Fractal Design Core 1000: How Little is Too Little
by Dustin Sklavos on April 13, 2012 11:35 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- MicroATX
- Mini-Tower
- Fractal Design
Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked
It's better to get this out of the way ahead of time: the Fractal Design Core 1000 is not a case for serious overclockers. Mild overclocking and tweaking is fine, but if for no other reason than that it's incredibly small, the Core 1000 really shouldn't be used for anything too extreme. There are budget enclosures out there that have a little more of the headroom the performance-sensitive users are going to be looking for.
Once again the Core 1000 is posting thermals mostly comparable to the Corsair 550D, but remember that again, that's only part of the story. In the meantime, it does prove that it can at least handle a moderately overclocked system. While I wouldn't recommend popping Sandy Bridge-E and an AMD Radeon HD 7970 into the Core 1000, it'll do in a pinch.
The Core 1000's smart thermal design continues to pay dividends. At idle there just isn't that much here to make noise, so if the cooling on your processor and graphics card was pretty efficient and quiet to begin with, the single 120mm fan included with the Core 1000 isn't liable to make things any worse. Under load we still see just a little bit of headroom, but the Core 1000 is definitely noisy.
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StevoLincolnite - Friday, April 13, 2012 - link
Seems black is the new beige these days. :(Belard - Friday, April 13, 2012 - link
I thought it was the "new beige" 10 years ago.I've been using silver and white cases for years... I've never owned a black case for my main desktop.
Sabresiberian - Saturday, April 14, 2012 - link
Hmm, no, beige was still the most common case color for a person building their own a decade ago.Black is better for 2 reasons, in my opinion; it fades from view better if it's a background piece of hardware you don't care to look at anyway, and, particularly if it's plastic, doesn't develop that old look beige does.
My least favorite is silver paint or poorly finished aluminum; they seems to look the worst over time (again, my preference, it may not be yours :) ).
;)
vol7ron - Sunday, April 15, 2012 - link
Yeah I had Black 10+ years ago, moved to silver 6 years ago, next one will either be a two-tone white/silver, or wood (veneer).stephenbrooks - Saturday, April 14, 2012 - link
You'd prefer this was beige?jaydee - Friday, April 13, 2012 - link
I don't see any exposed USB or headphone/mic ports on the top or front of this case, but they're listed in the spec sheet. Where are they?Light65 - Friday, April 13, 2012 - link
It's on the right hand side of the case... click on the right side of the case and you should see it up front...jaydee - Friday, April 13, 2012 - link
I see it now. Kind of an odd place to put them...MonkeyPaw - Friday, April 13, 2012 - link
Yeah, I saw this case at Microcenter. It's a nice case, but the side ports are a terrible idea. I'd rather they go top mounted on a mATX. Otherwise it seemed like a very solid build.Azuredragoon - Friday, April 13, 2012 - link
Haha, this is hilarious, but that's the exact spot I need my ports with the way my table is set up