Yeah, after watching some YouTube videos of various cases that’s the one I decided on for my upcoming build, which I hope to put together in the next few weeks. My current system is about 6 years old so this will be a nice step up.
I’m still rocking my 4670K from a couple-few Christmases ago, but am about to add another 8GB of RAM (to bring me to 16) since dad recently upgraded his old Phenom x3 system to Skylake. Otherwise our layouts are remarkably similar (not sure how the 290X I bought from Wumpus last year stacks to the 960, but I assume the difference in processors probably clears any gap there at the resolutions I can game at).
I really like the Fractal Case and enjoyed building in it a lot. Hoping that for my bday or Xmas I can replace the aging and somewhat imperfect PSU and grab a silent CPU cooler with which to OC and stretch the older processor another couple of years. Maybe I’ll remember to take build pics that time!
Def would love to hear how yours turns out, though, Klaatu. That looks like a killer system at a great price.
A cheaper CPU cooler would save maybe $30, $40 if pushing it; a gtx 970 is $100 minimum more than the 960, thus raising the price $60-120 or so at best. Sure, I’d love a 970 but ain’t gonna happen on my budget. I’m pushing it as it is.
Yeah, and again, I’m not sure there’d be a huge gain from going up to the 970 unless you’re rocking a 1440p monitor, anyway. I mean, the 970 is an awesome card, but I don’t see it doing someone gaming at 1080 much good–this console generation, at least.
And yeah, you don’t need a 970 for 1080p gaming. 960 will do just fine. Obviously if you have the money, go for it-- you can increase graphics quality further with downsampling etc. I would go for a 970 myself, because I am possessed by technolust. But not strictly necessary.
Finished building the system over last weekend. You’re right, the Fractal Design Define R5 was a joy to build in. I had all the parts but the motherboard for a few days so I took a schematic of the MB layout and spent two days laying out all the wiring on the back side and got it absolutely perfect by the time the MB got there that installing it and everything else was a breeze. And when it was powered up the first time everything just worked perfectly, which doesn’t happen often for me so it was sweet.
I did make one change in the parts list besides a couple more fans, and that was finding enough spare bucks laying around to swap the Nvidia 960 out for the 970; talk here convinced me it would be worth it if possible.
Installed my retail copy of Windows 10 Pro purchased months ago along with other necessities, then games: Diablo III, Kerbal Space Program, Cities: Skylines, Distant Worlds, the main ones to start with for now. All ran great as you can imagine. KSP was especially quicker in all aspects. I’ve got the system overclocked to 4.3Ghz with CPU temps in the 50C range; I tried up around 4.6Ghz but didn’t like the increase in temps so brought it back down to a more reasonable level. I might kick it up to 4.4 and see how it goes.
Really very happy with how it turned out. It’s a big improvement over the 6 year old clunker I had. Looking forward to being able to play some more modern games, and at higher settings, than I could before.
Is there a case of equivalent quality that doesn’t spend space on multiple HDs, optical drive and potential second video cards? I plan to have one or 2 SSDs in systems as of now, and single GPUs. I could also live without the comedy CPU coolers. They’re like Stop-the-Pigeon these days.
The Define Nano S is in the same series as the aforementioned R4 and R5 (and presumably a little “ritzier” than the Node line), and is still a mini-ITX case.
The Define Mini is somewhere in-between, marrying the Define layout/featureset to a micro-ATX form-factor that’s got a little more breathing room (and is a little easier to build in in general). As I recall, it’s the oldest of the three (R5, Nano S, and Mini), so its features more resemble the R4 (which is still quite awesome).
There’s also the Define S, which is a R5 without the 5.25" cage, either of the 3.5" cages, less insulation around the front fascia, the bottom dust filter slides out from the rear, and without the latched side door. It’s a bit cheaper. Also a nice enough case but really better suited to people running home-made water loops with giant reservoirs and pumps.
Of course you can easily remove any of the three drive cages from the R5. It’s fully configurable to like 8 different setups. I removed the middle 3.5" cage myself. I left the 5.25" in empty, because why not?
I considered building microATX or ITX myself, but the thing is under my desk anyway and the ease of building a full ATX kept me in the fold.
