Fractal Meshify 2 Case Review: Thermals, Build Quality, & Airflow Benchmarks

in the middle of reviewing all the amd ryzen cpus and nvidia ampere gpus we received this case to review and we were very happy about that not necessarily because of the product or anything but just because it was something different other than silicon products which are very interesting but at some point you want to die so now we're reviewing the fractal meshfy 2. there are two cases coming out from fractal today this is the one we're reviewing but there is also a fractal mesh by 2x or xl and that is the larger of the two we'll come back for that one in a separate review this is a 140 case the larger of them is 180 case and right now the case competition especially in this mesh fronted configuration is really fierce we've seen a major shift in how cases are designed over the last couple of years so we'll be benchmarking this for thermals acoustics noise normalized thermals and of course looking at build quality and the changes versus the previous designs before that this video is brought to you by drop and the new drop enter mechanical keyboard the drop enter 10 keyless mechanical keyboard uses an aluminum housing underside to provide rigidity when typing and topside it uses smooth gaiter on yellow or tactile halo true switches drop offers this smaller keyboard in black white and two-tone black green and calls it a beginner mechanical keyboard for soon to be enthusiasts currently drop is offering the keyboard bundled with a pc37x headset which is actually the main one we use in the office learn more at the link in the description below so first of all this is the third meshify case that fractals made it is technically again the meshfy 2 but the reasoning that this naming works out the way it does is because fraxel is trying to finally unify its naming get rid of the letters and stop confusing people so there's the define s there's a define s2 there's an s2 i think it was a mashify there's the original meshfly c that's the first one they put out not a lot of fans included in that uh poor performer out of box but was okay once you put stuff in it and some of those cases like the master yc and the masterfi s2 shared front panel designs but ultimately these newer ones appear to be moving away from some of the more annoying usability or ease of installation flaws with previous cases for example the new we'll call it tetherless design is a nice change where previously the front i o is built into the frame and connected the front panel to the rest of the chassis as a result of it's an old design it's literally the oldest one where you've got all the i o contained in a separate panel that comes off but has all the i o routed through it and sometimes it's just a pain to work with so moving away from that was one of the better moves that fractal has made with these updates recently and other updates or interesting notes would be while removing the mesh insert on the old cases required prying or yanking on the fractal logo at the bottom of the panel or just pulling the whole thing off with the bezel and everything else now the front panel swings open with a light pole on the fractal logo and the door can be popped out of its hinges for cleaning the hinges are plastic but since they're designed to pull apart they should prove a little more resilient than the dark base pro 900s which we've now shattered twice unlike be quiet's doors though the front of the meshify c only swings out about 70 degrees so the door has to be pulled off completely in order to remove the inner filter now the filter again it's removable and they've gone to a nylon rather than the original sort of foam mesh type thing which was worse for air flow so this change is one of the better ones that is beneficial to performance and in fact proving that fractal has been listening to someone at least a diagram in its manual is labeled the quote remove front filter for increased airflow which is something we've talked about for very long time now so it's good to see some moves in the right direction some actual listening while working on the product okay so we've got a lot to talk through today we're gonna go through build quality notes walk through the whole case extensive information on thermals cpu gpu alike and everything else and then we'll talk about if it's actually worth it at 140 this isn't a small case it's 541 by 240 by 454 millimeters the same size as the defined seven it's average in volume for mid tower but like many of fractals cases it's stretched out to accommodate hard drive trays in the front in a way that makes it appear larger than it is we mentioned this to give some context to the xl version of this case that we also have here but we'll be reviewing separately in a future piece the non-xl already lists support for eatx motherboards up to 285 millimeters although there are no built-in standoffs for anything larger than standard atx we could delve into whether or not large motherboards would fit into this case as we did with the defined seven but anyone who really cares about that should just wait for our upcoming meshfy 2 xl review drive cage location in this is extremely flexible which opens up interesting options for radiator mounting at the bottom of the case as well it's not an ideal location but it's technically possible thanks to the ventilated power supply shroud and is useful maybe for some form of open loop radiator in the bottom removing the hard drive cage completely is a viable option as well since the meshfy 2 includes a further four drive trays that can be mounted inside the body of the case this is a common feature of fractal's larger stretched out cases like the s2 the r6 and the define seven that's a total of six three and a half or two and a half inch mounts included in the case and two dedicated two and a half inch mounts but there's space for a further five trays in the case interior and two more with an additional hard drive cage installed underneath the shroud fraxel claims a maximum capacity of 15 three and a half inch drives for this case with two quote multi brackets as they call them mounted at the top of the case extra hard drive cage trays and multi brackets are all available separately through fractal and do cost more money though adjusting or removing hard drive cages requires removing the bottom filter and loosening four screws on the bottom of the case which as a downside were so tightly installed on our sample that we nearly stripped the heads they also appeared potentially cross-threaded this is a kind of common problem with case manufacturing where case companies will experience over-torqued screws out of the factory there are no more springs or buttons in the top panel of the case the panel itself instead snaps into the same kind of sockets used in the side and front panels with a partially removable top panel underneath it may be a simpler design than the earlier iterations with springs that were built in but there's a lot less to go wrong with it because of that removing the top panel can be done from the exterior of the case while removing the screws for the top bracket requires removing a side panel first these are all changes which were introduced to the define 7 but are new with the meshify line and getting rid of the button was a good move there are vertical gpu mounting slots as well in the mesh by 2 but as usual we don't recommend installing any sort of air cooled cards in there the slots are too close to the side panel to give gpu fans adequate room to breathe although frackle's product manual shows an air-cooled nvidia reference card being mounted this way we'd strongly advise against it and we've proven why in the past and we don't really need to keep proving why putting a video card against a glass panel with so little space is a bad idea fraxel has intentionally removed the bridges between the expansion slots in the rear panel so they can be replaced with a separately purchased vertical slot conversion kit which we'll be covering with the xl case later their description of that product includes the line quote liquid cooling recommended for vertical installation of gpus over two slots thick so someone does get it we've found that conversion kits like this generally can perform better than built-in vertical slots because they allow the gpu to be mounted further away from the side panel but more on that later the floppy plastic cable cover behind the power supply shroud is annoying to work with it's simultaneously too easy and too difficult to pop out with the plastic snaps in the middle unable to stand up against the pressure of unmanaged cables the tabs at the edges wedge firmly into the chassis so that forms the part that makes it hard to remove for personal use we'd likely end up popping the cover out and then never putting it back in this is a returning issue from our defined 7 review where we noted that we'd like some optional screw holes to tighten the plastic down there does need to be something to relieve pressure from the side panel though since both side panels are popped into place without the benefit of screws the glass side panel does have a metal tab with the screw hole hidden behind the front panel that can be used to secure it for transport but fraxel doesn't ship the case this way and even if they did they'd have a lot of confused users wondering why the panel wouldn't come off we'd like to see the screw hole in both panels maybe through the plastic tabs on the back edge somewhere where it's visible to the user in terms of cable management for the most part it's adequate to avoid any issues with the side panels the cable organizers and velcro straps still work well but there may be some overflow as the cables bundle together closer to the power supply one cable organizer isn't large enough to hold atx pcie eps 12 volt and sata power cables all at once we solved this by just running some cables alongside the organizer which isn't difficult it just looks a little uglier there are extra tie points around the edges of the case but most cables will naturally pass through the two locations where velcro straps are pre-installed the rear edge of the case and alongside the front edge of the motherboard are these main areas the top filter has a similarly dual layered system to the front but the nylon filter has small reinforcing ridges that support the metal layer from underneath that's cool but it does make us somewhat reluctant to remove the nylon filter which is what we'd recommend for a typical top exhaust configuration there's not much point to filtering dust out of exhaust the metal mesh isn't overly flexible without the reinforcement but we've definitely seen the problem before on cases with larger mesh surfaces like thermal takes level 20 rs so we'll be keeping a close eye on the xl all three filters top front and bottom have the same meshified design as the front panel with plastic ribs outlining the triangular facets on the front panel this requires perfect alignment of three different patterned layers two plastic one metal this is something that we think fractals executed well the internal nexus plus two slim pwm fan hub no affiliation at the top of the case takes sata power and pwm input and can power three four pin pwm fans and six three pin dc fans nothing fancy here and there's no external control other than the motherboard it's more for tidying up cables than anything else the three stock fans are three pin models so they can be attached to this hub with room to spare although we always connect case fans directly to the motherboard for benchmarking as described in our methodology the stock fans are all 140 mil and they're dynamic x2 gp14s those are rated at 1000 rpm max with a standard manufacturing variance of plus or minus 10 percent in our testing they ranged between 900 and 1000 rpm so that's expected these are the same silence focused fans from the meshfi s2 previously they didn't impress us back then but they also had a much more restrictive front panel to contend with so we'll see how they perform in thermals later on each of the fan mounts in the case can fit either a 120ml or 140ml fan the rear fan mount is no exception but we find it slightly odd that it has slots cut for 120 millimeter fan and those are arranged in such a way that it can only be mounted in one location they could have just as easily bend holes instead of slots to allow for more customization radiator support claims aren't overly ambitious on this one max rear radiator support is said to be 120 millimeters despite fitting 140 ml fans but you do have to accommodate the tank and front radiator support is 360 mil despite fitting 3 140 fans again you have to accommodate the tanks on either end remember as well that radiators are larger than fans because of other things like tubes and fittings and then the reservoirs the power supply shroud has two tiers of cutouts a small one to allow room for a fan at the bottom of the front panel and a larger one to allow for tubes or drive cages this case could theoretically fit a tubes down 360 ml clc in the front but it would require longer tubes for top mounted rods fractal warns that anything 140ml wide will only clear motherboard components like ram with a max height of 36 millimeters measured from the surface of the board speaking of clearance fractal also lists a maximum gpu length of 491 millimeters or 19.3 inches so it can actually double as storage for gpu scalpers front i o includes two usb 3.0 type a ports and one usb type c eliminating the additional two usb 2.0 ports of the defined seven we always prefer more to less for this but two type a ports is still more than some cases deliver three and a half millimeter audio jacks are separated into discreet mic and headphone ports here fortunately and there's a reset button the only lighting in the case is a white led that's tucked behind the top edge of the mesh panel rgb lighting in this case will likely be underwhelming since backlighting for the front panel hides the facets of the mesh and our dark tinted version prevents much light from escaping the interior anyway fraxel offers black grey and white skews with dark tinting available on the black model of the case light tinting on the black and the grey models and clear tinting only on the white model the black case is also available as a non-tempered glass solid version that replaces the glass with a second steel side panel we stuck with our standard test for this review with one additional task with just the nylon filter removed and the metal mesh left in place the xl is a larger case with more room to play around with fan configurations so we might do some additional front panel tests with that one and you can stay tuned for that we'll start with only some of the fractal cases in cpu testing and then look at the rest starting with our torture test the cpu averaged 50 degrees celsius over ambience which dropped to 48 degrees with the entire mesh assembly removed from the front panel removing just the filter had almost exactly the same effect with another resulting average of 48 degrees the metal mesh is fairly open and it makes no difference to the relatively slow low volume 140 ml stock fans whether it's there or not we'd expect more of a gap to open up and test in with faster aftermarket fans the defined s2 meshify is a different case but ranked similarly the magifi c original case wasn't great stock at 54 degrees over ambient but adding some expensive fans got it toward the top of the chart compared to the closest fractal model the massive via s2 the meshfi 2 the new one is almost tied with its 51 degree average that's not surprising given that the fans are the same again a greater performance difference may emerge with higher speed fans which we'll cover with the xl other airflow focused cases which we've reviewed recently like the lancel 215 at 45.4 degrees average and the 4000d airflow at 50 degrees average outperform fractals meshify to varying degrees but the meshfy 2 is definitely an improvement over unventilated cases like the defined 7 which averaged 63 degrees in this test the cooler master td-500 was also around 51 degrees over ambience and is another budget competitor gpu temperatures were almost impressively stable even compared to the cpu nothing we did persuaded the temperature to vary more than a fraction of a degree from baseline which rounded to 51 degrees celsius over ambience with everything else stock much of this comes from the relatively low power fans coupled with a front panel that isn't too restrictive of those fans removing the front panel averaged 52 degrees and removing the front panel averaged 52 degrees but both were within variance of the original result the fractal mesh 5c original case plotted about 58 degrees celsius over ambience with variations including more fans spotting around 56. so far the new meshfy 2 panel is less restrictive than we've seen in other tests comparatively the stock massify s2 averaged 55 degrees so this is one instance where the newer case takes the lead even the landcool 215 and 4000d airflow averaged 52 degrees about the same as the mesh52 stock during this test the be quiet 500dx is another relatively low cost airflow case performing similar at again 52. this seems to be about the new point for the bulk of airflow cases particularly ones that are in the 100-ish dollar class that aren't outfitted with those higher performance fans average gpu temperature during the fire strike stress test was 52 degrees celsius above ambient nearly identical to the original torture test result this test is a good indicator of whether hot exhaust from the cpu cooler has any effect on gpu temperature as it's more of a gaming gpu load and in this case we're not seeing that impact the opposite was true of the defined 7 though which averaged 50 degrees in this test the meshfi s2 moved towards the warm end of the chart averaging 58 degrees over ambience while the lian li lancole 215 and 4000d airflow stayed at approximately the same level as the meshfy 2 with averages of 52 and 51 degrees respectively average cpu temperature when rendering our standard monkey head scene was 36.2 degrees celsius above ambient placing it between the p500a digital and the purebase 500dx there are many cases that have done significantly better in this test and the massify s2 performed sorta worse but basically with an error at an average of 37 degrees without additional heat from the gpu cpu temperatures improve here using the gpu to render the scene raised its average to 23.5 degrees over ambience which is very close again in performance to the land called 215 and corsair 4000d airflow and it's also much cooler than the meshfi s2's average of 28.4 degrees over ambient all the gpu-centric tests we've done so far have shown the mesh of i2 to be relatively strong in this category replacing the three one forty mil stock fans with the two one forty mil and one one twenty mill knocks with fans that we use for standardized testing lowered the average cpu temperature down to 47 degrees and that's a greater improvement than the one we saw from removing the front panel now this test is by popular demand we introduced it a while ago over a year ago now and there's a lot of caveats with it so if you don't understand what those are you should definitely watch the methodology piece to make sure you understand where this data is useful and where it isn't still this hasn't vastly improved over baseline and it comes at the cost of a huge increase in noise compared to the other cases on the standardized fan chart 47 degrees puts it on the warm side of the mesh fronted cases tied with the mesh of ic that's a little depressing given that the filter layer seems like it should be more breathable but the filter layer is also intentionally removable in the meshify 2 which is a huge advantage on its own users can choose to take the filter out completely without altering the look of the case if they decide to moving to the gpu's average temperature of 48 degrees celsius above ambient in this test the meshfy 2 is more competitive landing between the lancol 2 mesh and the p500a digital more importantly it beats the 4000d airflow and solidly defeats the mesh of ic's 55 degree average this isn't the least obstructed front panel design but fractal has done relatively well by allowing users to set it up the way that they want using our standard noise testing methodology and with case fans at 100 speed we measured the noise level of the mesh by 2 to be 39.7 dba getting that down to 36 dba thresholds for our noise normalized testing required reduced speed for the three fans in the case down to 75 percent and we always leave the cpu and the gpu alone the resulting cpu temperature was 51 degrees celsius over ambience on average barely changed from baseline and that takes the massive by 2 from okay and the torture test to excellent tied with the p400a rgb and only significantly beaten by the lancole 215's 47 degree average the meshfy 2 isn't especially quiet with all the fans spinning as fast as possible but it's capable of maintaining nearly the same performance level and being much quieter at reduced speeds the gpu averaged 52 degrees in this test again barely changed from baseline and therefore again more competitive than it was in the torture test it's ahead of the land called 215 and 4000d airflow at 53 degrees average silence cooling is always fractal's goal but the masterfight cases are far better at achieving that goal than their noise damped cases so the title for our original fractal defined seven review these names these this is why they're changing the naming scheme i can't name a fractal case without looking at the sheet because they're all over the place they're working on that but the fractal defined 7 review was titled high build quality and thermal challenges and we that's a pretty good representation of that product the meshify 2 in nearly the same case mind you this pretty similar chassis in a lot of ways has solved a lot of the thermal issues of the defined 7 by well changing the front panel changing the configuration internally such that it's beneficial to airflow changing things like the filters and what material the filter is comprised of and the mesh is comprised of at the front of the case the defined seven for contacts did leave us with a positive impression it just had those thermal issues given that this is so close to the defined seven except it's resolved the thermal issues that moves us into territory where not only is it generally a positive impression of the build quality overall but actually of the performance now the biggest issue here that fractal will face is that its competitors have all gotten the idea to finally make airflow cases seems like everyone's caught on to that we're not we have absolutely no idea why suddenly people are paying attention to not overheating their components but it's a great change and we've seen a lot of it and particularly we've seen a push in this uh sector of the market where you're sort of the 70 to 110 range in that range you run into the cooler master td 500 great performer on our charts you've seen it in these today you run into the be quiet 500 dx the land called two on five uh some of the other lienly cases the fantax p 400 a was roughly in that range up to 70 to 110 typically towards the higher end of that p 500 a isn't distant and so there's a lot of really good competition right now and even the defined seven if you just like this case but you don't really care as much about the airflow the fine seven is about 90 bucks now on newegg at least at the time we checked right before obviously uploading and that too is a good deal at that pricing we don't really recommend the define seven over the match by two this is a much better case in our opinion but if you don't care about the airflow then it is cheaper and you get a lot of the same stuff the biggest thing this deserves credit for is performing well at lower noise levels that noise normalized performance with the rest of the cases which is designed as a test to check for efficiency rather than just blasting the fans so it did well there it gets credit for that fractal and its mesh 52 is probably not necessarily the first case we would choose for an airflow oriented case right now because there's so many good ones in the 140 and under class so not necessarily our first choice it's not bad the case itself is overall fine to good depending on which aspect you're looking at again noise normalized thermal performance actually very good the problem is that there are also a lot of other very good cases right now which is a good thing and uh those are cheaper similar in price so we are fine with this case and the way we wrap up this review is basically if you look at this and you like it and it fits your needs then we're fine with you buying it we don't have a hard note do not buy this recommendation or anything like that we're also not saying definitely buy this over every single other case because there are a lot of options and they're worth considering you should look up while you're doing research on your cases of course this one is worthy of consideration is good quality and performs well but you should also look up the cooler master td 500 which performed very well in testing cheaper length cool 215. you should look up the ap500a you should look up the liam lee 011 dynamic but you would need to do some extra expense for fans for that one and the corsair 4000d airflow has another example of a recent performance those are all much cheaper the build quality does fall off as you get lower down that pricey glass you can start to feel structurally where the price where the the cost is the bomb cost so this does spend more in that category but that's it for this one fractal's done well overall here with this case it's defined seven and in a lot of senses in terms of our impressions of it except with the thermal problem fixed so looking good overall for the mesh phy two the name will eventually stick but dropping the letter's been hard for us so that's it for this one thanks for watching as always you can go to store.gamersexes.net or patreon.comgamersnexus help that directly subscribe for more we'll see you all next time

Channel: Gamers Nexus

Views: 586,729

Keywords: gamersnexus, gamers nexus, computer hardware, cases, best cases, best gaming cases, best airflow cases, airflow cases, fractal design meshify 2, fractal meshify 2 case review, fractal design meshify 2 case review, fractal design meshify 2 xl review, fractal meshify 2 vs h500

Id: qTW2KHGzbM0

Length: 24min 26sec (1466 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020