Final words and conclusion

Final words and conclusion

The Fractal Design Core 3300 is a nice, simple and sturdy mid-tower chassis. You get a matte black designed chassis which features several options to put in many HDDs and devices. The chassis is reasonably tool free, but does not have say easy click-in optical drive clips. You'll still be using the good old thumb-screws - that works fine of course, but it's not as modern as some of the competition seem to be able to manage. Next to that the vertical plate to mount HDDs and SSDs is not "my thing" either. I find it to be a bit of a cheap solution. That said for SSDs it is more than sufficient. But for mounting HDDs we do prefer a drive bay with removable trays. A good thing is that for a mid-tower there is plenty of space to maneuver through at the inside, and cable routing options are there, but everything does feel a little minimal. More grommet holes for cable routing in the motherboard tray would have had my preference.  

Aesthetics

The looks of the 3300 definitely are decent, but remains to be just that. It is however a fairly good size chassis for this model alright. I mean this mid-tower offers plenty of features and plenty of cooling. You can fit seven fans in here, and the vertical HDD plate is removable. There's room for three 3.5" drives and three 2.5" drives, you get two USB 3.0 ports, seven expansion slots and support for even the largest of graphics cards. The extra wide design obviously helps out as well. The paint job is of decent quality, the overall looks have that nice dark theme with small subtle white elements that are used by the two included fans. 

Final words

Features wise this Core 3300 chassis is just fine and decent, but much like the original 3000 chassis, we do get the feeling of missing out on that good old x-factor a bit. I mean the black and white design really is tasteful, but nothing more than that. Overall it is a very sturdy build and the overall design is stylish enough for those that like it. So yeah, it's up-to you. We can definitely recommend the product as there honestly is very little wrong with it - you just need to really like the design I guess. And please do keep our remarks about the vertical HDD/SSD mounting place in mind as that is not everybody's cup of tea. With an average price tag of almost 60 EUR, the Fractal Design Core 3300 is priced fair though. For the money you get a chassis with space, decent looks and a decent enough feature set. It certainly is not an expensive product at all and as such will offer good value for money within its class and range.

• Sign up to receive a notice when we publish a new article
• Or go back to Guru3D's front page