Fractal Design R3

Exactly the same buy colour mate :) best thing about this case when I was desperate for screws to do push/pull on my h50 the black screws to mount HDD's with are the same size lol and the thicker bit to put through the rubber grommet is just the right size for the fan whole (in thickness)
 
I'm surprised at all these guys running rather large PSU's at 750 and 850w!

I've made do with a 550w for years on an overclocked system with 6 hdds.

What are the stock fans like, are they worth keeping?
 
I just got the white instead cuz ocuk doesn't have the black one. Was a whole new build so I would rather just get everything from here even thou I found it cheaper elsewhere, ocuk is lucky for having such a community and good customer support :D
 
Bleek said:
What are the stock fans like, are they worth keeping?
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They run at about 800-900rpm and are therefore very quiet but don't move massive amounts of air.

I put an additional 1400rpm FD Silent 120mm fan in the front, and temps are nice and low.
 
I already have an R2 with a server build that does not require much cooling. My R3 will be arriving today together with my Sandy bridge build. What fan setup has people found to work? With 3 fans would you go with two intake at front and 1 exhaust at back. Or one intake at the front back and top exhaust? I have heard that the side fan can upset the front to back flows and therefore might not improve temperatures. Could the top fan cause the same problem?
 
Got this today.

Best case I ever had, build quality feels solid, it's really heavy, everything snaps in and out fine not like the old case panels of my antec 900, enough mb holes to cable manage, just perfect, only complaint is they really could have put 2 fans in the front to save me the hassle :D
 
Mr. Brightside said:
In need of more hard disk space (I previously had an Antec 300 and had maxed out the capacity), I picked up an R3 last Thursday from OcUK. I'm very pleased with it - build quality is great and it's so much quiter than the Antec 300. I'd recommend it.

Bonus points: looks better than the 300, cable management is better, and the CPU cut out would have been handy when I first fitted the H50.


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Hope you don't mind but can i ask what the noise levels are like with 8 hard drives?

looking at getting one of these cases to put my server in.
 
From the strength of this thread I bought an R3, I also added another 4 standard fans at the front, one in the bottom and another two for the heat sink, the idea being they all run at the same RPM and shift the air and heat column'esk. I have a C2D E600 @ 3.48Ghz couldn't quite get 3.5Ghz on decent volts with 4x 2gig ram. I have also installed the PSU up side down to keep any extra heat out of the case. Temps are 34 at idle and mid 50's playing games and touches 62/64 on Prime.

Things I don't like the side door runners/slots are ill fitting and glitchy to take off and once back on the screw holes don't marry up unless you press the side of the case with your thumb. Although the back plate has "noise" deadening foam it eats up the space to cable tidy with leaving me with a slightly bow bottom edge.

I would post some pics but I don't have any hosting at the min.
 
Rensin said:
Hope you don't mind but can i ask what the noise levels are like with 8 hard drives?

looking at getting one of these cases to put my server in.
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Probably too late to help now but I only just now got a notification email for this thread.

I don't even notice the eight drives that are in the proper hard drive bays, they're inaudible over the Corsair H50 exhaust fan (and that's at 50%). I do however hear the ninth drive when it's seeking: it's in the same bay as the optical drive and so there's no noise isolation for it.
 
I've got the black version, very nice & very quiet. The only thing I really hear is the fan on my Corsair H50-1 radiator.

Couple of design quirks that I think they could easily iron out is a bit more room on the back panel, so it makes routing the 24-pin PSU cable a bit easier. Chunky cables there are a bit of a squeeze. Also, the gromits that are in the cut outs for cabling pop out at the smallest touch. They need to be held in better & not just by friction as even a sata cable pops them out when you pass them through which is annoying.

Generally a nice case & definitely one of the best cases I've owned, even with the design issues.
 
what did you guys do for case fans? I replaced the stock fans with yate loons but they seem to cause some sort of vibration at max speed :(

I'm thinking of picking up some GT's or nexus fans but I heard that the GT's seem to rub against the front filters and make extra sounds :S
 
+1 to Max3, looking for the same answers really.

I've got the bigger brother, the XL and although it's quiet, things get rather hot inside. I'm currently using a H50 and sucking air out the back and it's effecting temps, everything was cooler in my Lian Li. Tried reversing it and the inside of the case just got too hot, resulting in freezing, etc (this is with a mild overclock bare in mind) because the very top 180mm fan is, shall we say, dreadful.

I've got One 140mm fractal front and 120mm front, one 140mm fractal on the side, one 120mm on rear (H50) and the top 180mm.
 
mod1fied said:
Anyone have more than 2/3 hdd's in one of these? My fileserver has 8 hdds and is rather noisy - was looking to get this as a replacement case.
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I have 8 x2TB Western Digital Caviar Greens in mine, plus a 2.5" 500GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue and a 50GB OCZ Vertex2 SSD

Very quiet as well, especially if you stick with the fractal design fans or Noctuas
 
I've got 4 hds at the moment though I've disconnected 2 of my 7200rpm drives recently. They caused the case to have an annoying vibrating sound. The grommets don't seem to help enough.
 
Max3 said:
what did you guys do for case fans? I replaced the stock fans with yate loons but they seem to cause some sort of vibration at max speed :(

I'm thinking of picking up some GT's or nexus fans but I heard that the GT's seem to rub against the front filters and make extra sounds :S
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I have 5x Apache Blacks, 2 intake, 2 upper exhaust and 1 side intake.

All except the side intake controlled via fan controller. Very quiet :)
 
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