 So today I'm going to be having a look at a new product and it's new in the sense that it's not even released in North America yet. This is the Fractal Design Define R2 computer case. This is a Sweden based company. Okay, and this is their first case, or well their first three because it comes in three different colors. So let's have a look at what makes this case unique. First of all it has a stylish front panel with noise insulated door. So the first thing you'll notice about it is it has a very, very sleek design. There's really nothing to it. It's very clean looking. Okay, so it has a unique moduvent feature that allows you to choose between optimal silence or optimal airflow. So we'll show you that in a minute. Effective noise absorbing panels mounted on the side and top. Ten drive bays including eight internal three and a half inch bays and two external five and a quarter inch bays. I love to see this because how many times have you seen a computer that actually has nine five and a quarter inch devices in it and yet that seems to be the trend with so many cases these days. I'm glad to see a focus on more hard drives since that's what people are actually adding to their computers. Sturdy overall case quality, two front 120 millimeter fans with one included, two top 120 or 140 millimeter fans and those are optional. One rear 120 millimeter fan included, one side 120 millimeter or 140 millimeter fan optional. A bottom 120 or 140 millimeter fan optional and a bottom intake hole for the power supply. So you can see that despite the fact that they marketed as a silent case, you can actually load it up with a great deal of fans and still get good tooling performance out of it. Now you should notice that this is, wow, this is just taped like crazy. I really wish I'd gone and gotten a knife before I started this but what are you gonna do? This has actually made its way here as a sample all the way from Sweden. So you can see that the job they do packing it and the box that they use is actually good enough to survive a a ground shipment first across Europe and then across Canada. It actually landed in Toronto. So and then it made its way all the way here to me in Vancouver. Oh, yeah, here are the three colors. So the one that we have here is black pearl and it's also available in titanium gray and silver arrow. Oh, and then we've actually got some pictures over here. So I'll let you enjoy those pictures while I continue to work away at this tape with my screwdriver because the magnetic tip keeps coming out when I try to jab it through the tape and this is not not working out as well for me as I would have perhaps hoped. There we go. I finally have the box open. So the first thing we find inside is a user's manual for the Define R2 ATX case. They give you a little bit of information. So the product is guaranteed for one year. A little bit about the concept of fractal design, designed and engineered in Sweden. Excellent. They give you an overall list of the features. Okay, cool. Let's get this baby open. Now what I've heard about this case from the couple of North American reviews that we've seen so far is that it smells bad when you first open it and that's a result of the noise dampening material that they use in the side panels and the top. So apparently the smell goes away after about a week. So it's one of those things where yeah, that's a sacrifice you have to make. So it comes packed in As long as you're using a good quality box, I guess it's about an inch of foam and it's a good quality foam. So you're not going to run into issues where it'll crack in shipment. Like you can see it's the flexible type. So those thin foams where it uses the hard foam and it can crack, you can find that those cases can end up arriving damaged. But this one looks like it would be just fine. And I mean it did make its way here from Sweden. So if that doesn't vouch for it, then I don't know what damage it's going to cause. So here we have it, the Fractal Design R2K. Peel off the front. Okay, so why don't we start with the outside of this guy. So up at the top here, we've got the power button, which glows blue when it's on. Then we've got the front headphones and mic, two USB ports and one eSATA port. And then we can open up the front. Okay, that's kind of nice. So in the front, we first we have the sound deadening foam. And you can see that the way that the, oh actually I don't know how the front fans get access to airflow. I think there are, oh there's ventilation here. This is kind of smart. So the ventilation all comes out the side of the front panel. Okay, and that is how the fans, which sit behind here, actually get access to airflow. And you can see that these have filters on them. And you undo the screws here and then you can pull out the fans that way. That's kind of nice. So then you've got one 5 1⁄4 inch and one 5 1⁄4 inch with a 3 1⁄2 inch external adapter. So you could potentially do like your Blu-ray drive and your media card reader. Something like that would be sort of the recommended configuration for a case like this. Front door has a magnet so it actually shuts in place just like that. Overall quality of the front door is good. You don't see any warping or anything like that. Alright, so why don't we keep moving around. This side of the case is very plain, very clean. You can see there's a little bit of residue on it from the packing. So that should come off in due time. Around at the back, we've got a couple of holes for water cooling. I mean most people don't really use these, but what are you going to do? We have one 120 millimeter fan and it's the little touches like this that I like to see. We've got white PCI backplates. Okay, so it looks kind of sharp at the back. A little bit more ventilation space and then there's a case for your bottom mounted... Or there's a case. There's a spot for your bottom mounted power supply. So let's take off the side panel and see what we find on the inside. Okay, side panel is officially off. Wow, that's heavy. Oh, okay. Yeah, there is our sound dampening material right there. So it's got kind of a sticky, grippy feel to it. Okay, and this part comes away for you to mount a 140 millimeter fan on the side if you're not quite as concerned about noise and you're more concerned about cooling. So the inside of the case, you can see it features a lot of sort of up-to-date features. For example, you've got the cutaway hole for the CPU cooler. So that means that you can install a new CPU cooler without taking out the motherboard. That's a great feature. I love to see it. You've got an overall white and black color scheme. So you can see the fans are white and black. The PCI back plates are white and black. The included fans are sleeved. It's not a great quality sleeving, but it's functional and it looks a lot better than seeing bare fan wires. Okay, up in the top, aha, they've got their sound dampening material, which you can remove and mount 120 millimeter fans or 140 millimeter fans. That's very cool. I'm guessing that's their module event feature, which allows you to either turn things into a vent or turn them into something that doesn't allow sound to escape. This is something I want to see more of. All of the front panel connectors are black already because most people are going to want them black when it's the last time you saw like a red sleeved power supply, for example. So if you want it to match the rest of your case, that's a great way to make sure that it happens. All right, other things to note. First of all, the entire interior of the case is painted. This is something that I want to see more of, especially on cases in this price range. You've got these cool rubber grommets that we've seen on a couple cases. I've seen it on the NZXT Hades. Obviously, it debuted on the Corsair Obsidian 800D, but it makes cable management just way, way more convenient. Okay, so let's have a look down here, bottom-mounted power supply with the vent holes. So that means you can turn it this way so that the fan is on the bottom, and it'll draw fresh air from the bottom of the case. And then again, you can put a 120 or 140-millimeter fan here. Okay, so there's your 3.5-inch adapter there. Okay, all the accessories come in a little box right here. Oh, you can see. Oh, look at that. One of our 3.5-inch hard drive sleds actually came dislodged in shipping. So why don't we have a quick look here on camera even to see if that actually damaged the case. So we've damaged our paint job a little bit, but it's nothing too significant. And when we go to slide it back in, oh, it's just fine. Okay, well, that's... I'm really glad to see that. I would have hated for that to be damaged. So let's have a look at what we've got included here for accessories. Do-do-do-do. A lot of screws, tons and tons of screws. So you've got longer screws there for the hard drives. You've got your motherboard standoffs, the standard brass kind. You've got screws for optical drives, and you've got screws for the motherboard. Awesome. Oh, this is nice. Oh, this is really nice. Cool. Check this out. Okay, so they've actually included a fan controller. It's a white PCI bracket, powder-coated white, just to match the rest of the white ones at the back. All right, and then you can plug in, looks like, three fans. Oh, that's terrific. So it's actually got a splitter that allows you to simultaneously use this knob to control three of the fans in your case, and then it's just got a little power adapter just like that. That's little touches like that that really set something apart from the competition. All right, so here is our 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hard drive sleds, and I actually didn't give you a closer look at these. These are powder-coated white, and you can see that they've got rubber grommets to isolate the hard drive against noise. All right, so overall, I'd say we've had a pretty good look at the Fractal Designs R2. Thank you for checking it out with me, and thank you for checking out my video blog.