This is one hell of a case. It is built like a tank but has the noise output of a mouse.
Starting from the outside:
The entire body is made of steel apart from the front door (plastic with brushed aluminium look) and the front grills (plastic). The steel is quite thick and the case sides do not flex,bend or dent when kicked (accidentally!). The paint is a matt finish and applied quite thickly, this will not scratch easily.
Moving inside:
Inside are two hard drive bays, each holding 3 disk drive trays. These are of steel construction and are once again superbly made. There is the option to screw the individual trays into the bays but to be honest you would need to run this case over to inadvertently dislodge a tray.
The motherboard mounting wall is of steel construction with many bends to keep it stiff. Guess what, it is solid and wont flex.
Cable management is surprisingly good seeing as there is very limited room behind the back wall. There are plenty of tie downs. But even with the cables poorly tied down the sturdy side panels slide on ,with a bit of force ,compressing the jumble below without breaking a sweat.
One last thing to note is this case is dead silent with stock fans. There is a fan controller included (mounts at the back) and with this you can make the case go from Silent to barely noticeable. I have added a second fan to this case to blow air through the lower drive bay and into the graphics card. This was not strictly necessary, and did make the case slightly louder, but helped keep the GPU temperatures below 70.
To sum up this case is a great choice for any MATX or ITX build. I have no doubt it will look new even after 3 years of abuse.
Worth every penny for a faultless case, 5 starts!
| Brand | Fractal Design |
|---|---|
| Product Dimensions | 21 x 49 x 39.5 cm; 9.5 Kilograms |
| Item model number | FD-CA-DEF-MINI-BL |
| Manufacturer | FRACTAL DESIGN |
| Color | Black |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
| Item Weight | 9.5 kg |
