hooked up:
Now it gets tricky...
Removed the second hard drive because it was too noisy (caviar black 640). Just the 500GB F3 now, which I may end up bungee modding.
- remember there is the damping material to fit as well!Well the panel went on. Case in place now.
And another one.
Sealed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today:
Oh look, the FT03!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All in all I definitely feel it was worth it; I like that this case is sealed on the sides, top, and front, and considering it is steel+plastic versus steel+aluminium, I think it looks very good too.
Did you know the upper hard drive cage can be rotated 90* to act as an air guide for the graphics card? Mind you it wouldn't fit like that with the GTX260, so only really useful for 10" cards or below.
Of course, the quality of the FT03 is like most silverstone cases - hard to describe, but it just feels better than the fractal.
However practically, the fractal is far more suitable, with more options of how to do things inside. Having said that, it is considerably heavier than the FT03 - do not buy this to transport around, because I imagine it will be mildly traumatic. Mind you, the FT03 was also not really a portable case, not so much because of the weight, but because of the size and shape of the case.
Minor quality issues with the fractal:
- cloth on the sound damping material was/is peeling off at the edges, but a little glue should fix that
- lower front vent cover door is not a perfect fit - it does not latch cleanly.
- some screws were a little awkward to remove, but no real problems.
Design issues:
- seriously not enough space behind the motherboard to route cables. I don't know why it is so tight - less than 5mm would have made all the difference. As it is, removing and refitting the right side panel requires a lot (really. a LOT
) of effort. Having said that, there is no noticable flex or bowing in the panel which is quite amazing considering how I jammed it on. Seriously, cable management in the SG03 with an H50 cooler was on par with, if not easier than this!- the 5th expansion slot cover gets in the way of removing the screws for the other 4 expansion slots - the screwdriver is at a slight angle. Manageable though.
Minor annoyances:
- The hard drive mounts are not particularly soft, and don't do a great job of cutting out vibrations (hence me having to remove the caviar black), but it is better than nothing, and better than the vibration against the right side panel in the FT03. In the FT03, the top hard drive would be ok, because there was space between it and the panel, but the lower horizontally mounted drive would touch, and creat a horrible hum, meaning I had to run the case with that panel off most of the time.
- It's not that silent. Granted I need to properly configure the fans - at the moment I have 3 apache blacks on the cpu pwm header - bottom intake, rear exhaust. The front fans aren't hooked up. But what it shows is that you can't indiscriminately chuck in anything you like and expect the case to do the job at silencing; component choice is still crucial. I will change the entire fan setup, which should deal with this issue, and maybe bungee the hard drive or simply use a some 2.5" drives and get rid of 3.5" drives altogether.
- Raised vents on the top and the left side - just looks a bit ugly. I'd rather have them flat like on the R3, but no big deal.
But I really can't complain. For the price this is a great case - a sealed off static piece of furniture for those who like to tinker, but only with minimal components/smaller builds.
I am pleased!
Last edited:
