ATX

Oct 01 2012

Review - Fractal Design Define R4 ATX Chassis

By Aaron Ledger

headerFractal Design made a great impression on us last year with the debut of the Define R3 ATX chassis and its smaller sibling, the Define Mini Micro-ATX chassis. It is hard not to love a high-quality, well-built, sleek and unobtrusive chassis and these are all qualities the Define series of chassis exhibited to us. Not content to rest on its laurels, Fractal Design went back to the drawing board to come up with several enhancements to the design of the R3 with the new Define R4 ATX chassis.

The main refinements offered by the Define R4 are larger and improved fans, a more flexible hard disk drive (HDD) cage, a wider case body for easier cable routing, additional mounting options for 2.5” SSDs, a new tool-less front fan holder, support for liquid cooling radiators, a new fan controller that is integrated with the front panel, and an additional USB 3.0 front panel port.

Apr 23 2012

Review - Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge CPU and DZ77GA-70K Motherboard

By Andrew Van Til

Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge CPU and DZ77GA-70 MotherboardLast year Intel’s Sandy Bridge “TOCK” married the graphics processing unit (GPU) and CPU on the same die, making it a first class citizen in the system and introduced a true integrated processor graphics (IPG) solution. With HD audio bit steaming introduced in the previous generation, full hardware acceleration of VC-1, AVC (H.264), MPEG2 as well as 3D Blu-ray (MVC) and reasonable refresh rate accuracy already offered; Ivy Bridge’s 22nm die-shrinking “TICK” could have easily rested only on improved process technology for frequency gains or power efficiency, but instead promises a little bit of raw performance with significant reductions in consumption. Most importantly for the home theater PC (HTPC) enthusiast significant improvements to the GPU are also included - offering greater flexibility in playback software selection as well as improvements to the existing media consumption experience.

Dec 20 2011

Review - Fractal Designs Arc Midi Mid Tower Case

By John McMahon
We are continuing our reviews of Fractal Design cases today with their Arc Midi mid tower desktop case.  We have previously reviewed the Core 3000, Define Mini, Array R2, and Define XL.  Like the other Fractal Design cases, the Arc Midi features a sleek, minimalist design, but it stands out as a versatile case that would work equally well for gaming, HTPC, as a media server, or a combination of all three.  It can work as an HTPC but with more built in storage than the R2 and Define Mini.  It has 2 fewer HDD bays than the XL, but won’t cost near as much (~$50 less) if you are looking for a great server option, and although the Core 3000 is the closest in design and price, the Arc Midi is slightly larger (8 HDD bays as opposed to 6, more fans, etc.) and has a USB 3.0 port that the Core 3000 lacks.


SPECIFICATIONS
Jul 05 2011

Review - Fractal Designs Define R3

By Andrew Van Til

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When selecting the perfect chassis to serve content to the audio/video stack a different set of attributes is required than what is typically demanded from a home theater PC (HTPC) enclosure.  The ideal server must be able to scale to support multiple hard drives, keep everything cool and not sound like a shop-vac in the process.  With eight 3.5” hard drive trays, seven fan mounts, sound absorbing material included and a convenient layout Fractal Designs’ Define R3 enclosure looks good, and has the specifications to warrant consideration.

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