Fractal Design Mood PC Case Review

what is up guys we're back with another video and today we're checking out this case right here this is the fractile design mood so let's go ahead and take a look [Music] now to start off they're going to be two different colorways of this case to start out so we have the Black Version here it's also going to be available in a light gray color for me the Black version is more of a dark gray version as most of the case is going to be this dark gray and then we have black accents on the top and bottom of the case when it comes to the actual size of the case as you can see see it is pretty small now I'll go ahead and put the official dimensions up on the screen here like I always do now this is going to be a 20.4 l case and it's going to weigh in at just over 10 lb without any hardware inside now as far as the shape this is more or less shaped almost exactly like an Xbox series X the really interesting thing about the design of this case is that fractal has wrapped the case on on three sides with this double layered textured fabric so it really makes this look like a speaker sitting on your desk as opposed to like your PC which I really like it's going to really help this kind of blend into your setup which I'm definitely a fan of now this fabric isn't necessarily super thick or anything like that so it should allow the case to breathe and get proper airflow on the front of the case towards the bottom you'll find a small fractile design logo as well as your Connections in butt buttons there's a combination headphone microphone Jack a USB 3.2 gen 2x2 type-c Port large power button and two USB 3.0 type A ports the back of the case is the only side that doesn't have fabric on it instead you have a normal panel with large ventilation holes and a larger fractal design logo towards the bottom the top of the case is all ventilated that's because of the large 180 mm fan mounted at the top of the case we'll get get a better look at it once we get inside getting in this case is really easy so here we are at the back and the first thing you want to do is just simply pull on this back panel and it's going to go ahead and easily unlock and as you can see we actually have a filter on this back panel this is a magnetic filter and it easily slides right out it makes it really easy to clean but you can also just run this case without the filter if you want better better performance with the back panel removed we need to remove two screws so there's one here and one here so let's go ahead and take those out when you remove those screws that unlocks the entire three panel section of the case so all you have to do really is just pull up on it and it comes right off super easy to get in this case and this is sort of like on a rail system so I've reviewed a few cases that are in this same design that have like a three- panel system like this and sometimes they're really hard to get lined up or anything like that this easily like I said take it off and you can easily go ahead and put it right back on with all the panels removed we can get a better idea of how the inside of the case is designed the back of the case where we initially remove the first panel will house your graphics card this is made possible of course by a pcie riser cable as far as graphics cards go the mood will support a tw- slot graphics card up to 3 325 mm in length moving over to the opposite side you'll first find a cooling bracket as well as a hard drive cage the hard drive cage does support either a 3.5 in or 2.5 in hard drive now in order to make full use of the cooling bracket you'll have to remove the hard drive cage so it is a sacrifice if you want to fully populate it with fans or an all-in-one liquid CPU Cooler the cooling bracket is fully removable from the case and will support up to 2120 or 2100 in 40 mm fans as well as radiators up to 280 mm there is a Max width of 148 mm on your radiator in fan combo with the cooling bracket removed we can see where we're going to mount our sfx or sfx L power supply and our Mini ITX motherboard your power supply will be mounted at the top of the case while your motherboard will be closer to the bottom we can also see how the pcie Riser is routed between the two sides of the case fractile has also routed a power extension cable inside the case so you can easily connect power to the system from the bottom taking a closer look at the fan it's a very large 180 mm fan that's 38 mm thick which is set in an exhaust position it's fractiles Dynamic X2 gp18 which is a pwm fan that will spin between 300 and 1200 RPM with a max airflow between 44.9 and 153.7 CFM and a max noise level between 16 and 35.4 DBA if you planned on making full use of the cooling bracket you would have to remove that hard drive cage so you do get some extra hard drive options so there are optional brackets this is the 2.5 in bracket so all you would have to do is you install your 2.5 in SSD on this side you flip it around and then you line up your grooves here and you just press it in and it locks into the side of the case super easy to do the second hard drive bracket is the 0.5 in bracket or that's what fractile is calling it I have it right here and it actually gets installed on the top section of the case so I've actually gone ahead and removed the top fan super easy to do just four screws and you can pull it right off now you'll go ahead and install your 2.5 in SSD right in here there are mounting holes on each side super easy to do and then all you do is you just line up your grooves just like this and then you just press it in and you'll be good to go obviously because it's where the fan Mount is it will interrupt your cooling just a bit so definitely keep that in mind but if you were making use of the side cooling bracket and you remove that hard drive cage this case will support up to two 2.5 in ssds when it came to my installation things were actually really easy I always dread doing small form factor builds because they're just a pain to do a lot of the times things you know you just feel like you don't have enough space but with all of the panels removed installing everything was really easy motherboard winning no problem graphics card winning no problem connecting everything was actually really easy the only thing that I did notice is that fractel didn't use the standard header connector for Mini ITX motherboards they had single connectors specifically so I actually had to go on my phone and look up the user manual for my miniitx motherboard to see where to connect those headers having the standard connector would have just made things a lot easier so here's what my build looks like before we go ahead and put all the panels back on like I said really easy to build in this and again everything just has its place nothing was really out of place we did an air cold build so we didn't do any AIO installation but because that cooling bracket is removable I would assume that aiio installation would be pretty easy as well when you power on the system you will see RGB lighting if you do have it on your motherboard or on your CPU Cooler or on your memory on the front side and then on the back side you'll see RG lighting if you do have it on your graphics card all of your connections do come out of the back of the case on the bottom so you will have to kind of put the system on its side and connect everything and again if you need to connect anything down the line you'll have to do that as well here's what the system looks like on my desk as you can see it doesn't take up any space at all and with all the cables being routed out the back we don't have any cable mess either when it comes to testing we're going to be testing both temperatures and noise levels so here's a breakdown of our test [Music] system as we come to the end here I have to say that I'm really impressed with fractile design they've sort of built out this niche of cases that don't look like your standard PC case you know while I have all this RGB back here not everybody wants that and I think a lot of people just want a sleek and elegant case that's going to look good sitting on their desk in the mood I think is definitely that you know they have this really cool design with this fabric exterior that really makes it look like a speaker and I definitely like that now of course this is a small form factor system and the biggest thing that I look for for small form factor systems is how easy is this to build in and this is actually super easy to build in it's really easy to remove the panels you know once I was doing my install I didn't feel like I didn't have space or anything like that everything was very straightforward so I definitely like that as far as cooling goes it's obviously going to depend on you know what you have installed in here in the cooling that you choose the single fan does do a good job I would of course advise adding more fans and for the most part I think if you're doing a high-end build I would definitely advise doing a liquid cool build in here and again you can support up to a 280 mm AIO in here which is definitely nice as well so overall this is a great small form factor system for people who just want something that's going to look elegant on their desk and of course is really easy to install in as well now frati will be selling this for $149.99 which I think is a very fair price so if you have any questions about the mood go ahead and leave it in the comments section below and if you did enjoy this video I would appreciate it if you hit the thumbs up and we'll see you guys in the next video [Music]

Channel: ThinkComputers

Views: 3,717

Keywords: thinkcomputers, tech, pc hardware, fractal design mood, fractal mood, fractal design mood case, fractal design mood pc case, fractal design mood build, fractal mood build, fractal design mood review, fractal mood mini itx, fractal design mini itx

Id: dblgY45GgdE

Length: 10min 57sec (657 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2024