Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 Review
Structure, Design and other features – Inside of the enclosure …
Let us now take a look inside of the Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 case. The Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 is also inside of the chassis completely black coated exept a few white accents and all plate edges are very well deburred, folded and rounded, so that you can easily upgrade the PC without cuts. For an easier assembly, the motherboard tray is equipped with labeled holes for the distance screws and an extra large en recess for the CPU cooler mounting.
On this picture you can see the huge cut-out, that allows a trouble-free mounting of a screwed CPU cooler into the case, even after the installation of the motherboard. Furthermore, you can see very nice that you can route the cables through the rubber cut-out behind the motherboard rear panel. This concept provides improves the airflow on the component side and optimizes the look for the Casewindow. Also the motherboard plate is supplied with additional holes, to allow the rear mounting of two 2.5″ SSDs.
The top three 5.25″ drive bays are provided with a drive holding mechanism and can be mounted additionally with screws.
For the 3.5″ drives are the lower trays with white drive bays, equipped with rubbers for less vibration. A press on the clips easily releases the desired drive from the HDD cage:
To offer even more ways to configure, such as a radiator or to install extremely long graphics cards up to 430 mm or to improve the air circulation, the drive cages can be dismounted or rotated depending on the desire. The construction is very clever and allows an optimum adaptation to the respective hardware !
Here you can see the white coated slots, which were fitted with black metal knurled screws in this chassis. All cards can be mounted easily and without a screwdriver into the PC. Here you can see the 7 slots together with the additional vertically-mounted slot.
Over the slots and in the top of the case already white 140 mm fans are integrated, which carries the heated CPU cooler air quietly and reliably out of the chassis.
Already a 140 mm fan is integrated into the removable front cover, which can be installed also to the lower front according to the HDD cage mounting.
BTW. the three case fans can be connected to the 3-step fan control to adjust them manually depending on the application. But in the meanwhile, some motherboards offers their own PWM fan controllers that can control multiple fans depending on the temperature and should be used at least for some fans.
All I/O panel connectors of both LEDs, power button and reset button are well labeled. The attention label on the USB connector cable is extremely important, because you must not plug the USB 3.0 connector together with the USB 2.0 connector on the mainboard. Both, the USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 plugs of the Arc Midi R2 are simply switched together, to either use two USB 2.0 ports or two USB 3.0 ports on the front panel. The internal USB connector for both USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 ports and the connector for the 3.5mm audio plugs are each build in one block, whereby the audio connector offers an AC’97 and a HD audio pin allocation. So it is not necessary to connect each pin to the motherboard. Nevertheless one should compare the pin allocations of the plugs with the motherboard manual before the installation.
Result and general impression of the Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 Case …