Fractal Meshify 2 Case Review: Thermals, Build Quality, & Airflow Benchmarks

Hey does it have sound dampening

Id be grateful to anyone who might share ideas. I have the bequiet 500 dx and an rtx3080. The gpu really warms up my pc and i assumed its mostly because of the size of my case, i started entertaining the idea of getting the meshify 2, but now im thinking if simply adding 2 exhaust fans on top will solve the issue? Im not very experienced, but it seems to make sense, right? 2 exhaust fans on top should help to get all that hot air out? I have an air cooled cpu but the flow right now is linear - from the front of the case to its rear and out. I guess since the 500 dx is a decent airflow case maybe it being somewhat short isnt that big of a deal and i can solve my issue by adding 2 bequiet fans on top?

love the case

I'm a big fan of Fractal cases and would like this case the best if it was a little shorter and a lot narrower to just fit a 360 AIO on top similar to the Meshify 2 compact which should have been a hair wider, a little longer and taller to fit a 360 AIO as compact is almost 1" to narrow and needs more room to fit a AIO on top.

Thanks for the extra recommendations to compare.

I've got this case. It's high quality for sure but my #1 complaint is that it's about an inch or so too long, and it's about an inch and a half too short. There's a bunch of extra space in front of the GPU, probably for building a water-cooled setup so if you aren't, then it seems a little sparse up front. The motherboard goes right to the top of the case, then when you install a radiator with fans on it, it covers access to your top MB inputs. I've vertically mounted my 4070 Ti Aero GPU, and it would hold a much fatter GPU in the same way as there's still a couple inches plus to the glass. The case seems like it would be well suited to do a reverse airflow setup, with plenty of space for a radiator on the front. Fractal also says, it'll fit 3 x 140mm fans on the front, and it doesn't. At least not the Lian Li AL-140 V2's anyway. The cables coming from the top inputs and power button, block the last little bit needed to fit the front fans in. It fits 3 x 120mm fans no problem. When using the 140mm fans on the front, there's a lot of Sheetmetal obscuring parts of the fans and blocking airflow. The filter elements also have too many plastic spars going across in front of the fans. Nothing that a Dremel couldn't fix. I'd prefer they just made it that way. With the deep, yet slightly short dimensions, it's hard to get positive air pressure in the case, because you'll have only two front intake fans, but 3 fans on the AiO, and 1 on rear case exhaust. I think this case could be modded to almost set cooling records with a few little tricks. Lastly, for a white case, why is the whole inside black? People want white for their white builds IMO. So, if Fractal is listening, make it slightly taller for MB and 3 x140mm fan clearance, slightly shallower (So it'll still fit a 360mm AIO with all say 30mm fans for flexibility), and if I'm picky, about 10 mm fatter would be nice, because the Lian Li Performance 360 didn't fit by a tiny bit. It either hit the MB, or the case clasps. I could have made it fit with a drill press, cutting holes in between slots on top, but I didn't feel like taking it all apart to do that, and just exchanged AIO's instead.

New owner of Meshify 2. I can say this case works excellent with my rig. I particularly like the airflow it provides. Comparing to my old Define C, it is a little bit louder but now I am happy to see my graphics card runs at 68-70 degrees.

I just want to know how to open the case lol

Just bought a fractal meshify 2 for my newest personal build. 4070ti, Ryzen 5 7600, looking forward to putting it all together in a couple days.

Took me 24min to learn that the case I've ordered doesn't suck 🤣. Don't change pal🙏🏻

Just got the case, using in storage config as I have too many hard drives, dual boot 11/Manjaro, and RGB doesn't net me performance. Reconfiguring the case was an exercise in WTF but after getting it setup, I love it. Made me realize how freaking loud my main gaming system is, this baby is nearly silent.

Just don’t put any HDDs in this case unless you enjoy that noise. Guess we can’t have the beautiful noise reduction of the define without the thermal downside. This is from my personal experience. Went from define r4 to this case.

What I like is that you can get them without glass sidepanels.

I don't want to see the innards of my pc, yet 95% of case manufacturers seem to give little to no option to those who just want old school opaque side panels

hi im bilding my pc what kind of case woul you recomend for up aio 420 , Asus ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO and G.SKILL 32GB(6000MHz CL36 Trident Z5 ( about 44mm big) . i was looking on fractal Define 7 but the ram won't fit

Omg... Why the history lesson about every other case. Who cares? 2 minutes of review material, 22 minutes of wasted oxygen.

It fits my Asrock 6900xt 😂

The RGB version comes with 4 fans included and is now on sale from Newegg for $99.99 plus shipping. I think its an amazing deal on a solid case with 4 good RGB fans included.

fractal are one of the only people still offering steel side panels these days. 10/10 would buy a gain (even though the glass side panel version was 30 dollars cheaper.....)

Just purchased one from Newegg after watching this video... Its beautiful

what are your ambiet temps?

tbh, not a lot of options if u have a lot of hdds. this is pretty much the only case in the price range which can host 8+ hdds. Most others mentioned as comparisons/competitors can hold at max 4 or so hdds.

omg, cut your hair,, its not the 1980s.. lol.. yeah, would have loved to watch but couldnt get past the 80s hair cut. lol

There is something that Meshify 2 have and all the other on the list doesn't, and it is the solid side panel. I don't want tempered glass and Meshify 2 is the only one with solid side panel

I paid 170 for this case. Damn. I overpaid

Have you guys tried out the new RGB version of the meshify 2? was wondering how the thermals and noise compare to the original with all the stock fans

so would the Meshify 2 RGB be the exact same as this just with.. RGB? or is there an actual difference between other than just having RGB fans?

wait a min.. if you use a top mounted aio/radiator, wouldnt you want that pulling air IN and the various case fans sucking all the air out?

I think I prefer the Define 7 having the 5.25 ODD bay, plus a solid top cover.

Just bought Meshify 2 and put three Silent Wings 4 PWM Highspeed on front and something is wrong, because it's extremely loud when fans spin faster than 1000 RPM, sounds like a drone... I have also the same SW4 fan on rear and it's completely silent on high RPM. Does anyone know the solution to that?

What the heck is wrong with the video? At first I thought its just my eyes. But every single B shots have this small wiggle in camera that's so noticeable. I thought I went mad for a while there!

I bought this case today bc of this review. Thank you.

One year late to the party and this still looks appealing to me. Option for no glass and plenty drive expansion makes other offerings look bleak

There aren't many options for those who still like using more than 2 3.5" hdds

I just bought one of these. I don't own a computer but my landlord increased the rent for my house, and this seems like a logical alternative. I'm hoping the Arctic 420 leaves me room to make ramen in there.

Does the front io depend on case or motherboard? I mean this case has usb 3.0 type a and 3.1 gen 2 type c. My motherboard has 3.2 gen 2 type c and 3.2 gen 1 type a for front io support. What output will I get using this case?

Can this fit a modular 180mm ATX PSU?

I've had this case for a couple months and it's perfect. plenty of space for water cooling and air cooling, with the removable top panel making radiator mounting a breeze

Good to see that "someone" is listening to Gamer Nexus and, by extension, all of us :). So, isn't it about time we got rid of all those useless 3.5'' frontal trays for HDD's and make this case shorter and more home-user-friendly? Especially now that we have M.2 interfaces on the motherboard and we can mount our SSD's and 1-2 HDD at the bottom or on the side panel of the case.

Hi, i have a Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact Black Tempered Glass, i bought it used from ebay.

But the serialnumber sticker is removed

Does someone have a serial number from this product for me?

Thankyou🙏

Are the 3.0 usb cables a splitter or is it 2 separate usb 3.0 cables?

i like that you give other examples of good air flow cases hat are noticable cheaper.
But im gonna follow your advise, it suits my needs and i like the way it looks, so im gonna buy it.
The main thing for me is, even tho there are some sick, over the top looking cases with RGB and all that stuff, i prefere non RGB cases.
The only RGB things in my PC currently are my MOBO ( can show the temperature of different Mobo components like chipset) and my 1080 Xtreme Gaming ( currently shows the temp of my GPU)
I like the cable management options the case gives you, that it comes with big fans although i have 6 120mm Corsair fans. the space it gives you for Hard drives.
in total im more than willed to spend those 150€ for it

Thank god Fractal still thinks about us HDD users that run their desktop PCs as a semi server for multiple things. I get that most people don't require them but this is one of the reasons that Fractal shines. They give you flexibility for many usecases rather than just completely negleting such things.

huge fan of the filters as i dont like dust getting in the case. as far as i know fractal design are the only ones doing this so they earned my money.

With z690 boards , some cpu mounting brackets won't fit this case, the cutout is not big enough. Eg. Arctic freezer 2 AIOs.

Can I fit Asus ROG MAXIMUS XII EXTREME e-atx motherboard into this?

I bought this case and have installed a Pro Art Z690 in it. I like it, but a negative surprise for me was when I installed the cheap 4 port serial card from my old PC in it. The PC card works fine in the bottom PCIe slot, but there is insufficient clearance on the outside to attach the connector. Unlike my old case the panel is recessed about 1/4" and it gets in the way of the bottom slot. So, I either have to go with USB serial ports or forgo half the PCIe lanes on my GPU by using the second slot instead of the 3rd. One thing I liked about Meshify was that it is made of metal on all sides. It is in my ham radio station and I need to keep the RF from the computer away from the radios, and vice versa.

I'm not sure if you'll see this comment but I would really appreciate your help

I won a gigabyte 3070 TI Aorus master in the shuffle but I'm having a hard time finding a case and I would love to have this case but


So after figuring out the confusing naming scheme, I was trying to figure out between the Fractal s2 tempered white and the 2 ver you have right here

But I can't even find the S2 which is supposed to be bigger

But the XL is way too big

I have a gigabyte Aorus 3070 TI Master L=324 W=142 H=70 mm


Which is fairly a big GPU unfortunately

but I also want to use the 3.5 SATA hard drive bays, but the S2 says it can fitStorage layout: 315 mm Open layout: 491 mm (467 mm w/ front fan)

So it pretty much almost seems that if I want the data hard drives I can't have the GPU or am I wrong?

Bonus info I'm also getting the 11700k with the Asus b560m tuf mobo and noctua u12a

I know the mobo has two m.2 slots so I can just have two ssds but I would really like to have a one or two 3.5 4 TB satas for storage

I had to get this one. "Server" configuration. Only major gripe I have is no option to at all house a 5.25" (that's right, I still use and like ODD, too; bite me). In addition to ALL of them now blackballing 5.25", they're ALL blackballing 3.5" cages as well (saw none with the option of more than 2 anywhere for less than $200). This was the cheapest option I could find to have almost everything and more or less as-is out of box (will just have to keep stealing old build's ODD and jerry rig it as needed; the external USB laptop slim type ones are crap).

To be clear, great case (and I'm grateful they're not nickel and diming for the drive shelves; 6 included is generous, thanks Fractal). What I resent is this seemingly concerted push to utterly oust ODD's and HDD's; they're still viable and plenty of us still utilize one or the other or both. There should still be more than a mere few (more often than not really pricey) options for them in chasses, damn it. 😒

If anybody is wondering, 100% air cooled (NH-D15s and the 3 stock included fans). Perfectly fine.

Eh, I hail from the era of 6+ 3.5" drives, 1-4 5.25", and HDD dock and multi-card readers built in (both of which I also miss) for usually around $100 so maybe I'm just a little saltier than new-fangled builders for having been so spoiled (really got your money's worth 8 plus years ago)... 🤷‍♂

I wanted a case with good airflow and wide enough to fit a noctua d15 and some high ass rams i bought (which was not that good of a decision with the noctua bc it made it higher than 170mm) so this one filled my requirements