Soon after Fractal released their successor to the Meshify series, that being Meshify 2, I have covered that as it happened, feel free to check it out, later on, today I’ll be doing the same, but with its compact brother, the Fractal Meshify 2 Compact, so let’s have a looksy, but before that, let me show how it was building it in this quick time-lapse.
So, as you just saw, there’s enough room to get around, nicely laid out the main compartment and well thought out cable pass-throughs and routing canals, with a lot of preinstalled Velcro ties and tie-down points, very similar to the Meshify 2. Although the Meshify 2 Compact is actually the successor to the Meshify C, thus having a natural inclination to be compared with it going back forward in terms of what was improved, despite that, the best way to describe it is that this is a regular Meshify 2 but shrunken down. Again, I have the Light tempered glass model, but there will be few other models with different panels and color combinations. Again, the panels come off in a simple manner, you just pull the tab on the top backside of that chaises and lean the panel out and that’s it.
In terms of the novelties, compared to the Meshify C, there’s been a lot of subtle, but functional changes, on the top we have the front I/O, which consists out of two USB 3.0 and one USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-c port, input-output audio jacks and power on and reset switch, and whole connection panel is attached to chassis, so the hinged removable steel mesh front panel and its removable dust filter, can be operated with without interfering with the I/O’s.
Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact – Pocket size-ish
The same goes for the top panel with integrated steel mesh, very easy to remove panel, and dust filter. In terms of the dimensions, it is around 10 mm longer and 20 mm higher, but interestingly enough despite being the same with, it lost on the CPU cooler height support, and together with that the cable routing space is 7 mm shallower in the widest part, but that didn’t cause any problems in terms of the extensive amount of cables or being able to close the right-side panel. As for its bigger ongoing bother, compared to it, it is around 120 mm shorter and 20 mm narrower, while the height is the same.
Because of this with Meshify 2 Compact there is no option for vertical GPU installation or going for that skyscraper-like stacking storage layout, which is completely understandable as there’s just no room for it, plus this makes the choice a bit easier, as if you don’t plan to have more than 2-3 drives, you can go for this model without any guilt.
Despite that, as I mentioned at the beginning, it is still easy to build in it although you do have less space for hardware handling during the assembly process. Although I use my RX 5600 XT model in my temperature testing, just for a reference, As you can see here now I’ve put this really long triple-fan Sapphire’s RX 6800 XT Niro+, fits in no problem, as do GPU’s up to 360 mm in length without anything installed on the front, and yes, I will be doing a review of it, be sure to subscribe for that one I’ll be doing and also trying it in relation to sim racing on this monster of a Samsung G9 display, so stick around, plenty of cool content coming around the corner.
Cooling line-up of Meshify 2 Compact
For radiator and fan setup, as you can see here it can take up to 360 mm rads on the front with it being 145 mm wide at max for optimal clearance, where you’ll get to preinstalled 140 mm Dynamics X2 fans, and up to 240 mm on the top with motherboards surrounding components being 40 mm tall at max, while on the back you can put 120 mm fans, where you’ll see one Dynamics X2 fan already preinstalled, and at the bottom, in the power supply compartment there’s another spot for an intake fan. Here you can again see that we have an option to pull the plastic panels off in case you want to reconfigure the space needed for a thicker front setup, for which you’ll have an option to slide or completely remove the dedicated 3,5” drive cage.
Speaking of that, you can put another 2 3,5” drives on the top fan position if you get a multibracket, while you can also have a total of four positions for the 2,5” drives, one on the back with these brackets and two on the power supply shroud with purchase of additional bracket. Unfortunately, they ditched the plastic cover for the power supply shroud, so you will not be able to cover the access cable.
OK, enough about that, let us check out the noise and the temperatures with the Meshify 2C, I’ll put up results with different fan configurations, you’ll see everything in that regard in the top right corner, while at the end there will be a noise test based of those fan configurations, so feel free to use that data to dedicated weather this is something that would work for you, having in mind that.
Smaller is better…? It depends
So, as you have heard the passive noise insulation of the chassis is quite good, while the stock fans do not get that loud to begin with, even at the top curve. Just with the normal-sized Meshify 2, there is an ample amount of non-restricted air intake and outtake points, so the temperatures of the components are reasonably handled, nothing that seems like it’s getting out of control, on the contrary. Feel free to hop over to my meshy 2 review for a back to back comparison, the hardware used here is the same
That’s it for this time, thanks for checking out this Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact Review, if you have any questions feel free to hit me in the comments section of my YouTube video listed above, you can contact me via my social media channels!
