- Today, we got cases. We got Fractal cases.
They made the pop series.
They're in a whole bunch of colors.
We got orange, green, magenta.
You know, I like all of these a lot,
but, as you can see,
I'm wearing a lot of blue today.
I got a blue hat on.
I got the party shirt on.
I got blue shoes, I got blue socks.
So we're saving my favorite out of the whole series,
the cyan one for-
(beep)
It's cyan, right? Not cee-an?
(laughing)
I don't know if it's cee-an or cyan, but you know what?
That's the one I'm unboxing today, 'cause it's my favorite.
(grunting)
These are cool.
So I'm a big Fractal fan.
My last computer was a Meshify C
and then my current computer is a Fractal Torrent.
And I gotta say, I just love their cases.
They're usually super easy to build in.
They've got most of the features that you want
especially if you're paying a little more
for their higher end cases.
But the pop series, it's kind of supposed to compete,
I think they're about $80 if you don't get the RGB.
And then if you do get RGB, they're $90.
So they go up about 10 bucks.
Oh, this looks great.
I love the color blue that they've chosen.
It's got support for a 280 on the front
and then a 240 on the top.
I'd probably just air cool this thing though.
I mean it comes with three fans.
You've got 2 120s in the front
and then a 120 rear exhaust in the back.
That's probably good enough.
You could maybe do another exhaust up here or something.
Fractal and Phanteks are probably my two favorites
when it comes to cases and cable management.
I think they just do a really good job.
You can get this in non-tempered glass.
So just like a regular flat look if you want
but I don't really know why you'd do that
because you want the color.
So you're gonna show it off.
I don't, whatever, that's up to you.
How does this, oh, it slides out.
So for the back though, it's not bad.
It's not super nice.
With a nicer case, you're gonna get stuff
like rubber grommets around the cable cutouts.
You might get more,
I mean this has cable ties, so this isn't too bad
but you might get like a more dedicated space
to run your cables instead of just kind of an area.
There might be like a much deeper channel here.
SSD Mount.
So there's two three and a half inch drive bays down here.
One thing I actually really like
is the drive bays are the same shade of blue.
You've got a few other places they've accented it,
like on the feet.
And then on the top IO here, is also blue.
One place that I'm a little disappointed
they don't add any extra color to, is the front.
They're going with their newer mesh instead of having,
I don't think there's a screen behind this,
there's no filter,
it's just like a much finer mesh on the front.
It would've been really nice to see either this cover here
be the same kind of blue, or the mesh itself be blue.
I don't know if the paint particles would be too thick.
A lot of the time you're seeing
like the front and this side
you're not really seeing the back or the rear.
And I really would've just liked a little,
like one more touch of blue
would've kind of brought this more to life in my opinion.
But it still looks pretty nice.
Honestly, for like $90 since we've got the RGB version,
it seems not bad.
I think it's a better competitor
than something like maybe the H510 Flow.
But I think they're just, oh, that fell off really easy.
What's this?
Oh, there's drive bays, CD drive bays like holy (beep).
I can't remember the last time I had a case
that actually had five and a quarter inch bays for anything.
But you know what,
if you still need a dedicated like Blu-ray drive,
or something along those lines,
maybe this is the option.
It's got a lot of storage space as well.
So if you're kind of like a media hoarder
it's got five SSD mounts, room for up to three HDDs
only if you don't use this though
as the five and a quarter inch bay,
you can fit another drive in there I'm pretty sure.
What is this?
It looks like an ash tray.
- [Jake] Yeah, it's a storage drawer.
- It's a storage drawer.
I don't know why anyone would use this,
but to each their own.
If you've got stuff you wanna hide in there, you know,
some illegal things, then go for it.
Maybe it's a good hiding space.
Another problem I have with a lot of cases
is that the fan filters on the bottom
can sometimes slide out
while you're pulling it up from the bottom
if you're holding it like this.
And I could see that being a huge thing
if you're trying to lift this case entirely from the bottom.
So this whole front comes off pretty easily too, actually.
Like I thought, there's no extra filter here.
This mesh is so fine
you're not gonna get a bunch of stuff in there.
You're not even gonna get many bugs crawling through this.
Cool. So this looks pretty sweet.
And because you can detach so much
it actually looks pretty easy to build in
which we're gonna do
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Now we build things in this, but I need parts.
Where are all my parts, Mr. parts man?
Oh my God, here they are.
At $80 or $90, this is one of the more like
decent budget cases on the market at the moment.
So we've selected kind of more budget oriented parts,
nothing too crazy, but nothing too super budget either.
You can get this in a smaller size, but it's the same price.
Or you can get it in a larger size at the XL
for 110 for the RGB version.
So about $20 more, which isn't too bad
if you want a bigger case for more stuff.
I need my CPU.
Where's my CPU.
I don't even know what I'm using yet.
Oh yeah, An i5-11600K, it's a really good CPU.
You might wanna get like a 12600K cause it's brand new.
Yeah. 11th gen is kind of dead.
12th Gen is the new king and 13th gen comes out pretty soon.
So if you want to go extreme budget
we just did the $500 budget PC.
And that used a 12100F and honestly,
for a four core eight thread CPU, it's pretty good.
Let's put our SSD, we went with the Sabrent one terabyte.
We're gonna take the motherboard armor off.
I hate this stuff, even though it looks cool.
One of the only good things
about the motherboard armor stuff,
especially for your SSDs,
is they come with a strip of thermal pads.
So they'll keep your SSD cool.
But the reality is most M.2 NVME SSDs,
unless you're doing like really crazy workloads,
they're not gonna get that hot.
Like if you're just gaming,
you can probably just throw an SSD in there
and it's gonna be perfectly fine.
Pops in just like that, just like our pop case.
So yeah, here is why I need the standoff.
It's because the 2280 is too small
for the one that they include.
But then the motherboard armor itself,
screws down on top of it.
So honestly we could get away
with just like screwing down this SSD.
You know, that's what I'm gonna do.
Ram.
People like how hairy I am.
All natural baby.
- [Jake] Baby since the 70's baby.
- I got it on my chest and everywhere else,
except for my head.
That's how it works.
NH-U12S, pretty good cooler from Noctua.
Yeah. This little guy.
So this is great.
One great thing about Noctua's mounting system
is they use basically the same one
for a lot of their coolers.
What side are the screws on on this guy?
They're here and here.
I wanna mount it like this.
So then I want them like this.
We're just gonna go air cooling today.
But like I said before, you can do a 280 on the front
and you can do a 240 up here.
There's not a ton of depth though.
So if you're gonna do a top rad, I don't know,
I would definitely try to install it first
before you put your board in.
Otherwise it's gonna be a real pain
trying to screw all that stuff down.
As for motherboard support,
you can do ATX and anything smaller than that.
So MATX, ITX, whatever.
You just can't fit like a big EATX board.
Oh yeah. I got my thermal paste.
Love it.
Noctua all the way.
(singing) Gimme the drip of thermal paste.
Did I put them in the right slots?
Hell yeah, I did.
Okay, cool.
Good old Noctua.
They make it real simple.
You just screw this all the way down until it stops.
It's tight, but don't worry, they know what they're doing.
What kind of Ram is this? It's nice.
Trident Z 3200C16,
that's like about the sweet spot for gaming memory
Get in the hole.
I'm just gonna pick it up by the cooler
and throw it in here.
All of our motherboard standoffs are already in place
and I'm gonna hope that they're in the right spots
'cause honestly, most of these cases
just come with your standoffs pre-installed
in the right space for an ATX motherboard.
And yeah, because this has the IO shield,
we don't have to put that in either.
I'm gonna hate myself later
for not plugging in the CPU headers, but that's okay.
'cause this isn't a NHD 15. it's just a U12S.
So it's not gonna take up like this much space
and I can still fit my hands in there.
Pro tip,
If you go to screw your motherboard screws down
and they don't bite right away,
you're probably using the wrong size.
I am gonna cheat a little
and we're not gonna screw all of these in.
You can throw like four screws into your motherboard
and it's not going anywhere.
Linus has scared me before,
by only putting like two screws into a motherboard,
but you know what?
It doesn't fall. He's right.
They're fine every time, so.
- [Jake] That's the Plouffe guarantee.
- That's the Plouffe guarantee.
If you put four screws into your motherboard,
you're probably good to go.
Please don't, that's not a real guarantee.
Please don't use that.
Just always screw all your motherboards down.
But like the reality is, you're probably good.
This is like the perfect example
of why I really wish motherboard still came in colors
and I get why they don't.
But this thing would look absolutely sick
if you painted your board.
If you could get a cooler that's colored, or something,
or you could like paint it or whatever, like,
I guess that's why you might actually want an AIO in this
is so that you can like make the RGB pump all, you know,
the exact color that you want.
Jesus Christ, 854?
If you're building a budget rig,
please do not use a THOR power supply.
They're a little overkill.
This is an 850 platinum.
Really nice power supply, don't get me wrong.
I don't know if this one, 'cause it's the 850,
I've only used the thousand watt,
but they should have a power read out here,
which is super cool.
Yeah. It's a full power supply shroud.
So you're not really gonna see it anyway.
The cool thing is they report wattage being used
in this little window.
And so if you can look at it, it's just pretty cool.
So I need these guys, I need our ATX,
and then we're not doing any hard drives or anything.
So we don't need SATA power.
Oh unless...
The RGB on most Fractal cases that I'm aware of,
requires SATA power.
So even if you're not putting in HDDs or anything like that,
just have a SATA plug plugged in anyway.
CPU, VGA, PCA, peripheral SATA molex, boop.
I actually wanna know how many PCIE I need.
So I'm gonna open the GPU really quick.
That's a Strix, is another really nice GPU.
It's only a 3060
but Strix cards are typically pretty nice.
Like this is a beefy three fan cooler, 3060.
My 3090 at home is not much bigger than this guy
and it stays cool enough, so whatever.
As you can see,
it does only require one eight pin power connector.
So we're just gonna plug one in to our power supply.
So this is the one instance
where I'm actually gonna plug in the cables first
and then I'm gonna run them through the case
and then plug them into the power supply afterwards
because the CPU stuff is just always a pain.
Yeah. I'm gonna run these up here.
And ideally you would do this
even before the motherboard is all the way in
and I'm sorry this is gonna be hard to see on camera
especially cause I wanna make this easy for myself.
This is kind of just normal.
It's not really a problem with the case.
There is enough space for me to work in here
especially because my air cooler isn't super beefy.
Definitely try to plug these in first
before installing the cooler.
'Cause if I didn't have this extra hand space right here
this would be a major pain in the ass.
You're not gonna fit this in the back through here.
So when you're building this,
just make sure you give yourself
a lot of room on the inside here
so that you can slide it in.
Oh, it's even got little padded feet for the power supply
so that if it vibrates,
it's not gonna make any noise on the case.
I totally put this in, screwed it in,
completely forgot that I didn't have my CPU cables in.
And of course they're all the way over at the side here.
When you're managing your cables,
the biggest thing to remember, is over, under.
You never want to cross stuff as much as possible
'cause that's gonna add to the bulge.
One kind of minor thing that I noticed
while installing the USB,
and this is kind of a motherboard issue
because usually they're on the side here
and it's perfectly fine,
but in this case you really want to get
a right angle connector or something for this
because it's really on the bottom here
and it's straining quite a bit.
Like I'm not even super comfortable plugging this in
because there's just no space.
Like the only alternative is to run the cable way out
to get this more straight.
And that just kind of looks ugly.
So I'm not doing it.
Our GPU should be two slot, maybe even two and a half,
but it's not quite three.
Which is good, because a three slot 3060
has got me scared.
'Cause yeah, a three slot 3060 is just kinda insane.
What are you caught on, anything?
Nope.
I just need to push, cool.
Plug our final power connector in.
If you want to hide this guy,
the easiest way to do it is to take it kinda like it is now,
and then zip tie it together behind the cable.
And that way you can still see it if you go looking for it,
but it's not nearly as noticeable,
especially when you kind of tuck it under like this.
I guess my one complaint is
I'm gonna have enough room to cable manage in this
without much issue,
but it doesn't really have that deep centered channel
that I like to see here where you can kind of
smush cables into.
Save like five or 10 of these for just
whenever you need them
because it's really easy to undo these.
And the rest of our cables,
we're basically just gonna stuff them back here
'cause they actually kind of fit pretty well in there.
We're gonna throw our front cover back on.
We put our weird tray.
I don't like this tray.
I'm sorry, Fractal. I don't see the point.
But then again, I personally don't really see the point
in a Blu-ray drive either.
It's a reasonably sturdy back panel.
One nice thing that you could do
to make this just a little more poppy
is you can get anodized colored thumb screws.
Again, this isn't the kind of case
that I would spend a whole bunch of money upgrading.
I would buy it, build in it, use it, never touch it again.
If you're willing to go and spend a bunch more money
on the extra parts on your case,
at that point, just buy a nicer case.
It looks nice though, I like it.
Yeah. I'm not trying to harsh on the case.
I actually really like this thing so far.
Hey, there it goes.
So it looks like I missed an RGB for the fan.
That's okay.
Once again,
I kind of wish that you could get colored components
and you could make everything like your actual dream color
or it was a lot easier to just spray paint stuff.
Like that's probably one of my main complaints
about this case
is it's like 80% of the way there
but I really would've loved some more accents.
Other than that, it's pretty good.
I think that this is probably one of the best cases
you're gonna get in this price range.
If you want a case that's a good budget that is colorful
and you don't really like the H510 flow,
or other cases around the same price,
I can definitely recommend this thing.
I mean, we haven't like stress tested it
in terms of thermals or anything
but the reality is the two intake fans at the front
and then the one at the back,
that's probably gonna do you just fine
with any sort of more budget oriented parts.
And then if you really think it's not enough
then go ahead and throw another exhaust up here
or another intake right here maybe.
If it was five years ago,
I probably wouldn't recommend spending $90 on this case
but considering the current market
and how everything just keeps going up and up and up,
yeah, I think this is a pretty good buy.
Thanks for watching everyone.
If you enjoyed this video,
make sure to check out the one Colin did
where he built in a Fractal torrent nano.
He put a 3090 and an 11900 K or something in there.
It was pretty cool.
You could fit a lot of horsepower in one of these bad boys.