Fractal Design Define 7 XL
A divine redesign?
For today's article, we head on over to Fractal Design, a company that has built a reputation with its stylish chassis over the past years. We'll have a peek at the Fractal Design Define 7 XL, an all-black, all cool and all silent PC housing for a wide variety of motherboards. The new Define 7 has a new updated body from the R6 and is to be launched with two SKUs initially. Basically you'll spot the Define 7 and the flagship chassis the Define 7 XL. From the outside, these chassis might have a somewhat simplified loo, from the inside however everything has been overhauled with customization and modular options in mind, next to offering a plethora of features of course. It is a product made with airflow and liquid cooling in mind to serve the more performance-oriented PCs builders. You'll be excited about storage, style, USB 3.1 options, and new very handy latching side panels. The new Define 7 XL is the largest and most expandable model yet.
The Define 7 XL can hold multiple water cooling setups fairly easily as the Define 7 XL can hold thick and very big radiators. Should you want to stick to air-based cooling, some Fractal Design Dynamic X2 GP-14 fans are already factory installed, and that means good ventilation versus fairly little noise. You can tie these fans towards an internal Nexus+ 2 fan hub with three PWM and six 3-pin connections logically placed in-line with cable channels. The chassis 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 185mm, a black paint and a top I/O panel with two USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C, audio in/out, power button, HDD activity led, reset button and fan controller. Storage? Well, that's not an issue either, the chassis has plenty of hard disk / SSD locations, and can hold even two 5.25" devices.
The Define 7 XL is Fractal’s new flagship standard for the full tower case, supporting E-ATX motherboards, multi-GPU setups, and almost two dozen (!) storage devices in an altered storage layout. The top panel can be fully removed for easy interior access, and interchangeable covers let you quickly swap sound-damped solid steel for filtered ventilation using the included accessory panel. Define 7 XL also comes with two universal multi-brackets, a newly designed part that converts any unused fan position (of the eleven available in total) to an HDD, SSD, pump, or reservoir mount.
We test the Define 7 Xl, and it's a lot! Here's a feature overview from the company itself:
