Fractal Design Core 500 Review 9

Fractal Design Core 500 Review

Value & Conclusion »

Test System

System Parts for Case Reviews
Processor:Intel Core i5-6600K
Motherboards:ATX: Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K6+
mATX: ASRock Z170M Pro4S
mini-ITX: ASRock Z170M-ITX/ac
Provided by: ASRock
Graphic Card:Long: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 OEM
Short: HIS Radeon 5350 HD
Memory:KLEVV Cras 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4
@ 3200MHz 16-18-18 @ 1.35V
Provided by: Essencore
HDD:Western Digital 320 GB 7200 RPM
SSD:Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 6Gbps
Provided by: Crucial
Power Supply:Seasonic Platinum Series 660W ATX 2.3
Provided by: Seasonic
Cooling:Air Cooling Mini-ITX: Thermalright AXP-100R
Air Cooling mATX: Thermalright Macho 90
Air Cooling ATX: Thermalright Macho 120
Provided by: PC-COOLING.de

Assembly


Installing the motherboard is done by traditional means, using screws. Invest some time into properly routing the cables from top to bottom and the interior will look really clean. You will obviously have to look for other options as soon as you put some cooling into the ceiling.


To install the optical drive, simply remove the front cover and slide it into place. Thumbscrews are used to secure the drive, but you may use traditional screws instead.


You may attach the 3.5" drives to the plate with these long screws, as there are rubber rings as an anti-vibration measure, while 2.5" and SSD variants are simply held in place by the tiny screws such drives necessitate.


Before installing the graphics card, you will need to place the PSU into the front of the chassis. Our Seasonic XP2 unit with modular cables just barely fit with a long GPU. The pre-installed power plug is quite the tight fit as well.


Having installed the graphics card, the Core 500 makes a great impression. The wiring clean, the area around the CPU is completely free of any clutter.

Finished Looks


With the cover back on the Core 500, you will hear the fan in the rear exude a nice, calm hum after your system has been turned on. The LED inside the power button also light up.


With the cover back in place, you can only see the Klevv memory sticks' red LED strip when looking through from the top. The other two air vents on the side are used entirely by the GPU and PSU.


The ODD in front suits the Core 500, but you should be sure to use a black drive. You can see the large, but quiet 140 mm fan doing its job in the rear, with all the motherboard connectors at your immediate disposal.
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Apr 27th, 2024 05:56 EDT change timezone

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