Outside
The outside of the Define R4 is mostly black in finish other than the front. The model we are taking a look at today is called the Define R4 Titanium Grey. With that, the front of the case is finished in a metallic titanium finish that picks up a reflection of anything around it. If you look at our pictures closely you can see part of the LanOC office in fact. Sticking with Fractal’s clean styling, the front panel is completely clean and lacks any branding on the entire case. On both sides of the front door is venting, putting the ventilation on the sides still allows for good airflow but helps keep noise down by making the sound have to make a few more bounces before it gets to you, rather than a direct line out the front and into your ears.
The left side of the case is also in our photo’s here and as you can see, there is nothing at all going on. You also have a great view of the round aluminium feet that give the case a little style without going over the top. What is interesting though is that the front feet look different from the rear feet.
With the front panel clear, all of the front I/O functionality is up on the top of the case. We have a center mounted aluminum power button, a reset button, headphone and microphone ports, and then four USB ports (two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0). Around the power button is a clear ring that also goes down to the top edge of the case that will glow blue when your PC is powered up.
Up top you will find two vents but if you look closely they are actually covered up from the inside. This is Fractal’s ModuVent design that keeps the noise down but allows you to take it off and have more airflow if needed.
Back on the front of the case with the front door open we really start to get a clue on how much Fractal works to keep the noise down on the Define R4. The front door itself is extremely thick, at least a half inch, and filled with sound deadening foam. For ventilation, all the way down the front there are horizontal vents, along with that we have two 5.25 inch drive bays up top. The drive bays can to get at without being in your face all of the time. be removed using the latch on the right side. Also near those latches, and hard to see in our photo, is the cases fan controller switch. As a case design for low noise its not a shock that they would include a fan controller, and its great that it is fairly easy
The right side of the case had nothing going on but on the left side we actually have a vent. Of course much like the top vents this vent is also covered with their ModuVent. Located right above the GPU’s this is a great option to have to cool your cards down if you have problems in the future.
Around back we can see a little bit of Fractal’s signature white trimming. The cases 7 PCI covers (eight counting the side mounted cover) all stand out with their white finish up against the black case. Along with that you can see the white fan peaking through next to the rear I/O panel. The PSU is bottom mounted and here you get a little clue to the cases width as well. You can see that there is a lot of space on each side of the power supply, something we don’t always see. This is normally a good sign for good wire management and/or lots of room for tall heatsinks.
On the bottom of the Define R4 you have a fan filter that is accessible from the rear of the case that covers the air intake for the power supply as well as a second intake location on the bottom of the case. I mentioned earlier that something was off with the feet and you can see it better from here. The front feet are wide but the rear feet are smaller and don’t have as much aluminum around them Its weird they would do this but I did figure out the reason for it. If they went with wider feet they wouldn’t have room for the air filter on the bottom.
