Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 review - Article

Style, the new trend...

For today's article we head on over to Fractal Design, a company that has built a reputation with their stylish chassis over the past three years. We'll have a peek at the mid-tower Fractal Design Arc Midi R2, an all black, all cool and all silent PC housing for a wide variety of motherboards. This product is made with airflow and liquid cooling in mind to serve the more performance oriented PCs. You'll be excited about storage, style, USB 3.0 options and an integrated three-speed fan controller. The Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 is what you can tag as mid-tower chassis. Not big, even a little compact, yet spacious alright. The Arc Midi R2 has been developed with good airflow in mind but liquid cooling fanatics should not be disappointed, on the contrary, it can hold multiple water cooling setups fairly easily as the Arc Midi R2 can hold thick radiators in the front and at the top. Should you want to stick to air based cooling, three high-performance but silent R2 fans are already factory installed, and that means good ventilation versus fairly little noise. You ca tie these fans towards an internal fan controller. Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 has many other features that we'll show you in this review, like cable routing space, removable fan filters, CPU cooler sizes limits of up to 170mm, a black paint and a top I/O panel with two USB 3.0 ports, audio in/out, power button, HDD activity led, reset button and fan controller.

Key features

• Designed with high airflow in mind while consistently holding a minimalistic, sleek look and feel
• Featuring a window side panel to show off your set up in style
• Extensive water cooling support, designed to support thick radiators in the front and top positions
• Three Silent Series R2 fans with integrated fan controller included
• HDD cages are now split 5 + 3 and are both rotatable and removable for maximum configuration and airflow
• Support for up to 8 hard drive bays with accommodation for an additional 2 x 2,5” inch drives behind the motherboard
• Easy installation and configuration with ample cable routing space making it simple for everyone to make a very tidy looking computer build
• Removable fan filters for easy dust maintenance and washing

Specifications

• ATX, Micro ATX, Mini ITX motherboard compatibility
• 2 - 5.25" bays
• 8 - 3.5" HDD trays - all compatible with SSDs
• 2 - 2.5" additional SSD positions behind the motherboard plate
• 7 + 1 expansion slots
• 7 - Fan positions (3 Silent Series R2 fans included)
• Filtered fan slots in front, top and bottom 
• CPU coolers up to 180 mm tall 
• PSU compatibility: ATX PSUs up to 170 mm deep when using the bottom fan location; when not using this fan location longer PSUs (up to 270 mm deep) can be used 
• Graphics card compatibility: Graphics cards up to 290mm in length with the top HDD cage installed - With the top cage removed, graphics cards up to 430mm in length may be installed
• 26 mm of space for cable routing behind the motherboard plate
• Thick rubber grommets on all holes on the motherboard plate
• Colors available: Black
• Case dimensions (WxHxD): 230 x 460 x 515mm
• Net weight: 10.7kg
• Package dimensions (WxHxD): 320 x 610 x 560mm
• Package weight: 12kg