Fractal Design Define R4 Case Review

1. Introduction2. Fractal Design Define R4: Packaging and Bundle3. Fractal Design Define R4: Exterior Design4. Fractal Design Define R4: Interior and Installation5. Testing Methodology and Performance6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

For our tests we will be using the Cooler Master TPC 800 CPU to cool the Intel Core i7 3770K CPU.  Our test system also features an AMD Radeon HD 7950 graphics card.  We tested the system at stock settings and when overclocked to 4.4 GHz using a voltage of 1.25V.

Test System:

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770K
Motherboard: Biostar TZ77XE4
Cooler: Cooler Master TPC 800 with 2x Be Quiet! Shadow Wings 120mm fans.
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-2
Memory: 4GB (2x 2GB) Kingston HyperX Genesis
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6950
Power Supply: Corsair GS800
System Drive: Intel 520 Series 240 GB
Monitor: Viewsonic VX2260WM
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Software:

CPUID Hardware Monitor
Prime95 64-bit
Furmark V1.9.2

To test the thermal performance of the Fractal Design Define R4 we loaded our test system for 15 minutes using Prime95 and Furmark and recorded the maximum temperatures reached using CPUID Hardware Monitor.  We then restarted the system and left it for 15 minutes before recording idle temperatures.  Room temperature was maintained at 20 degrees C for the duration of our tests.

We are quite impressed with the thermal performance of the Define R4 considering it's designed with acoustics in mind, rather than high airflow.  The CPU temps are a little toasty when overclocked but this is due to the CPU cooler.

To test the acoustic performance of the case we placed a digital dBA meter 1m from the front of the case and replaced the Radeon HD 6670 with a HD 5550 Silence.  We also momentarily detached our CPU cooler’s fans so we were only taking the noise into account from the case fans.

The noise level generated by these fans was below the 30 dBA minimum sensitivity level of our noise level meter.  In fact, this is one of the only cases we've ever tested where we've actually had to look under the desk to see if our test system is switched on because it's that quiet you don't notice it at all!

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