Fractal Design ARC Midi Tower

Fractal Design has quickly made a name for itself as a purveyor of fine PC cases, and it’s always a pleasure getting a new model through our doors for testing.

The latest model is the ARC midi tower case in black. It is roughly the same size and shape as the R3 which was the last Fractal Design case we looked at but where the R3 had solid walls and noise dampening material, the ARC has mesh openings and fan mounts for Africa.

The front panel may look like brushed aluminium in photos, but it's actually just cleverly textured plastic. Other cases in the price range rarely feature much aluminium panelling, if any, so I can’t really take too many points off the ARC for that.

The theme inside the case is functionality, with no less than eight removable hard drive bays, three 140mm case fans with fan controller, space for five more case fans, and plenty of space for routing and hiding cables.

Half of the hard drive slots are in a cage that you can remove to extend the space available for your main graphics card from 29cm all the way to 47cm. Unfortunately the other hard drive bays block your secondary PCI-E slot so any SLI or Crossfire solution won’t benefit from this.

The build quality of the ARC is top notch and I had no problems setting up an AMD rig with dual HD 6870 graphics cards. I also managed to hide all the cabling from my non-modular PSU for a really tidy build, so this is another Fractal Design case that gets a thumbs-up from me.