Fractal Design Define Mini Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on April 22, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- MicroATX
- Fractal Design
- Case
Assembling the Fractal Design Define Mini
The Fractal Design Define Mini may be a year old, but it's design feels like it's at least two or three, unfortunately. Certain conveniences we've come to appreciate in recent designs are absent, and Fractal Design hasn't shown any sign of learning about them in the intervening period between the Define Mini's launch and their most recent case, the Define XL R2.
Once again, no standoffs or studs are included to line up motherboard installation, so it's back to screwing in standoffs manually for you. A high end micro-ATX motherboard uses the same number of standoffs as a standard ATX board, so even the smaller form factor won't save you. For what it's worth, the motherboard lined up well, and the case headers were all long enough to connect with no problems.
.jpg)
Installing a 5.25" drive is basically toolless (and painless), but my review unit had the cables from the top I/O cluster hanging in the top bay. That meant a lot of struggling to get them routed the way they're supposed to; if they're not, you won't be able to fit an optical drive in here, and you'll run into the same idiotic problem the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 unfortunately suffers from, where badly routed cables actually prevent you from using the bay. The installation itself required no latches or anything of the kind; Fractal Design includes special thumbscrews with smaller heads appropriate to the mounting holes of an optical drive.
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
3.5" and 2.5" drives require the use of a Phillips head screwdriver, but I'm mostly okay with it due to how sturdy and rigid the drive trays themselves are. You'll need the special screws included for the rubber grommets used to insulate the 3.5" drives from vibration; 2.5" drives just screw directly into the tray proper.
.jpg)
Mounting the power supply was a painless process, but expansion cards and the fan controller are a little more complicated. That owes almost entirely to the fan controller actually; if you use the extra expansion slot, it makes turning the thumbscrews for the primary four slots much more difficult, and that's ignoring the fact that I needed pliers for the fifth slot's thumbscrew anyhow. So if you're stupid enough to install the fan controller in the fifth slot first like I was (and keep in mind I needed pliers to get it comfortably secure), you just made life a lot harder on yourself. This is more advice to the end user and less a critique of Fractal Design, who were thoughtful enough to include that fifth slot in the first place.
.jpg)
Things start to go a little off the rails when you get to cabling, though. Most of the routing holes are well placed and work perfectly, but that fan controller seriously hampers any attempts at a clean cabling job. It uses a molex connector, and all of its leads are too short to route behind the motherboard tray. The leads on the case fans themselves are also too short to route, so you'll have fan leads stretching across the interior of the case. I'm absolutely dire at cabling systems, but this just makes things worse. Space behind the motherboard tray is at a premium as well, making the rear panel difficult to replace.
The Fractal Design Define Mini is ultimately reasonably easy to build in, but it lacks modern conveniences, and things go haywire (no pun intended) when you start running the necessary leads. This isn't catastrophic by any measure, and the case as a whole is very sturdy, but it's further evidence of Fractal Design being just a breath behind Corsair and now NZXT in usability.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
57 Comments
View All Comments
antef - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
Agreed, dimensions are the first thing I check for any MicroATX case now, if it's no smaller than most ATX cases then why would I even consider it? I hope manufacturers are reading this. Many of us don't have that many components and don't require these dimensions.takeship - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
I can vouch for this. It's FAR too large a case for what it offers. I've built twice with this case, once for myself and once for a friend - in retrospect the thermals vs noise don't justify this over a full Define R4, or one of the recent NZXT Phantoms. Mostly high quality, though the motherboard cut out is the wrong size for virtually any backplate, and the included fan controller was junk, and well, I replaced every fan anyways. Further, there is *barely* enough space to fit a Crossfire/Sli dual slot setup in the case with the tight clearance above the PSU standoff. I only have a single card, so it's less of an issue, but there is very little airflow from the front case fans through the non-removable lower HDD bay into the GFX card space. Living with it for now, and the heft makes it feel secure, but I wouldn't recommend it for a real enthusiast.dave_the_nerd - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
Quote: "It's a weird situation when the micro-ATX form factor seems to be ideal for the majority of end users."Umm... what?
The majority of PC end users buy laptops. (Laptops outsell desktops by about 2:1.) Most of those desktops are sold to businesses, and it's literally been years since I saw an ATX or mATX minitower in use in somebody's home. (Mostly SFF desktop designs and iMacs.)
Today, mATX is the answer to a question anybody asked. The BYO "enthusiast" crowd will continue buying ATX towers with room for all their cooling hardware, and the BYO "best fit for my needs" crowd will continue snatching up SFF.
marc1000 - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
Hi Dustin! you say you have a terrible time to manage cables on every case you test, but how do you feel about cabling a custom-case made by hp?I'm living with it because it is mATX and is much smaller than the average cases on stores. I don't have the exact dimensions now, but I managed to change all internals, add one SSD, a scythe Ninja Mini cooler, and even a Radeon 5770 in there. with all fans being PWM this thing is pretty quiet, at iddle you can hear it but it's not annoying. at load however the GPU fan makes a bunch of noise :(
here are some images from a similar case from the HP site.
outside: bit.ly/ZE9Bge
inside: bit.ly/ZEaQMr
how would you feel about doing cabling this one? lol
marc1000 - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
short url corrected:http://goo.gl/QCjpd
http://goo.gl/PhBJZ
ZoeAnderson24 - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
If you think Ronald`s story is surprising..., a month back my cousins best friend basically recieved a check for $8905 working a 40 hours month at home and they're friend's mother-in-law`s neighbour has been doing this for 7-months and made over $8905 in there spare time on there labtop. follow the instructions from this web-site. All29.comCHECK IT OUTjrs77 - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
Testing cases is really a hard thing to do I'm afraid.I've got the Define Mini on my desk behind my screen, where it hides itself due to it's little height.
Anyways... for the watercooling. A 240mm rad in the front is possible without modding. Just remove the two drivebays and install your 3.5" HDD + 2.5" SSD in one of the 5.1/4" bays. Another 120mm rad is possible in the back, so you have one 240mm rad for the GPU and one 120mm rad for the CPU, and voilá... even lower temps and the same low level of noise. Install a Scythe S-Flex @ 800RPM in the bottom behind the PSU and one in the top for that little additional ventilation and you can even use powerful components.
I'm running a GTX660 and an i5-3450 in my Define Mini, and temps are no issue at all, and the case is still dead-silent there behind my screen. The one thing I did tho was to cutout the grill covering the fan in the back, as these hex-grills produce a very annoying noise when air is pushed through.
A TJ08-E with a 200mm rad in the front and a 120mm in the back is deadsilent aswell, but a little bit trickier to assemble and crammed.
bsix - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
Dustin,You seem down on the Define cases except for the Xl r2. What separated that case was a bottom fan. I feel this design really needs that airflow with low impedance to help even out flows, otherwise there is a bit of a dead zone in the bottom half of the case.
Also have we seen a comparison of an air cooled vs water cooled case at Anandtech? I'm not sure I have seen one with some of the later packaged water coolers..
barry spock - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
It must've been out for more than a year because I got this in Sept(?) of '11. I used it in my first real build for more than 10 years and all up I like it, although I don't know how it compares to others.The aim for me was to build a silent PC. I went for a Noctua fan as well (as someone else in the comments mentioned). It's pretty quiet but in hindsight I think what I should've done is make a no-fan HTPC.
rvdbos - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
$99 for an empty box? wtf, is it year 1995? nowadays I could get TWO bluray players with remote, ethernet, buildin wifi and DLNA for this much dough. why even bother bringing such a ripoff to the market?