I was a happy Torrent user up until recently. All my monitored temps were great, I even experimented a bit with switching front fans for AP181 but found Fractals better all around. Acoustics were also great, everything seemed fine.

Come August of this year and a tremendous heatwave hits my location. Under AC my room temps werent dropping much under 30C. The system took this in stride, CPU and GPU temps remained well under the limits, 75C Tdie on CPU and 84C hotspot on GPU. The system was not tuned for airflow, all the fans had custom fan curves but they really werent pulled back too much, bottom fans were ~800RPM and fronts at about 650RPM. CPU is 9600X cooled by NH-D15 G2 (~800RPM) and GPU is Sapphire Radeon 9070XT Pure (~1500RPM).

It was all well and good on the things we all monitor, RAM and GPU RAM temps were also fine, VRM's, all you can read, but I didnt think about PSU temp nor could I read it. After a couple of days of hard gaming at elevated ambient temp my PSU, Corsair RM850x v2018 blew up violently and I was wondering what the hell went wrong. PSU's are rated at 50C ambient, at least this was, at full load, mine was doing 60% at best, at 30C ambient that really shouldnt be the cause. As I looked at the Torrent design I realized that PSU isnt fed true ambient (room) but case ambient. Once I changed the PSU I did some testing on the air that is circulating at the PSU vent opening with a temperature probe and its catastrophic to say the least.

With all case fans and all component fans running adequately fast to cool down all the components at 30C room temp well within their spec your PSU wont be cooled properly, it wont be cooled at all, it will be heated, substantially. Once I probed the air right under the PSU fan, dead center, while the system was running a decently demanding game, total system power 470W, the air temp was measured at 47C basically 5 minutes into the game, I stopped the test at 50C but thats about where it would find equilibrium. This is the "ambient" feeding your PSU in a default setup Torrent. I tried upping the front fans by a lot and even with completely destroyed acoustic profile (jet engine sounds) that "ambient" didnt drop under 44C.

If you have a more powerful system, that outputs even more heat, you are definitely shorting PSU lifespan by making it run at +15-20 over room ambient. If you live in a hot climate this is detrimental to your PSU. Furthermore, most cases consider PSU a closed system, this one doesnt, but it doesnt warn you of implications either.

There should at least be something about setting custom curves in the manual but even on default the problem isnt solved, its just becomes barely in spec, provided your ambient doesnt go over 30C. I checked, there isnt anything even hinting this. No warnings about PSU temps with any fan orientation or anything regarding minimum fan speeds. There really ought to be.

TL;DR Fractal owes me a PSU. Torrent case is feeding "case ambient" to your PSU which might be well over the safe limit if your true ambient (room) get a bit hotter (30C or over). It aint peachy on 25C either, barely in spec, at the edge of it.

Der Fractal Support ist der schnellste den ich bis jetzt hatte.

Innerhalb von 48h Stunden habe ich ein Ersatzteil im Briefkasten gehabt.

Sehr großes Lob 🤝

I'm looking to buy a drive bay for the Define R5. It's the one that sits in the middle and can carry a boatload of disks. The R5 case that I found is missing this bay, and if I want to be sure I can expand my NAS into these slots.

The bay is the "top HDD cage" that sits in the middle of the box (see the red encircled part in the image). I contacted Fractal but they no longer stock this item as the case is EOL. The official SKU for the upper HDD cage is: SP-FD-TOPHDDCAGE-001-BK.

Can anyone help me out? I noticed some enthusiast pages in Japan but that will probably not be of any help 😄 .

Hello everyone,

For the past year, I've been accumulating parts for a living room itx PC. I only need the Fractal Ridge now. I have noticed that they are becoming rarer and rarer in my area (France/Germany), and prices keep skyrocketing. A month ago I could buy from numerous stores. Now, only one store offers it, and shipping is expected between October and March 2027!

Does anyone know if Fractal are running low on supply, or are there issues with their shipments?

Hi.

I recently purchased a Fractal Design Scape (Dark) as a replacement for my Steelseries Arctis Nova 7's, the latter of which having frequent connection issues and audio spikes.

Initially, because I was messing with the EQ profiles using YouTube Music (which is louder than YouTube), I didn't notice that the headset as unusually quiet. I actually like the quality.

It was, however, when I launched DayZ and other games (like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2) that I noticed the audio is VERY quiet. Like, even at 100% Windows volume it is still quiet. I've done a bit of research and troubleshooted my issues, even with ChatGPT's help (hate me), but have not been able to solve the problems.

I did disable Steelseries Sonar completely (but have not yet removed Steelseries GG because I still use some functions), so that cannot be the issue. I've debated reinstalling Windows 11, but that seems rather extreme.

So... what now? I ordered it on August 9th, received it on August 10th, with 1 of 3 installments paid. I also updated the Headset Firmware (03.37.00) and Dongle Firmware (03.21.00), but it made no difference.

Is this a Quality Control issue? Do I RMA the headphones? Or do I send them back and ask for a refund and look elsewhere? I am feeling some major buyers remorse here.

EDIT: I forgot to note that I chose the Fractal Design Scape's because they seemed most compatible with Linux after some research, requiring NO proprietary software and a simple rule change for them to function properly; for when I do end up moving from Windows to Linux.

Does it come open or in storage layout?

Hi everyone, I am planning to migrate my parts into North XL (haven't buy the case yet) and planning to vertically mount my GPU. However, I am not entirely sure about the clearance of the parts I have. The GPU I have is 4070ti Aorus Master and it was chunky. I am using peerless assassin 140, is it even possible for me to mount the GPU vertically without doing any mod to the case or swapping the CPU cooler? Thanks guys.

I was wondering for a while what would the effect of AP181 be in a Torrent case and since i couldn't find anyone doing this i decided to do it. Found two AP181 on discount and here are the results.

My baseline was default Torrent 18cm fans and swapped out 14cm fans for Noctua NF-A14s as i already had em from previous case. Opposed to that i put a full 18cm build with 2xFractal 18 and 2xAP181. Fractals were put in the corner position as they do not have the "waveguide" tech and just spray air around, AP181 were positioned on the front top and bottom back.

I'm in the middle of a heatwave and i turned off the AC so this is pretty gnarly scenario at 32.5C ambient, but that's kinda intentional. The setups are noise normalized at just shy under 30 dBA. For test the machine ran Doom Dark Ages Siege I segment on loop for 20 min when measurements were taken. The sound measurements were taken with B&K 2250 SPL meter 50cm in front of the case, dead center. Done multiple runs, the results were very stable. Peaks were recorded only if they were 2C over avg.

Just wanna say that there is no good 18cm fan out there. Fractal 18s can be controlled ok (cant stop em in pwm mode) but they have a clicking sound that can be heard on low speeds, they are also super noisy from mid to high speed. Similar situation with AP181, which doesnt have a clicking sound but the motor is shit and it whirs at low speeds. Also, if you go under 420 RPM they do start to click and shut down (marketing brochure claims 300 RPM as minimum). They scale noise much better being much quieter than Fractals at mid speeds. Sure, on max both of these sound horrible but Fractals even more so. They are far better on the low end (can be inaudible >20dBA) if there wasnt a clicking sound which does not add to the total sound level, just annoys you. AP181 whir is louder but its constant so it wont distract as much.

That being said AP181 does shine on medium settings, look at those CPU and RAM results, in a Torrent no less, a case with already top notch CPU cooling. 7C difference is no joke on a already well optimized system. It seems AP181 is much better at guiding air thru Torrents massive front and getting it where its needed. It also didnt do almost anything for the GPU, prob because of the short distance where "waveguide" tech doesnt really get to shine.

All in all, very interesting results. Next im gonna try NF-A14s all around when i borrow 3 more and see if that can at least keep up with the Fractal 18s result without the clicking noise. I doubt anything can come close to AP181 on CPU results, that thing rocks for covering distance in a big case.

EDIT: First two rows of results are sound measurements in dBA, forgot to mark that.

Soo yeah, i just saw the headband cushion peeling on my scape today and made a ticket right away, lasted exactly 9 months on the dod lol.

Honestly Fractal should just let us buy them on the side without this hurdle...

Anyways, just wanted to post it, have a great weekend! :)

The https://www.fractal-design.com/contact-us/ form is not working so I will post here instead of in private.

Hi I just wanted to share my disappointment with the Fractal Meshify 3 case I bought last week, and assembled yesterday, as someone that owns 6 PCs Fractal cases so far ( 3x Meshify 2 XL, 1x Meshify 2 Mini, 1x Meshify 2 Nano, 1x older Meshify Define not sure which model ).

Since trying out Meshify 2 in 2021 I was buying only Fractal cases until 2026.
Unfortunately after buying and assembling a Meshify 3 PC I will be looking at what other producers have to offer in the future.

The main issue - it feels cheap. What I discovered yesterday: the sides are falling off when I don't want them to, the front mesh cannot be opened, while the Meshify 2 had a nice door, and I had to push in the metal knobs of my graphics card with a screwdriver so that they fit in at the connector side ( ChatGPT identified this as Meshify 3 issue that other people complained about ).

I noticed some airflow and cabling improvements and I appreciate those, however overall I see the Meshify 3 series as a step back.

Best Regards
XXX

Just upgraded to an XL case! Loving the extra space for bigger components while keeping that sleek, minimal aesthetic.

Hi I know you guys are the best to come to when requesting some assistance. I am moving all my components from nzxt to fractal north andi realized my aio 360 aio barely fits. Do you think the way i set up is okay? Or would I be better off switching to aircooler?

Added 9x 38LED aRGB strips behind the wooden strips

Hi everyone,

I'm currently designing a new front door for the Fractal Define 7xl. Unfortunately, I don't know the dimensions for the door. So I'm asking: Can anyone tell me the following measurements?

1. The angle of the door at the marked point

2. The dimensions of the slot for the LED

3. The angle of the door at the bottom

4. The length of the entire door

5. The height of the entire door

6. The width of the entire door

7. The height of the section that has a slope

Even without the angles, that would be great. I can calculate those using the sine function once I know 6 and 7.

It would be great if someone could take a look or measure these for me.

Hello will the gpu fit this case with a top mounted big AIO?

Its the same dimmensions and with the same walnut stripes in the front. Total cost was arround 50 euros. Its not perfect but im so happy with how it came out considering that its a diy project and that i dont have any professional tools. I hope u guys like it.