Assembly

Installing the motherboard is done by traditional means. It will sit right inside the recessed area of the tray. The Gigabyte GeForce GTX970 G1 Gaming Edition is not long enough to get in the way of any potential hard-drive cages either, so you should run into no such issues. As the Define R5 is a silent chassis, I chose to install the radiator into the front, leaving the top with its sound-dampening covers alone. Fractal Design was kind enough to supply us with their Kelvin S24 cooling solution for our case reviews.


Each metal hard-drive tray may hold a 2.5" or 3.5" drive. Fractal Design redesigned these to reduce the amount of required metal without sacrificing any functionality.


Both types of drives require screws, but 3.5" variants will also need anti-vibration rings before the drive itself can be pinned down with special screws Fractal Design supplies. There is nothing unusual when it comes to installing a 2.5" drive. The only noteworthy difference here is that it sits right in the middle, with its connectors right above the tray's edge.


Once filled, simply slide the trays into the bay of your choice. They will snap into place and hold quite well without any additional screws.


The installation of an SSD onto the backside of the motherboard also takes screws. Simply take the white metal piece off, add the drive, and put it back into place.


You do not need any tools for the optical drive, and removing the front cover of the bay of your choice is easily done as well, thanks to its (un)locking mechanism. Once free, slide the drive into place and use the supplied thumbscrews to hold it in place.


Last, but not least, adding the power supply is also done by traditional means, with the use of the screws Fractal Design supplies.


With everything installed, the Define R5's interior makes a very clean impression. With Velcro strips holding all cables in place, all of those have been hidden away behind the motherboard tray nicely.

Finished Looks

Turn the system on and how well the R5's sound-dampening works becomes apparent. There is a definitive increase in noise after you open the front door, which proofs that the door does a good job in encapsulating it. The same goes for the side panels and the top of the chassis. A blue LED lights up, glowing through the little cut-out in the front to let you know that the system is up and running.


The LED is clearly visible even with the door closed. As you can see in the picture above, the door now swings open to the right, and the Kelvin S24's two 120 mm fans are humming away behind the dust filter.


Everything in the rear is where you would expect it to be, and taking a peek into the chassis through the top reveals the reason as to why one should really avoid using this area for cooling. The entire top is one big air vent. It is just as wide as the chassis itself, which makes little sense as most will require it to be no wider than a 140 mm fan, which greatly diminish any noise-encapsulating attributes the chassis might have had. There is also no dust filter here. Fractal Design should maybe sell an upgrade kit with panels that are perforated and have a built-in dust filter to give those looking to install a radiator or cooling into the top the ability to do so without giving dust a chance.