Some companies tell us that their chassis are quiet, and then there are some who like to prove it. Add Fractal Design to that list. The folks there recently brought the company’s award-winning Define R5 to a place that the Guinness World Records calls the “quietest place on Earth” – an anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories that can drop below zero dBA. Didn’t realize there was such thing as a value below 0dBA? I’m not sure I did, either.
Nonetheless, the entire process is played out in the video below, which I highly recommend taking the time to watch. Ultimately, the standalone Define R5 is tested against a system build by Puget Systems (a company that also cares a lot about silence), as well as an open air test bench. While I think it would have been great for the same configuration to have been tested against even a nameless competitor’s chassis, we have no such luck this time.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVdkIi9iUVM
The overall results can be seen in the graph below. While normal conversation hovers around 50dBA and a quiet library at 30~35dBA, Puget’s build settled in at 21.2dBA. In effect, noise from everyday life, even if it’s a “quiet” surrounding, is going to drown out a build using the Define R5. Note that the 21.2dBA even represents the PC running at 100% full load.
Where things get really interesting is on the left side of the above chart. The same system at idle generated about 1.4dBA of noise. That’s much less than the 18dBA or so of sound that a ticking watch makes.
Why Fractal Designs took so long after the release of the Define R5 to do these tests, I’m not sure, but it seems like this is going to become one of those legendary chassis that we all remember years down the road. Further proof of that could be the fact that we’ve already taken a look at this chassis not just once, but twice.