Fractal Design Define R2 XL Chassis Review

Overall I really enjoyed working with the Fractal Design XL R2 and while it might be a little on the large side for some people, it was designed with one thing in mind, extreme performance and Fractal Designs haven’t cut any corners in delivering exactly that. It’s extreme in size, extreme in weight and extreme in terms of component support and that’s never a bad thing.

While its size maybe a little much for some people, the next big thing about the XL R2 is just how heavy it is. 16.5KG may not sound much but for a PC case it’s practically an elephant and it becomes near impossible to move around after installing your system, clocking in around three times more than your average PC chassis. While a good proportion of this can be accounted to its size, it’s really down to the choice of materials used by Fractal Design.

Sure the chassis is built from plastics and steel like many other cases, but the steel panels are very strong, thick, heavy and pretty much at a grade I would class as blast proof, add to that a bulky layer of sound proofing materials and a thick black paint job, even the side panel alone feels quite heavy. Of course there is one important factor here, build quality, this is something that the XL R2 has in droves, the thick panels aren’t going to break in a hurry and if you’re fitting this out with multiple graphics cards, radiators etc, you’re going to want them to be safe, I have no doubt that they will be here.

Style is also a big factor here too, this big and expensive chassis leaves much to the imagination and its ironic that such a beast of a chassis is made to look so featureless from the exterior, yet I rather like the styling here and its impressive that something so large can still look understated. The front panel door just has a soft reflective shine to it that really gives a premium look to the whole system and its also quite elegant to look at. It’s as if someone has taken a stealth bomber and giving it a coat of polish, quite an interesting mixture to say the least.

Yet for a chassis with no side window there is an impressive attention to detail to the interior of the chassis. Features such as the high quality black and white fans, perfectly finish fittings and mounts, a custom white paint job on the metal HDD racks, braided fan cables, cable management cut-outs and un-used fan mount covers, Fractal Design have gone all out on this one and there isn’t a single thing on show, or hidden away that hasn’t been crafted to perfection, I’d be half tempted to leave the side panel off this system just to admire the work.

It’s safe to say that I really like the Define XL R2, that much is obvious. Yet I wouldn’t have one for my own system, it’s just too darn big to fit next to my pokey little desk, and it would just look silly in my living room. This isn’t for people who just want a quiet office PC even if it can be super quiet with all that sound proofing, this chassis is more about building an extreme system and that’s exactly what you’re going to be able to build within this case, with zero compromises. Yet even with all this performance and quality the Define XL R2 is priced at around £100, which is miles under the price tag of rival brands similar specification chassis, you simply can’t get anything close to this build quality for the same amount of money.