Fractal Design Define S Full-Tower Chassis Review
Peter Donnell / 10 years ago
Complete System
It took me around twenty minutes to complete this system build, but given it’s rather cavernous on the interior, there were hardly going to be any issues with component compatibility. As you can see from the picture below, cable management is incredibly good; those velcro straps certainly come in handy. The rear hard drive mounts are very easy to work with and while I love showing off my SSD, having them out of the way is going to free up a lot of space for cooling components and keep even more cables out of sight.
Where’s the rest of the system! You would be fooled to thinking this was a Mini-ITX rig in a super tower, but that’s a full ATX motherboard and a not so small GTA 980 graphics card in there. The amount of space towards the front of the chassis is simply staggering and if you’re wanting to install thick radiators and a vertical mounted reservoir, you’ll have absolutely no problems in doing so.
The clearance from the back of the GPU to the front fan is massive, almost room for another graphics card in terms of length; this is good news for those investing in any of the ultra-long graphics cards that are on the market.
A nice little touch, a small cable routing hole at the bottom of the chassis, saving me from routing the front panel audio cable across the bottom of the motherboard.
Clearance from the top of the motherboard to the top of the chassis is very good, leaving plenty of space to work with while installing your radiators.
The cable routing grommets are angled slightly towards the motherboard, which allows you to keep things looking even neater.
All panels back in place and there’s no doubt that the Define S is a stunning looking chassis, that clean cable management really paying off as the view through the side panel window is crystal clear.
