FRACTAL DESIGN DEFINE R4

The Define R4 is still a popular and widely available case, but it’s one of Fractal’s slightly older designs now. As such, it has an older-style layout that puts more emphasis on drive bays than compactness and cooling. But it does have an ace up its sleeve. Starting with that layout, though, you can squeeze in a whopping eight 3.5in drives, as well as two 5.25in drives, which is fairly ludicrous by modern standards, particularly as the huge stack of 3.5in bays gets in the way of longer graphics cards. It takes removing just a couple of screws to slide out the whole middle section of bays, opening up a nice gap for your graphics card to extend into.

Elsewhere, this is clearly a premium case with quality touches everywhere. You also get masses of cooling options, with seven 120/140mm fan mounts. Two of these are occupied and combine to provide good overall cooling, with the lowest CPU temp on test and a mid-table result for the GPU.

And as for that trick up its sleeve? The case is plastered in sound deadening material, meaning that only the strong whoosh of fans comes through.

Still, there are plenty of other cases with more modern layouts that would probably suit most users better, including Fractal’s own Define S.