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The system arrives in big padded, brown box, and inside it is packed within a Fractal chassis box. We didn't receive any of the accessories, but Wired2Fire told us that a retail unit will have a restore DVD and operating system as well as all the accessories involved with the system build, such as spare cables for additional drives.
The Fractal Design Arc Case is very attractive and rather subdued in appearance. The Fractal name is embossed into the chassis -which looks great. Wired2Fire have installed a Samsung BluRay reader/DVD writer which will come in useful for high definition media entertainment. Along the top of the case are several USB ports (2 x USB 2.0 and 1x USB 3.0), a headphone and microphone jack and a reset and power button.
The rear of the Fractal Chassis is very neat, with a fan set to exhaust at the top, next to the I/O plate. The Asus Maximus IV P8Z68 Gene-Z is fully loaded with GB Lan, HDMI out, several USB 3.0 ports, eSATA ports, USB 2.0 ports and a CLR CMOS button.
A warning note is included in the bundle which alerts the end user to open the case and to remove some shipping pads. These are placed under the graphics card and between the card and CPU cooler.
Wired2Fire are using the Thermaltake Frio cooler, which is excellent, if a little noisy. They have included 8GB of Corsair 1866mhz DDR3 memory (2x4GB) which is supplied with heatspreaders.
The Corsair CX600 handles the power delivery for the system and we are pleased to report that the wiring job is first class. This is aided by the excellent chassis design which has plenty of routing holes throughout.
Wired2Fire have opted for a KFA2 Geforce GTX570. These are great graphics cards, but we aren't so sure of the appearance, especially the bright blue fan. Thankfully you don't have to look at this while enjoying the system.
Moving down to the bottom of the case, and we can see a removable dust filter – ideal to keep all the gunk out of the power supply above.
The hard drive mounting system in the Fractal case is fantastic. Simply push in on the metal levers at the side and pull out.
The system build includes a 20GB Intel SSD 311 drive, which Wired2Fire are using as a caching device. Underneath is a Samsung HD103SJ 1TB 7,200 rpm drive which is paired up with the Intel SSD via Intel Smart Response Technology.
Removing the other side panel gives us direct access to the cable routing, which is very neat and hidden from view. This really is another great case from Fractal.
Nice system, not so sure about the caching system mind you, but I have never been sold on Intels tech in this regard. Id much rather have a small SSD as a standalone drive for boot.
Nice case, and good performance. Seems the UK market is heating up lately. Nice to have alernatives from dell etc.
I agree completely, great system, but let down by the frio. I bought a frio and even at the lowest fan settings, they were annoying me. they emit a ‘whir’ sound, like a high pitched whine. Very annoying and I had to replace the cooler completely because of it.
I like this a lot. I havent heard the frio but ive read a lot of positive reviews about how good the cooling is. shame about thos efans.
Seems ok, but I dont know about that SSD caching thing, seems a bit of a ‘patch’ to fix a slow hard drive.