This article was published in the July 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here.
Fitting multiple radiators into a new mid-tower case from Fractal Design
Length of Time: 1–3 Hours | Difficulty: Medium
The Mission
When this editor took over the “Build It” section a couple of years ago, the aims were initially modest: Don’t screw it up. The standards were high, and the amount of available time was low—just the way we like it. It turned necessity into the mother of invention, leading to a PC running inside an aquarium fi lled with mineral oil, a mini Dream Machine cramming a 280mm radiator and dual videocards into a microATX case, a tri-SLI 4K test bench, and everything in between.
In this final entry before the reins are handed off to another gearhead, we come full circle and do something relatively straightforward: a nice gaming system that doesn’t break the bank, built inside a relatively conventional mid-tower case. But there’s some new and interesting hardware in the mix, of course—expect nothing less. We have minty-fresh gear from Fractal Design, Corsair, and Asus for your perusal. This build is also oriented toward low noise, so those of you with sensitive ears might want to check it out.
Not Loud, Still Proud
When you're trying to cut down on noise generation, the biggest factor is your case. Fractal Design recently released the Define R5, which is a mid-tower with pre-installed noise absorption panels on the sides and front. The top of it uses the company’s “ModuVent” system, which features modular panels with their own sound absorption that you can pop out to mount fans. We’ve had great success in the noise department with the R4, and this line of cases is quite roomy and sturdily built as well. Perfect for our needs.
Ingredients
| Part | Price | |
| Case | Fractal Design Define R5 | $110 |
| PSU | Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 800W | $130 |
| Mobo | Asus Z97 Pro Gamer | $160 |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-4790K 4GHz | $340 |
| GPU | AMD Radeon R9 295X2 | $650 |
| RAM | 2x 4GB low-profile Corsair DDR3 | $60 |
| SSD | SanDisk Extreme II 480GB | $440 |
| HDD | Western Digital Black 4TB | $213 |
| OS | Windows 8.1 64-bit OEM | $100 |
| Total | $2,203 |
The funky-looking videocard in there is the Radeon R9 295X2. This has two 290X GPUs in it, and an integrated water-cooling system with a 120mm radiator and fan. We moved some things around to make room for its cooling. Since it only costs around $650, despite being the fastest single card available (Nvidia’s Titan Z was apparently a limited run), it seemed like a no-brainer.
Of course, he needs some hefty power, so we’re adding our trusty 800W Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold. This—along with an Intel Core i7-4790K, 2x 4GB of low-profi le Corsair DDR3 RAM, a 480GB SanDisk Extreme II SSD, and a 4TB WD Black Edition—gets plugged into an Asus Z97 Pro Gamer motherboard, which we should be able to overclock respectably. We’ve also added a 120mm Noctua fan to the front of the case. Otherwise, we’d have just the one 140mm pre-installed fan in that spot.
1. Panel Beating
This switch is new to Fractal Design cases. When you press down, it releases two catches that hold the side panel onto the case. That means you have toolless entry with just a flick. You can optionally add two screws if you’re worried that the panel will pop out when you’re not looking. Under ordinary circumstances, however, it’s not possible to get in without pushing down on this widget. Unfortunately, it’s a bit tricky to get the side panel back on, so this might not be the best case for first-time gearheads. The sound-absorption layer adds weight, so you need to grip the panel firmly on removal, to avoid gouging your desk.
2. Hard Case
This case actually comes with three drive cages with a total of 10 drive trays. All cages are removable, even the 5.25-inch cage at the top. We kept only the smaller 3.5-inch drive cage and lifted it to a higher mounting point to make room for the videocard’s radiator down below. We could have tossed all the drive cages, because there are two 2.5-inch mounts behind the motherboard, but then there would be nowhere to install the WD drive.
The case comes with silicone grommets that you can slide into a drive tray to absorb the vibration of a mechanical drive, and each tray can take a 2.5-inch drive as well. All of the trays are metal (which is rare), so you don’t have to worry about snapping bits off through rough handling or dropping on the floor. And because this case is so wide, you don’t need right-angle cables in the back.
3. Screaming Fans
With the drive cage elevated several inches, we have enough clearance to install the videocard’s radiator. The rad gets screwed in from below, after sliding out the dust filter underneath the case to make way for installation. We had some concern that the air coming from the case’s front intake fan would get sucked into the rad’s fan, which would mean less airflow across the motherboard, so we added a 120mm Noctua fan in front to provide more cooling. We also could have removed the ModuVent on the side to install a case fan there, but that would increase the noise level.
4. Access All Areas
The larger fan in the top of this image is 140mm and comes pre-installed. You can lift the dust fi lter away to access the whole front area. There are notches on the right of the fan mounts to feed their cables back into the case. At that point, you can connect them to the case’s integrated three-speed fan controller, or plug them into mobo fan headers, if available. We opted for the controller. It gets juice from your power supply via a SATA power connector. You may have noticed there are no grills on the front. Instead, the R5 has vents on the sides to pull in air. This way, it can dedicate the front to a slab of noise-absorbing material. It’s pretty slick. If you don’t care about that, you can remove the door. It’s just attached with a couple of screws.
5. Wide Load
From above, you can see just how wide this case is. Those black screws are attached to a standard 240mm radiator (that of the H100i GTX that’s cooling our CPU). Why would you want to shift everything to one side? That way, you don’t have to worry about large mobo heatsinks or tall RAM sticks blocking the installation of a radiator and its fans. There’s plenty of room to now add a second set of fans to the rad, which is pretty rare for a mid-tower. And there’s room for a 360mm rad if you remove the 5.25-inch drive cage.
We installed the fans below the rad, pushing its heat out of the case. This is much easier than trying to sandwich the fans between the rad and the top of the case in a “pull” formation. Some cases have extra-wide mounting holes designed for case fan screws, but Fractal Design seems to understand that this location is more likely to be used for installing a radiator, so we had no issues there.
6. Nice and Tidy
We could take credit for the cleanliness, but it turns out Fractal pre-routed the cables coming in from the front (things like two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, headphones, and mic) and strapped them down with these Velcro straps. We just had to take their lead, loosening the straps to make room for a 24-pin power cable.
The mobo tray is sunken compared to the R4, so there’s less play behind it. That gives you the radiator clearance we talked about, and also allows taller air coolers. We can still send a rounded 8-pin CPU cable back here without contortions. You’ll note a similar-looking cable down below. This is for PCIe power. It’s integrated into the power supply, so we can’t remove it. We went with two modular cables because they were flat (and so more flexible) plus all-black (making them less noticeable). We hooked up the fan controller and two drives with a single SATA cable.
- The top of the case can take a 280mm radiator, but only if it’s mounted toward the front, since the screw holes are too close to the rear.
- We put grommets in the drive tray that we didn’t use, in case we wanted to add a hard drive later and couldn’t find the little bag that holds these widgets.
- Despite this videocard being about 12 inches long, there’s still plenty of clearance between it and the drive cage.
- We used this 295X2 in the Dream Machine last year, which is why it has the sleeved tubing. The “stock” version has bare tubes.
Rocket Rig
Overall, this system felt like a solid gaming machine. We got an average of 145 frames per second in Batman: Arkham City, with all settings cranked up at 2560x1600 (other than Nvidia’s proprietary PhysX). When running the videocard benchmarks, the 295X2’s radiator pumped out a lot of heat through the bottom of the case, as expected, but the lower intake fan on the front of the case recirculated a minimal amount of that, thankfully. The best orientation for the rad would probably be on the top of the case or the side, if possible, since heat rises. But the bottom mount seems to do well in a pinch. And our 800-watt power supply had no trouble dealing with the hefty power requirements of this videocard.
Corsair’s H100i GTX performed admirably, its fans hardly spinning up no matter what load we put on the CPU, which was overclocked from 4GHz to 4.4GHz and didn’t go past 73 degrees Celsius. We probably could have pushed it to 4.5GHz, but we prefer being confident about the stability of the system versus cranking it up as hard as we can and quickly running a test before the thing locks up. That can be fun, but it’s not representative. And with this radiator, the chamber on the side that connects to the tubes was a little wider than we anticipated, and the case’s rear exhaust fan obstructed it. That’s why the tubes are coming out on the “far” end, with the pump logo upside-down.
A fresh system is also super-snappy, allowing a full reboot cycle in less than 20 seconds. So you can get into the BIOS, make a tweak, and be back to Windows in a fl ash. The motherboard initially wouldn’t let us boot at all, because we didn’t have anything plugged into the CPU fan header (the cooler’s fans plug directly into the pump). We had to hunt around before we found the setting to ignore that header altogether, but it’s an important safety measure to have. By default, a system will shut down if the CPU gets too hot, but you can override that—at which point you better have everything plugged in correctly.
Despite its rocket-fueled performance, this system is a bit slower than our zero point in some tests, even with its higher clock speed. That’s because the i7-3930K has two additional cores—and an MSRP of about $580. At about $340, the 4790K is not bad value.
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