Fractal Design Define R5 Mid-Tower Chassis Review

Complete System

Building a system inside the Fractal Design Define R5 took me an hour, this is a pretty slow time for me personally, but this is a big and heavy case. All of the hard drives have to be screwed into place (as opposed to tool-free trays) and it’s also the first time I’ve deployed our new Gigabyte Gaming.5 ATX motherboard. As you can see I’ve taken advantage of the rear 2.5″ hard drive mount for our Adata 128GB SSD.

While this build may have taken me a little longer, the end results are certainly worth it. The Define R5 looks incredible on the interior and it’s nothing short of a shame that we won’t see it all with the side panel back in place.

Cable routing is fantastic throughout. The rubber grommets are of a very good quality and I especially like the slightly angled grommets to the right of the motherboard.

The Sapphire R9 270X graphics card is a bit of a beast and features a massive cooler that most cases struggle with. The Define R5 fits it with room to spare and I didn’t even have to remove the front hard drive bays.

Overall, this is a great looking build and there is clean airflow throughout the chassis. There were no component conflicts and there is no doubt that this chassis can handle any of the latest and greatest components on the market.

All panels back in place and the Define R5 looks just like it did when we took it out of the box.