Review on 💻 FD C DEF7X 01 Fractal Design Aluminum Computer by Mike Starling

The case itself is fantastic and I would highly recommend purchasing it, but both the quality control of the case and the availability of disc slots are important issues. One of the drive cages was bent and one of the screws had a critical defect that had to be removed to convert the case to a server configuration. I contacted customer service and tried to get a replacement case but they were out of stock. Revain stepped in as they returned to camp and shipped #2. The material could have been a bit thicker or firmer in places, the platters and drive bays could have been stiffer, having seen the issues that were present with Case #1 I understand they probably did that to get around that to lighten heavy cases, but at $200 I don't want to think about the integrity of the panel. In this price range, a better choice of steels and alloys and structural reinforcement should have been made. Another big issue is the lack of available 3.5 disk bays for server configuration, which is a big problem since it's one of the builds listed in the manual. I've found 2.5 SSD bays in other stores, but 3.5 bays are hard to come by. Pros: The body is LARGE and easy to route cables through. How large? The photo shows an E-Tax motherboard and a 160mm high CPU cooler. Wanna stuff some heatsinks in here? No sweat! Want to add 18 3.5 disks for a non-RAID server? No problem! This is one of those cases that's very common in the consumer market, where you can literally hold just about anything you can think of and not look like the mothership has landed. Cooling mounts are plentiful, and stock fans can actually be used in conjunction with the included fan controller. The noise level is acceptable, this case wasn't advertised as quiet, but it still does the job well. Despite all the issues I've had, would I buy this case again? Yes I would. Of course there are quality control issues in production, the case was rushed to market with little inventory, and better structural choices could be made about panel stiffness, but what you really get is a case to tune in , what - some serious devices that would do that would not be possible in almost any modern case. Eliminate quality control issues and make accessories widely available and this is a SIMPLE 5-star case.