 This thing is huge. It's here. It is the first of its kind in North America This is the fractal design define XL so this is as you may or may not be able to guess an Extra large version of the define which is on its third revision so you can buy a define R3 or a define XL So let's go through the bullet points on the front really quick here Obviously you can read them if you so desire, but here's one of the big highlights boom Ten internal three and a half inch hard drives. That's huge. That's awesome You've got noise absorbing material just like the define R3 thermal chamber design We've come to expect their mod uvent technology Which I'll show you when we open up the case as well as an optimal airflow cooling system So two front so included you have 140 140 millimeter fan One top 180 millimeter fan and one rear 140 millimeter fan You can check out what you can get that is not included to add to the case over here on the other side We see all of these supported motherboard sizes, which is pretty much everything Although you'd have to be on something pretty good to put a mini ITX board in a case this size. It would be like this big So don't do that, and I'm gonna just open up the box and we will continue this shortly now The reason I chose this one out of all the ones in our warehouse to unbox is that it wasn't labeled with a color So I figured if we unbox it then we'll also find out what color it is it comes in two colors black and titanium gray It also comes with a user's manual which is pretty basic But if you've installed a PC in a case before you should be able to figure it out reasonably well, so there's the packing material It's a cardboard reinforced with fast. I will not really reinforce it styrofoam reinforced with cardboard For some puncture resistance as well as some rigidity The cardboard is pretty good. You got like a dual wall All right, so let's get the case out of its plastic sheath and Find out what we've got going on in here. This is a very large case. They weren't kidding when they called it the XL because it's Not gum, but it's really big. Here we go We'll use me for scale next to it here so you can see a person is quite small compared to the Defiant XL And we can see that this is the Titanium gray version of the Defiant XL So the black one would be a little bit darker would be more like the finish on the rest of the case Although you would still have that brushed look to the front of it. Just like the r3 We've got most of our business stuff up at the very top of the case That means you got your microphone and headphones eSATA for USB 2.0 ports as well as your power switch Once you open up the door, you will find some noise isolating as well as I assume dust trapping No, it couldn't be because through there. No the intakes are here. So some noise isolating foam You've got four five and a quarter inch phase which come off quite easily as you can see All you do is remove the little tab and then you can also put them back in should desire Well like that that's kind of neat actually and then oh behind this one. Look at that. You've got room to mount a 120 millimeter fan so because most people only install one five and a quarter inch device that makes a lot of sense So you can put up to three 100 and these look like 140 and then this looks like a 120 three fans in the front You can see the one that has been included and I think that pretty much does it for the front So the intakes as I mentioned see you've got dust filters right over the fans The intakes are actually all along the side. So when you've got when you've closed the front of the case That's where those fans are gonna get their airflow from Alright, let's take actually here. We'll look at the back While we take off the thumb screws here No, no, we'll look at the side first wait ah moduvent I promised I'd talk about this This is a moduvent. You see how you can't see through it Well, that's why it's moduvent because right now they've got a piece of their noise isolating material screwed in So you just remove that you mount a 140 millimeter or a 120 millimeter fan there and boom now You've got airflow instead of noise isolation So that's what makes it modu Go ahead and pull off the side panel here I hope I can figure out how the mechanism works for the side panel on camera because sometimes I have trouble with those Okay, there we go. It came off. Well, there's our noise dampening stuff It's quite a bit thicker than what I've seen on the Define R2 Although I haven't seen an R3 in person, but there you go. That's how you remove it So let's go ahead and put that away. Wow the panels are quite Quite heavy. They are steel panels and they do have The noise dampening material on them. You can see they're quite sturdy and we better take a break. I got a phone call And here we are on the inside of the case So the first thing we're going to notice is our accessories So this is giving us a little inventory here of everything that's included I guess that's why that information was not in the manual We've also got a fan controller a five and a quarter to three and a half inch bezel in case you want to install a floppy Drive or a media card reader as well as some cable ties very nice Thank you, Fractal. And then what else do we have in here? Here's all of our front panel connectors, which should be pretty much run-of-the-mill I think because we saw everything that was at the front. Oh, this is nice So look all of the switches are individually sleeved Just like that. So they're all going to be nice and black inside your case You won't be able to see them against the black interior We've got HD audio as well as AC97 2 USB as well as our eSATA plug so that's all taken care of And then here is the nicely sleeved look at that high quality sleeving You can't see the color of the wires at all behind it So you've got your nicely sleeved three pin connector for your front fan Here are the 10 three and a half inch drive bays So these come on little sleds you can install a three and a half inch or a two and a half inch device on here quite easily So this case is entirely SSL You can install 10 SSDs out of the box the other six are down here Now as a water cooling enthusiast the first thing I think when I look down here is actually that It probably wouldn't be that hard to remove the rivets from these bottom cages and down to radiator down there So that would be an interesting project for a power supply. We've got four little rubber mounts So any power supply whether you've got bottom cooling top cooling however, you want to mount it We'll be able to get adequate airflow although what I would recommend is mounting it with the fan on the bottom So that it can pull air up its own dedicated cool air through the dust filter here which can be pulled out to clean Just like that and yeah, so it can sit on the noise isolating rubber mounts and what else do we have inside? So here this is what what is this? This is interesting. We've got another moduvent here, although I'm not 100% sure What it's for? Huh, okay. Well you can take out this square piece and that gives you full Access to the power supply there goes my other side panel Which I had unscrewed helpfully for myself just in case I wanted to take it off for you guys And then most of the cables are actually going to go up through here So we've got a little rubber grommet. You can see the quality of the silicone they're using here is very high So you're not going to be putting things through it and then pulling them out and have it stay in place No, you're going to be able to mush these around and they'll go right back where they belong and then you can Yeah, so most of the cables will go up that way where they're going to come out is a whole other ball of wax So we'll look at that when we get around to the other side of the case Here's that 180 millimeter fan That's going to be cooling your MOSFETs as well as drawing any hot air away from your CPU socket area Speaking of the CPU socket you have a removable cover so that you can access the back of the motherboard and install Aftermarket CPU coolers without taking the motherboard out. Here's another 140 millimeter fan here in the back Just like the one in the front. We've got seven expansion slots. So that means you're going to fit Standard ATX micro ATX extended ATX, but none of those weird XL ATX type things We've got one extra PCI slot here Just in case you've got a cold cathode kit or a fan controller or something that you want to dedicate a PCI slot In the back too, but you don't want to take up room to install things on your motherboard Just go ahead and mount that right there Here's all of our rubber grommets all along the side and up along the top so we can do SATA we can do Power we can do 24 pin we can do 8 pin and that's all going to come up in a nice convenient location along there So a five and a quarter inch is all fairly straightforward here. We can actually oh, yeah There's the five and a quarter inch to three and a half inch adapter is actually mounted in there by default so you could just remove that or you could leave it in and you could install the Adapter for the front panel that they include in the accessory box. Did we look at the back of the case yet? I don't think we looked at the back of the case yet. So there's the fan. There's some venting There's more venting along the side panel. There's two holes for water cooling. Although those are pretty small You'd probably only be able to get about 3 8 inch tubing through there. The power supply mount is right here And then you got some more venting there. So fairly straightforward very clean That's what fractals becoming known for is the designs are just clean. Everything has a purpose And there you go. There's how you access the cpu socket. Look at that. It stays on too So you can just put that back up there. It's got a little thumb screw No problem Now you do have adequate room behind the motherboard tray to route cables. That's been one of my biggest complaints about some of the Cases i've seen that have you know little holes to to to route cables But they actually don't have enough space back here to do it So the side panel is way out here, which means you've got like a good inch of space Behind that motherboard tray to route 24 pin atx connectors or whatever it is that you need to route behind the motherboard Now there's the reset switch. There's that front 140 millimeter fan. I think that pretty much covers Everything I wanted to say about the define xl paint finish actually on the parts that are not the front looks quite adequate It's going to be quite fingerprint resistant It's not the best i've ever seen but the value of this case for the features that it comes with is just outstanding You get the black interior actually i'm pretty impressed so far. I haven't seen this one in person yet I'd only seen it in photos And it looks really good. It looks like they've got another winner on their hands Thank you for checking out my unboxing of the define xl from fractal design and don't forget to subscribe to linus tech tips