The Refract S1 chassis is a value-oriented enthusiast chassis that offer the premium looks of tempered glass and RGB lighting with synchronization support.
Product on Review: Refract S1Manufacturer & Sponsor: Xigmatek
Street Price: £51.99 (Amazon UK)
Xigmatek, a Taiwanese PC hardware manufacturer established in 2005, offers a selection of cooling solutions, cases and power supplies. Today, we will be looking at one of their enthusiast-grade desktop chassis – the Refract S1. This chassis packs tempered glass side panels, RGB-synchronize enabled cooling fans and support for liquid cooling solutions. The Xigmatek Refract S1 is most certainly on the cheaper side of tempered glass cases and having pre-installed RGB cooling fans with synchronization options is a huge bonus for enthusiast builders.
Aside from the tempered glass panels and RGB cooling fans, the chassis also comes with its own RGB controller and hub, a USB 3.0 Type-A port and two more USB 2.0 ports on the front I/O. The Refract S1 also features a mirror-finish on its front tempered glass panel which is where the name is derived. It is a mid-tower chassis that combines aluminium and the premium looks of tempered glass, offered at a very attractive price point. Let’s find out if this value-oriented tempered glass chassis got what it takes to match the offerings from more popular brands like Corsair, NZXT, Fractal Design and others.
Xigmatek On Their Refract S1 Chassis
The Refract S1 is the next innovative mid-tower chassis from Xigmatek. The front features a unique mirror-like panel and tempered glass side panel is what really sets this chassis apart from others, and with a 457mm body length, this chassis is definitely suited to most and also those who want to take their builds to the next level, most importantly able to beautifully display their builds.
Technical Specification
Below are the technical specifications of the Xigmatek Refract S1 chassis.
Exterior
The Xigmatek Refract S1 comes in with an eco-friendly cardboard box wherein the case is cushioned by polystyrene and protected by a sheet of plastic.
The Refract S1 sports two tempered glass panels with the front glass panel having a mirror-like finish. The chassis is majority black with the front tempered glass panel having a silver colour. The full-window tempered glass panel on the left side has a dark grey colour which is getting common in tempered glass cases nowadays to hide certain interior details while highlighting lighting. The chassis has a solid tempered glass with mirror-finish as the front panel, the front cooling fans take its intake air from the sides of the front panel. A Xigmatek branding is found at the bottom of the front panel.
On the other side is just a solid aluminium side panel with a convex design that gives more interior space for cabling behind the motherboard area compared to a flat side panel.
The front panel I/O is located on the top of the front panel and features a USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, a set of audio ports, a reset switch, and power switch. The power and reset switches are spring-loaded and the USB ports and audio ports come with protective rubber inserts.
The top panel has a honeycomb mesh panel for ventilation that’s covered by a magnetic fan filter. The top can support up to two 120mm cooling fans or a 240mm radiator.
Interior
The tempered glass side panel has four thumbscrews on its four corners which can be easily removed to access the spacious interior. At the bottom of the case is a non-removable power supply shroud which also hides the two 3.5-inch drive bays accessible at the other side of the chassis. There are no rubber grommets on the cable routing holes but the case offers plenty of that.
There is room for an interior slim 360mm radiator to be mounted on the front end of the chassis given the cutout allocated for it. However, it needs to be the very first component to be installed inside the chassis. Once the motherboard is installed, fitting the 360mm radiator upfront might be difficult or even impossible.
At the other side of the Refract S1 is where you can access the drive bays for 3.5-inch drives and the hidden 2.5-inch drive mounts along with the power supply. There are plenty of cable management options wherein you can use a cable tie to tie down cables. 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives have a very simple mechanism, simply place the drive and fasten them with a screw.
Installation
Installation on the Refract S1 is pretty straightforward and simple given the spacious and obstruction-free interior of the chassis. At the rear, there are plenty of cable routing options due to the numerous cable tie routing holes provided. Even beginners should have a plenty of space and options to tie down and secure cables at the back.
The spacious front area of the interior offers space and mounting for liquid cooling hardware. There’s also a third 120mm fan mount at the bottom of the front panel which is left unoccupied.
Installing 3.5-inch drives is easy but not tool-less. Just slide the 3.5-inch drive into the drive bay and secure with the provided screws. However, the drive cage doesn’t feature any anti-vibration mechanism for the 3.5-inch hard drives.
Installing 2.5-inch drives on the chassis is simple but quite tricky. It goes into the rear adjacent to the motherboard area and it requires straight SATA cables. SATA cables with 90-degree plugs will have an issue fitting into a 2.5-inch drive and could potentially physically damage the drive.
The chassis have cable routing holes at the power supply shroud to easily connect cables to headers located on the bottom of the motherboard which in our test setup includes the front I/O cables, USB 2.0 connector, USB 3.0 connector, audio connector and the 4-pin RGB connectors from the two pre-installed RGB cooling fans on the front of the chassis.
Clearance – CPU Cooler, GPU, Cable Management, Cooling
The clearance options inside the Refract S1 chassis in most aspects are very generous. Let’s check out which hardware components require some reconsidering before purchase if you do decide to go with this chassis.CPU Cooler
The Xigmatek Refract S1 chassis offers a moderate clearance of CPU coolers of up to 159mm tall, which is exactly the height of the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU cooler.
Graphics Card
The chassis obviously offer a very generous clearance of graphics cards with its very spacious interior and drive cage-free front offering a total of 330mm of space for graphics cards. Take note that installing a radiator behind the front panel will reduce the space for graphics cards.
Cable Management
The Refract S1 chassis features a concave aluminium panel on the rear side where cables are routed which offers extra space for cable management. But in areas where the concave is not present, builders will have 10mm of space to work with. On spaces with the concave panel, builders have an estimated 20mm of space for cable management.
Water Cooling
Behind the front panel have space for a 240mm or 360mm radiator for water cooling. The top panel can also accommodate a slim 240mm radiator if desired.
Thermal Performance Testing
The Xigmatek Refract S1 chassis comes with two pre-installed 120mm RGB LED cooling fans at the front for intake which delivers a positive airflow configuration. To test the thermal performance of the chassis out of the box, we will record idle temperatures after 20 minutes from a cold boot. We will then stress the system and temperatures will again be monitored after 30 minutes have elapsed. The fan controller will be set to “high”.For the purpose of accurate analysis, the idle and load temperatures for CPU will be recorded and the range between idle and load will be calculated to determine how efficient cooling is.
Note: Ambient temperature is 26C
System Components
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1800X (stock)
Motherboard: ASRock X370 Taichi
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L12S
Graphics: MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G
Memory: 2x 8GB Kingston Predator DDR4-2666MHz
Drives: Samsung 840 EVO / Kingston UV400 / WD Caviar Blue 3.5-inch
PSU: Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 850W
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1800X (stock)
Motherboard: ASRock X370 Taichi
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L12S
Graphics: MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G
Memory: 2x 8GB Kingston Predator DDR4-2666MHz
Drives: Samsung 840 EVO / Kingston UV400 / WD Caviar Blue 3.5-inch
PSU: Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 850W
Results
The system had an average idle temperature of 36.9C, and an average load temperature of 69.86C making delta temperature of 32.96. Load temperatures peaked at 71.5C during the 20-minute stress test with AIDA64 CPU stress testing. While this is a new test setup which we cannot compare with our newer reviews that use an Intel LGA 1150 setup, I could immediately tell the Refract S1’s cooling performance is lacking out of the box.
Adding a single 120mm cooling fan on the rear as exhaust greatly improved the thermal performance of the chassis. In this review, we’ve added a single Noctua NF-F12 industrialPPC-3000 PWM fan and lowered the average load temperate to 64.5C, reducing our delta temperature to 27.6.
Noise
The Refract S1’s solid tempered glass front panel design blocks almost all mechanical noise produced inside the chassis making it very silent. However, the silence somehow compromises the cooling performance of the two intake front fans having no open source of intake air.
Conclusion
Xigmatek offers the Refract S1 as a value-oriented enthusiast chassis featuring tempered glass panels and RGB sync supporting hardware like the two RGB fans that came pre-installed in the chassis.
The tempered glass panels give a wide view of the hardware inside with the dark tint highlighting RGB lighting. The front mirror-like front panel gives a unique look when lighting is turned off, yet highlights lighting as well when turned on.
While the chassis isn’t really on the ‘premium quality’ side of cases with its cheap rear I/O shields and cable management routes without grommets, it still offers enthusiasts the great looks tempered glass panels naturally have and RGB lighting.
The Refract S1 also packs a generous amount of space to house high-performance gaming setups that would include water cooling solutions. It has a flexible storage solution of two 2.5-inch drives and two 3.5-inch drives but sadly lacks anti-vibration features. The front tempered glass panel naturally dampens the noise generated by the two 120mm cooling fans installed behind it resulting in a quiet operation. At £51.99, it’s a decent value for the aesthetics it offers but we highly recommend at least adding a rear exhaust fan to help improve the thermal performance of the chassis.
Pros
+ Great aesthetics for value
+ Spacious interior
+ Good support for water cooling
+ Low-noise operation
+ Reasonably priced
+ RGB synchronization support
Cons
– Thermal performance out of the box
– Lacking HDD protective mechanisms
– Unreplaceable rear I/O shields
+ Great aesthetics for value
+ Spacious interior
+ Good support for water cooling
+ Low-noise operation
+ Reasonably priced
+ RGB synchronization support
Cons
– Thermal performance out of the box
– Lacking HDD protective mechanisms
– Unreplaceable rear I/O shields
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