Installation
Moving components into the Define R5 doesn’t demand anything out of the ordinary. It isn’t a completely toolless system, however. Mounts need to be placed by hand before the motherboard can be seated. The hard drive trays support 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives, both of which require screws. Anti-vibration grommets fit into holes underneath the 3.5″ drives in an attempt to keep their noise in check.
My only concern was with the hidden 2.5″ trays. There’s little space to connect the necessary SATA and power cables unless their heads are completely flat. It’s possible to buy such cables, but most power supplies and motherboards come with ones with L-shaped heads. Aside from that discovery, assembly was quick, painless, and relatively clean. It had no trouble fitting our long Radeon R9 290, too, with several inches of clearance between it and the hard drive cage.
Noise & Temperatures
The Define R5’s noise isolating material does a great job at reducing noise levels, specifically high frequency sounds. At ear-level it was still possible to hear the 700-1000 RPM fans, hard drive, and the GPU under load, but it was a more gentle, consistent hum than a roaring annoyance. Better fans should lower the decibels even further.
Any irritating noise came from the hard drives themselves. The anti-vibration grommets didn’t do the best job at keeping their reverberations under complete control, which can translate through the cables and onto other surfaces. This unfortunately isn’t uncommon. The solution is often a slight realigning of the cables or even a soft knock on the side panel until things are positioned in just the right way.
The temperature results were decent for an enclosed, air-cooled case even in a small room during hot summer hours. All of the components inside were stock. We had no third-party CPU cooler or additional fans installed.
Idling, a 3rd-generation Intel i7 processor averaged 37 degrees Celsius. The motherboard was a smidgen lower at 36 degrees. The Radeon R9 290 idled at 41 degrees. Three hard drives – two 3.5″ and one 2.5″ – were installed on the five-tray cage lowered to the bottom of the case, with the three-tray cage that was previously below it removed. They hovered between 29 to 35 degrees, the SSD naturally being the coolest.
Under load, the CPU reached 55 degrees Celsius. The motherboard rose to 45 degrees, and the GPU to 74 degrees. The hard drives ranged between 33 to 43 degrees. For a closed case, those numbers are comparable to many other mid-towers.
Conclusion
The Define R5 is another knock-out from Fractal. It’s quiet and reliably cool despite the abundance of noise-isolating material, and its versatility is sure to please even the most seasoned builders. I’d like to see more ease-of-life features make their way into that particular lineup, but the extra few minutes needed for assembly don’t take much away from a solid, highly recommended case.
