In the test 15 years ago: the definition of fractal design made known in one fell swoop

In the test 15 years ago: Fractal Design’s Definition made a splash 13 comments

In the test 15 years ago: Fractal Design's Definition made a splash in one fell swoop

One of the most popular and well-known PC case manufacturers today, the Swedish manufacturer Fractal Design was still relatively unknown 15 years ago on the German market. At that time, the Fractal Design Definition R2 (test) was an excellent case for little money in the test.

Summary :

A lot of case for little money

The Definition R2 was a MIDI tower with dimensions of approximately 440 × 207 × 521 mm (H × W × D) and a weight of 12.5 kg. The case was made of steel and had a plastic front. The workmanship of the Definition R2 was very good, especially considering the low price of approximately 85 euros. The R2 design was disguised with insulation on the side walls, lid, and front to reduce the noise level of the built-in hardware. From the outside, only the openings for the three optional 140 or 120 mm fans were visible when closed, which were also covered with insulation from the inside. It was therefore up to the user to decide where the fans were installed and where they should be insulated.

Fractal Design R2 Design – Front Right Image 1 of 14

In terms of connections, the R2 design offered space for two 5.25″ drives on the front, while the front panel offered two USB, two audio, and one eSATA connection. Cards, with the exception of the Radeon HD 5970 Dual GPU graphics card, were also visible.

Low Volume and High Temperatures

The R2 design was insulated by the house, which the manufacturer made a compromise to reduce the perceptible volume of the system. In the test, the R2 design delivered very good sound pressure levels from all directions with both fans throttled to 5 volts and at full speed. At temperatures, it looked less rosy, especially with the insulation installed and throttled to 5 volts. At 62°C, the CPU temperature was still fully in the green zone, but the GPU, at 95°C, was at its thermal limit. Here, either a higher fan speed, more housing accompaniment, or removing the insulation was recommended. Without the insulation, however, the GPU temperature dropped to 84°C without any problems when the fans were still throttled to 5 volts.

Conclusion

With the R2 design, Fractal Design has made an extremely successful debut on the housing market. The equipment and conversion of the home, especially considering the low price, were beyond all doubt. A clear purchase recommendation could be given to both quiet lovers and all other users. The previously largely unknown manufacturer became an industry heavyweight overnight, and it hasn’t retained this status, but has continued to grow.

In the “Tested 15 Years Ago” category, the editorial team has been looking back at the test archive every Saturday since July 2017. We list the last 20 articles published in this series below:

Nvidias Geforce GTX 480 was the 2.0lmx super layer hairdryer with liquid metal instead of HeatPipesMulti-GPU with Nvidia and AMD thanks to Hydratel Core i7-980X with six kernels Sparkling önige Pentium G6950 and Core i3-530 The GeForce GTX 280m in 5.6 Kg Notebook For gaming, but otherwise the topshethes Top Blow-Koloss Grand Kama Crossdie Geforce GT 240 with 1024 Mbyte DDR3 was Senselessamds Radeon HD 5670 Bot DirectX 11 for 79 Eurohtcs Touch2 was a savings smartphone for 270 Euro advantages of SSDS compared to HDDS in the BLODERS BLADERS TAM A smartphone Wannabe Samew Super Mario Bros. The Wii was also a favorable NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 was the ultimate Air-D14 CPU. The Radeon HD 5970 was fast and jerky. The Corsairs Obsidian 800D was ideal for water cooling. The Radeon HD 5750 was recommended for water cooling.