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Malta, Valletta
1 Level
675 Review
60 Karma

Review on Black Solid Fractal Design MicroATX Case - FD-CA-DEF-Mini-C-BK by Brian Price

Revainrating 3 out of 5

Airflow is not enough even when fans are added due to the terrible design

I've owned this case since June 2020 and now in January I had a tough ride Since I bought it to do a mini-ITX Ryzen 9 build with my 3900x, this case was coming out of a full-tower ITX case, so I didn't know how much I really got sacrificed airflow. I got it because of the installed fiberglass insulation covering that inside the case. Big mistake, I got 90 degree thermal stresses on my CPU and my GPU (1070 at the time). So first I replaced the small form factor heatsink with NZXT's 240mm AIO liquid cooler which resulted in my temps getting back to normal but still hotter than I wanted so of course my 1070 is about 4 years now old so I removed the heatsink from the GPU and reapplied the thermal paste it didn't help much and I thought maybe my card broke. I bought the 3070, and my temperatures are even worse when my CPU is idling at about 60 degrees from 240mm AIO with 85-90 load. I bought two fractal fans to increase airflow by making the top an outlet and changing the rear fan to inlet and also two fans on the AIO as inlet, it didn't help at all ok finally I googled this case and I see a few people complaining about a design flaw with the graphics card location that traps hot air and prevents the GPU from venting properly, increasing the temperature of the entire chassis. This is due to the fiberglass insulation of the panels. I bought a Corsair 280x and installed fans instead with 4 intake fans and 2 exhaust fans, now I have 25-35 idle at 3900x 68 load, 28-32 idle at 3070 and 67 load. After buying a new AIO, Graphics card & fans I finally solved it with a new case by just buying a Corsair 280x, it's not even that much louder.

Pros
  • Series soundproofing with ModuVent technology for quiet operation In a compact Micro-ATX form factor
Cons
  • Disappear