 Welcome to an unboxing that took me a little while to get to. The Fractal Design Arc MIDI was actually out a very, very long time ago. I think the first time they showed this was actually CES 2011. But better late than never, as I always say. I don't always say that, but in this case it makes sense. Better late than never. I'm going to be having a look at the Fractal Design Arc MIDI Mid-Tower case. So Fractal Design's cases are all about simplistic looks. The first one that hit the market was the Define R3. So the Define R3 was kind of an ultimate compact silent case. It took a lot of cues, there's no denying it, from the N-Tech P18X series. However, what it did also do was add a few things of its own, such as the Modu Vamps, which were a way to choose whether you wanted optimal airflow or silence. It also added a sort of a different way of doing the noise dampening that was lower cost and thus resulted in a less expensive case at the end of the day. They dramatically altered the interior layout, which was entirely their own design. But one thing that Fractal's really good at with all their cases is a good balance on the interior design. So Fractal opts for using the space in a way that is beneficial to the user rather than sort of going with the status quo. They were one of the first ones to take a case and instead of filling the front of it with 5-1⁄4 inch bays and then doing some 3-1⁄2 inches in the bottom, they just do a couple 5-1⁄4 inch bays and fill the rest of the case with 3-1⁄2 inches because most users are putting in not 6 DVD drives but more like 8 hard drives. That is a more likely scenario. So let's have a look at the outside of the Ark. This is more like, I guess, a second generation Fractal case. It has a better internal layout than the Define R3. And here we go. So we've got, see this? This is cool. We've got a honeycomb mesh on the top of the case with a noise dampening as well as dust filtering foam on the inside of it. So what that means is that even though this is an ultimate airflow, more of a gamer style case than a Define R3, you can see that same foam here, tons of airflow, you're still not necessarily going to totally give up on the noise, the noise compromise that usually comes with a more like a gaming case. The front uses that brushed plastic that I'm actually a huge fan of because it looks really good. Can you see it in the camera? It looks great. The fingerprints don't mark. It's much easier to clean and it costs less. It's like win, win, win. In the front you see a single, whoops, uh oh, I'm going to have to check what sort of a fan that is. It looks like a 140 but I could be wrong. It could be a 120. Look at that, no it is a 140. So there's a single 140 there and probably mounting for another one. We're going to get it open. I'm not that familiar with this case. Front panel I.O. so we've got, well it looks like there's a little bent piece of metal there, but we can probably fix that with a needle. So front USB 3, two front USB 2, power switch, headphones, microphone as well as a reset switch. The sides are pretty straightforward. So you got your standard black side panel over there. You got your standard rear so you can either mount a 120 or a 140. It comes with a 140. There's your I.O. There's a couple of water cooling tubing grommets. Most people don't use those but they're there. We've got seven plus one PCI slots. If you have like a fan controller or something you can put it there. Obviously you can't actually install an expansion card there but seven standard slots. Bottom power supply which can either be mounted one way or the other way. You can see all the holes are present and then you can either use the filtered bottom. So that's a removable filter and mount it that way so it draws air from the bottom. You can see we've got nice tall rubber feet here so you're not going to be restricted in terms of airflow. This is smart too. Look at this. It's a nice touch. It's really, really wide at the front so it's easy to position when you're putting it in. Or you can flip it around the other way should you prefer that. On the side we've got what looks like a 140 or a 100 and something bigger than that. Hold on a sec. Yep that's 140 or 180 millimeter on the side. So it doesn't come with a fan there but you can install one should you see fit. So here is my screwdriver and let's get it opened up. Big fan of fractal cases. I might as well just say that up front here guys. I love the Define R3 and pretty much everything they've released since then has lived up to my expectation that was set back then with the Define R3. Here we are on the inside. So if you have a Define R3 or if you know the Define R3 this will look pretty similar but they upgraded some significant things. So these front fans are 120 or 140s now which is awesome because the Define R3 is only 120s. This hard drive cage can actually be rotated if you prefer to mount the cables in a different setting. Whoops sorry about that guys. This is not a magnetic screwdriver which is what I'm used to using. There we are. So it can be rotated this way or actually removed completely if you have a long graphics card or if you want to mount some kind of weird accessory here and then these plastic pieces can actually also be removed which is very very cool. Not only that but it also gives completely unrestricted airflow access to the video cards from this front 140mm fan so you are taking sort of your ultimate airflow case removing obstructions if you're only going to have four drives. And what kind of drives you use doesn't really matter because the included hard drive sleds are a little bit stuck right now. Hold on. That's funny. Oh look at that they're screwed in on this one. So on the Define R3 there aren't screws here to hold them in but on this one there are. So you can either use those and that will give you more safety in shipping or you can not use those and they do clip into place and they won't come out until you do this. So they are compatible with either 2.5 inch using these holes. Oh this is cool. Look at that. The holes are centered instead of being off to the side so they don't interfere with the rubber grommets. I've seen this overlooked time and time again. Whether it's grommets or whether it's those little pokey pieces from the side. You know the ones where you bend them open to put the drive in. A lot of the time the SSD mount is over here and it interferes with it. You can't even put it in without removing the hard drive mounting piece. So that's very very smart. So there you go. So they're compatible with whatever you want. So if you have like two SSDs in RAID and then a couple hard drives in RAID you can take this whole thing out and get better air flow and more space inside what is already a fairly compact and efficiently laid out case. I'm just going to remove this bottom one so that we can get out the accessories there. I'm going to have to find that screw I dropped at some point and I'm going to have to find that other screw I dropped at some point as well. So let's shake things up a little bit and I'm going to have a look at the accessories before we continue looking at the inside of the case. And they're all pretty much laid out here but... I've actually never used this case before. I only knew it from sort of looking at it and going yeah that looks nice those look like cool features but I'd never seen one in person yet. All the screws are here. So you got all your fan mounting screws, all your thumb screws, your little speaker, they include a speaker which isn't part of the case but hey if you want one then you have one. They include a 5.25 to 3.5 inch adapter, also the nice brushed plastic, a couple of reusable cable ties, fan controller that can be mounted here that connects to up to... Huh look at that. Three fans. Cool. Neat. And it can be powered either by Molex or by a fan connector and there you go. That's pretty much it for the included accessories. So let's finish up with the inside here. We've got our 5.25 inch base, one of which actually includes a 3.5 inch adapter inside it. I don't know if you're going to be able to get a good angle but you can take that out by removing these thumb screws. It's also got SSD mounting on it or hard drive mounting so that's a pretty cool thing there. So basically your options are as follows. You can do dual 5.25, 3.5 external, 3.5 internal, 5.25, 3.5 external or 3.5 internal 5... Okay I don't know what I said but you've got all kinds of options with the included adapters and with the included pieces. Oh wait no you can't do that. Okay okay okay okay so this goes on the front with the adapter that's bolted in here already to make it a 3.5 external. There we go. Now I got it. A CPU cutout, not the biggest one I've seen in the past but I think they've made a reasonable compromise here by putting cable management loops here instead of expanding this because you should still be able to reach from the back if you need to. They've also reinforced the motherboard tray just by putting in these bends. That does make it stronger. Cable management is a fairly strong point with the Define R3 and it looks like a fairly strong point with the ARC as well. We've got nice flexible rubber, tons of space in the back. That looks like plenty of space for a 24 inch connector, or 24 pin connector. Nice flexible rubber here, here, here, and here. These are a little bit less flexible than the bigger ones but they should still look okay even after you run something through them. Dual 120mm fans supported in the top or dual 140s. You see you've got a lot of different fan mounting options here which is really cool. So we have full support for dual 120mm rads which is a huge one for me that is very very important for me. And in a chassis this small there aren't too many competitors where you're going to have room to do that so very very cool. Yeah, let's have a look at it from the other side. So I might need my screwdriver again from the factory. These are pretty tight although you don't have to put them back in that tight yourself. So it'll be easier to remove without using a screwdriver later. Okay, there we are. Like I said, lots of room for cable management here in the back. There's the screws. And I'll also show you guys the front panel connectors. So we've got an internal header, USB 3, USB 2, there's going to be another USB 2 somewhere in all likelihood. Oh no there isn't, sorry, USB 2, front panel audio, power switch, power LED, and got to be a hard drive LED and reset switch right there. Only the USB 3 one is blue, everything else is black which is nice to see. And I think that pretty much covers it. So thank you for checking out my unboxing of the ARC MIDI and the reason that I'm unboxing this now is actually so that I can use this case for an upgrade to my wife's PC. So she's going to be going from socket 1156 to socket 1155 and getting a 2600K going on in there so should be good. I'm looking forward to using this case. I'm actually replacing the 800D because there's not as much space in our computer room anymore now that I have my tech table in here so we wanted to get things a little bit smaller. So we're going to be going with the ARC MIDI, very exciting. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. Sorry guys, I'm already outfitting it with its sexy matching PC power and cooling power supply for awesome black and white internals. But something I forgot to mention is how to get at the front fans so you just do the clips here, one, two, three, and then pop off the front. So the fans are installed just by clipping them into place and then running the cables into the rest of the case. Very very very very straight forward and easily compatible with a number of different kinds of fans. So there you can see one that's empty, very very easy to clean as well because it comes off even with one hand and the other hand trying to hold a camera stay.