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Benchmarks & Final Analysis
The Meshify C’s front panel appears to do an excellent job of letting the air in, dropping CPU temperature a full 8 Kelvin below the Define-C. It handily beats the NZXT and Bitfenix samples as well.
Mesh front panels aren’t just great for letting air in, but also for letting noise out. The Meshify C lets nearly 3db of extra component noise out compared to the Define-C, while the S340 Elite and Aurora beat both Fractal Design cases in this metric.
Although it didn’t have the lowest temperatures, a comparison of temperature to noise puts the S340 Elite in the winner’s circle. Yet the ideal I proposed at the beginning of this article is confirmed: The Meshify C’s extra cooling and noise are almost exactly proportional in comparison to the hotter and quieter Define-C.
The big shocker comes in our bang-for-the-buck chart, where the Meshify C, Define-C, and S340 Elite finish in a virtual tie. Then again, by now everyone knows that the performance-value equation doesn’t measure features, and there are a few differences between these cases.
The Define-C for example doesn’t have a tempered glass side panel, so buyers trying to decide between the S340 Elite and Meshify C probably aren’t even considering the elder product. The S340 Elite has more ports (an HDMI pass-through and two USB 2.0), a magnetic headphone hanger, and a steel face panel skin to allow the headphone hanger to be stuck on the front. However, the Meshify C has better radiator support. The S340 has a nylon screen front filter that’s easier to clean than the Meshify C’s embedded open-cell foam; but the Meshify C allows its bottom-panel filter to be removed from the front, whereas owners of the S340 Elite must turn their cases around and pull the filter from the back. The one killer feature NZXT has that’s unmatched by Fractal Design is support for oversized motherboards, just in case you’d like to stick a $350+ board into your $100 case, even if you’re not likely to do so.
Though it may not be a world beater in either performance or price, good quality and support for additional cooling make the Fractal Design Meshify C worthy of your consideration.
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