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Joseph G.

Joseph G.

Joined on 03/22/10

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Most Favorable Review

Good, but some flaws/QC issues

Fractal Design Define 7 Black Brushed Aluminum / Steel E-ATX Silent Modular Tempered Glass Window Mid Tower Computer Case
Fractal Design Define 7 Black Brushed Aluminum / Steel E-ATX Silent Modular Tempered Glass Window Mid Tower Computer Case

Pros: - Basement is big, lots of room for cable management. There is a cover on the rear of the basement to further hide cable mess. - Hard drive tray in the basement is (re)moveable (more on this below) - Built in support for vert mounting GPUs, once you get a riser cable separately - Top radiator tray is removable for easy rad installation - Included multibracket makes it possible to mount a pump/res to the top of the basement cover (see pics) - Support for lots of drives, even outside of the "storage" form factor - The front solid panel opens up (it is on a hinge) to support additional airflow if needed

Cons: - Most of the screws present in the case were excessively torqued to the point of making it impossible to unscrew them without stripping the screw. As a result, I was unable to move the hard basement drive tray. - Rather than being able to screw in, the side panels "pop" into place. Overtime I suspect the popping mechanism may fail leaving the panels unattached. - Given how the window side panel pops in, the receptor is located on the rad tray, leading it impossible to mount a radiator directly to the tray. You must instead mount your fans to the tray, and your rad to the fans. - Had difficulty screwing the motherboard screws into many of the standoffs. I suspect the standoffs weren't threaded consistently. - A lot of the case consists of plastic fitting/snapping into plastic, such as the basement covers

Overall Review: - It's a good case. I'm coming from a Fractal Define S and the cable management improvements are extreme. - Aside from the overly torqued screws I didn't have any problems during the build. Please Fractal, don't over tighten screws. I'm guessing this was a quality control default.

Most Critical Review

Beautiful case. Defective lights and fan controller

Phanteks Eclipse P400S PH-EC416PSTG_BR Silent Edition Black/Red Tempered Glass/Steel RGB ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Phanteks Eclipse P400S PH-EC416PSTG_BR Silent Edition Black/Red Tempered Glass/Steel RGB ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Pros: - Pretty glass - Basement/psu shroud to hide cables - Components all fit together nicely with enough room - Stores up to 8 drives. 2 SSDs behind the motherboard, 2 3.5"s in the basement, and 4 to the right of the motherboard. I have 6 drives so this works very nicely for me. - Comes with one lite strip which magnetically sticks to the top of the case. It never turns on though (see below)

Cons: - The power led + lite strip + fan controller component on the top right of the case does not work.

Overall Review: The built in fan controller and leds pull their power from a sata power cable. This component does not work (I tried many sata plugs from my PSU), rendering the power LED, the lite strips, and the built in fan controller completely useless. I'm having to use my case without lights and use the motherboard's fan ports instead of the ones provided by the case. I bought this case because I've always wanted a case with lights. Now that it's arrived and I spent hours building my system in it and I don't have lights I'm *extremely* disappointed, because that's the sole reason why I bought the case. I'm trying to decide whether to RMA, contact Phanteks, or go with something else.

Works

StarTech C6ASPAT20BK StarTech.com Cat6a Shielded Patch Cable - 20 ft - Black -  Snagless RJ45 Cable - Ethernet Cord - Cat 6a Cable - 20ft
StarTech C6ASPAT20BK StarTech.com Cat6a Shielded Patch Cable - 20 ft - Black - Snagless RJ45 Cable - Ethernet Cord - Cat 6a Cable - 20ft

Pros: Works as expected and I'm getting 10gig connectivity

Cons: None to speak of

Overall Review: If you need a 20ft ethernet cable that is future proof (supports 10gig) then get this

Works great

CORSAIR HX Series HX750 CP-9020137-NA 750 W ATX12V v2.4 / EPS12V 2.92 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full Modular Power Supply
CORSAIR HX Series HX750 CP-9020137-NA 750 W ATX12V v2.4 / EPS12V 2.92 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full Modular Power Supply

Pros: - Silent, especially as the fans don't really ramp up - Fully modular, so you can get custom cables. Corsair continues to release custom sleeved cables for the PSUs, and there are after market vendors as well

Cons: None

Overall Review: I'm using this with an RTX 3080FE and a Ryzen 3950X and it gives both of them enough power.

Works as expected

ASUS XG-C100C 10G Network Adapter PCI-E x4 Card with Single RJ-45 Port
ASUS XG-C100C 10G Network Adapter PCI-E x4 Card with Single RJ-45 Port

Pros: - Works out of the box with Ubuntu Linux without any additional work needed. (They use the built-in Aquantia driver) - I have two Ubuntu boxes directly attached using these NICs, and am getting 10gig connectivity.

Cons: - None

Overall Review: Works great

Works great

ASRock H310CM-ITX/ac LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel H310 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard
ASRock H310CM-ITX/ac LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel H310 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard

Pros: - built-in wifi + bluetooth, worked out of the box with my existing apple magic keyboard & apple magic mouse - POST'd on first try - Cheapest 9th gen intel board with built in wifi/bluetooth

Cons: - Under win10, the bluetooth keyboard/mouse can't wait the system from sleep. I'm unsure but this might be a limitation of bluetooth in general, rather than the included bluetooth radio

Overall Review: My use case is a under-the-tv video streaming rig to replace my mac mini which died after 9 years. Specs: - Intel Pentium Gold G5400 (using stock cooler) - One stick of G.SKILL Aegis 8GB 288-Pin DDR4 2133mhz - Fractal Node 202 - Old gtx 1060 6GB I had lying around - Win10 pro - Ancient 128GB Samsung SSD I mostly feel compelled to write this review as there is only one review for this mobo, and my build booted on the first try without issues.