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After winning a Fractal Arc Mini R2 case here on Hexus, http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-compet...2-chassis.html, I agreed to write a review of the case. So here it is! (I've never "reviewed" anything more than a few words before, so apologies for the odd format).
First, I'd like to get the grovelling out of the way. So thank you very much to Hexus and the guys over at Fractal for the lovely case. It forced me to finally upgrade my old PC, which was a bit pricey, but worth it.
I won't bore you with the buying process for parts, you can read that on my parts thread here: http://forums.hexus.net/review-my-bu...-microatx.html
I got a fairly meaty 4670K R9270x build for a slice over £500.
Anyway, the review.
The case arrived in a huge box direct from Fractal in Sweden, quickly ripped in to it to reveal a standard brown box, with an exploded diagram and a bit of writing on it. So far so good.
Slipping the chassis out of it's sturdy brown underwear, I laid her out on the comfy leather sofa. Offered a cup of tea but was met with a stony silence. Seems she wanted to get right down to business.
The case is BIG compared to what I was expecting, it's about the same size as my old full ATX Antec case. I think marketing it as mATX chassis is being a bit misleading. Still, space was not on my list of concerns, and I'm sure if you were looking for a compact chassis, you'd check the specs before buying one. It was fairly weighty, too. Again, not a real-world problem.
Here's a comparison of my now retired Antec Sonata ATX case (right) compared with the Arc 'Mini'.
Here's an off-topic shot of all the guts I'm going to be cramming in, for those of you that like animal size comparisons, my dog is a standard ATX size specimen.
Now, I haven't built a "new" PC for a good few years, and have scars to prove it. The insides of the Arc are very nice, all sprayed black (with gloss white highlights) perfectly matches the Sapphire DUAL-X (unfortunately DOA), Corsair DOMINATOR platinum RAM and ASUS GRYPHON board. There was a decent box of screws for fixing everything in, even a nice thumb-screw adapter for screwing in the motherboard standoffs, something that I've not seen before and a really useful addition.
I've never really had chance to do cable routing, I think the case made it fairly easy, although it took a few tries to leave enough space for the side panel to go back on. The big rubber grommets really helped - I'd have struggled with anything smaller.. Here's some opened up views showing the insides and rear of the case. Samsung SSD fitted in nicely in the reserved space. N54L overseeing the proceedings in the distance.
So, the case looks good, the fan controller/usb ports on top are a bit low-fi - was expecting knobs and lights. It was a breeze installing the parts and the window looks ok. No pics of the window, the only thing that lights up in there is the RAM, so it's a boring shot anyway. I will be trying out water cooling at some point, and will update the review then, since this case seems to be made for water.
In use, I'm extremely happy with the case. It's quiet and the fans move plenty of air, even on the lowest setting. Running a moderate CPU overclock on the stock cooler and it never gets in to worrying ranges. I'll run some X264 encodes, or heavy gaming with the controller on 12v and it's not upsettingly loud.
As with everything, there's a few gripes.
The dust filters don't work that well. I have a dusty house, so was hopeful that they'd do a good job, but the window has a layer of dust on the inside already. Will just have to blow it out more often than I'd have liked. This won't likely be a problem with "normal" levels of dust.
The thumb screws on the drive cages and side panels were impossible to remove by hand.
The sound insulated HD trays still rattle with my old Sammy spinpoint, but with non-satanic drives they are fine. Not a con really, nothing can contain the vibrations of my spinpoint, which I'm expecting to explode into a million pieces from it's own torque any day.
You need a child on hand to press the reset button. My sausage fingers can't press it.
So in conclusion, good, heavy, well built case. Very clever drive cages, good airflow and nice understated looks. Easy to work with, quiet enough and still plenty of potential for expansion.
8 out of 10
Edit 1: You see in some of the online spec lists that has a "colour manual", with the exception of a bit of blue writing on the cover, it isn't true.
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Originally Posted by naturbo2000
