Fractal Design North Review: Mid-Century Mid-Tower
Table Of Content
But it takes what was great about the original and sizes it up for E-ATX motherboards and the longest, largest graphics cards, while keeping the price resonable. The Fractal Design Define 7 is equipped with an excellent fan filtration system, with large removable nylon filters on every fan mounting location including the power supply. Fractal Design wisely designed the filter on the bottom of the case to be removed from the front, eliminating the need to move your system for filter maintenance and cleaning. You might assume the mesh improves thermals, but there's also evidence (at least in some cases) that air coming in from the side can be detrimental to the front-to-back airflow path. The only other case we've tested recently with a mesh side panel was the Azza Aero 480, and that did not perform very well.
Meshify
And, finally, the rear fan mount can fit a 120mm spinner, although the case only comes with the two fans up front. The top of the North features a removable panel with a leather tab and the back for easier removal. The side panels are removed via two thumb screws, which is a bit disappointing for a case of this price, and it’s almost ironic when you consider the otherwise excellent aesthetics of this chassis. Fractal Design makes some great cases, and this list has the top options they have for your own PC build. Fractal Design cases all also offer multiple variants under the same product line, so you can get different versions of the cases listed above, set apart by the inclusion or shade of tempered glass panels. The Fractal Design Define Nano S is the best ITX case that the company makes.
Hard Drive Cage Kit - Type B
In total, this system has four drain ports, three of which are hidden behind vanity panels in the back. Moving the motherboard in your gaming PC to the middle of your case is no easy feat, but PC modder Jeroen ter Horst has done an expert job here. He gutted his Fractal Design Meshify S2 and completely changed the layout, with a custom distro and cable management plate, while moving the motherboard to center stage, flanked by a pair of angled 360mm radiators. Like its smaller, older Fractal North brother, the North XL is available in charcoal black and chalk white, with a choice of a mesh or tempered glass side panel.
Wood, glass, and brass for bigger, classy builds
When outfitted with a tempered glass side panel is priced at $170 / £154 or $150 / £144 without it. Known as the finest case Fractal Design makes, the Define R6 is the case to go for for a quiet build. The case packs in a ton of features, however, with great radiator and AIO cooling support, and a mid-tower form factor with plenty of room for all your hardware. Terra is a PC case designed and engineered to reshape the small form factor gaming experience.
Specifications of the Fractal Design North XL
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That’s some real commitment to moving your motherboard, Jeroen – we’re amazed by the immaculate cable tidying and the custom distro plate. If you’re new to the world of water-cooling and want to have go yourself, then make sure you also read our full guide on how to water-cool your PC. Secondly, the motherboard and graphics card were installed, and connected with 16mm PEGT tubing. The third and final step was mounting the radiators and fans, then connecting the tubes between the distro plate and radiators.
Features of the Fractal Design North
However, Fractal Design offers a ton of options, so picking the best one for you can be tough.
Fractal Budget ATX Case Alternative: Fractal Design Focus G
But if you do want to show off your internals, the vertical GPU kit certainly makes more sense with the glass panel. The wood front slats are a darker walnut on the black model than the oak used on the chalk white variant, and I think it looks great. Once again, I’m not a carpenter, nor did I take woodshop in high school, but I love the way Fractal has done from a visual design standpoint, marrying brass metal and wood accents with more traditional steel and glass. When I took the North XL out of the box, I was taken aback by the attention to detail in this chassis. Instead of boring black or silver accents, the charcoal black version features brass-colored IO ports and feet.
Fractal's North, though, performed exceptionally well in our testing – especially with CPU thermals. Fractal's North is a mid-tower ATX case that disguises itself as a pretty piece of furniture. Obviously, the most appealing feature of this case is its wood front panel. Now, I never took woodshop in high school, but this feels and looks like bamboo. Fractal Design is a market leading company in the premium segment of PC gaming products and cases.
I don’t think I have ever been impressed by the feet on a case before, but there’s a first time for everything, I suppose. Speaking of the IO, the top panel features separate audio in and out jacks, two USB 3.0 Type-A ports and one USB Type-C 3.1 Gen 2 port. The entire bottom of the chassis is covered by a large plastic mesh filter that is removable from the front. The filter covers two mounting locations for 120mm or 140mm fans and the power supply fan opening. The four large rubber-coated feet keep the case approximately a half inch off the ground.
So it's likely the tempered glass version of the North is at least a little quieter. The Fractal Design Meshify C is a full-tower case with a ton of room for customization. The Meshify C is for those looking for a huge case with a ton of features packed in, all while carrying a price tag that isn't too high. The custom distro and cable management plate was made with the help of a fellow Dutch case modder known as TheDutchmanModifies. He used his CNC machine to mill out all the liquid channels, O-ring grooves and mounting holes in the 10mm and 5mm sheets of acrylic that I used.
With the Meshify S2, it’s really easy to take out the mesh from the front panels – it’s also possible to run the I/O cables into the case through a slotted hole at the bottom of the back front panel. From there onwards, it’s just like a regular PC when it comes to plugging cables into the motherboard and graphics card. You just have to make sure you do it when the PC is off, so your hands don’t hit any spinning fans. In total, the custom distro and cable management plate is 35mm thick and built up out of three layers of 10mm acrylic, with one final 5mm acrylic plate that’s wrapped in black vinyl to create a clean aesthetic. With the help of the online 3D library GrabGAD, I was able to find models of a micro-ATX motherboard, a water-cooled GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition, EK 360mm radiators and the Noiseblocker fans I used.
The Fractal Design Define 7 works with two different internal layouts, "open" and "storage." Open layout resembles many current mid-tower ATX cases on the market today. An open main chamber equipped with a pair of 3.5-inch hard drive mounts under the PSU tunnel and a couple SSDs mounts tucked neatly behind the motherboard tray. Fractal Design's cases generally aren't all that quiet, and that's true here as well. During our full-speed test, we got an average of 53 decibels, which is, bluntly, quite loud. Even though the case is loud, let’s not forget that the side panel is mesh.
/r/buildapc is a community-driven subreddit dedicated to custom PC assembly. Anyone is welcome to seek the input of our helpful community as they piece together their desktop. It took one and a half years in total, split into two phases for the build. The first phase was the design process, which ran from April 2019 until January 2020. This was the first time I’d done a full design in CAD first before building, and it was also my first custom loop. I chose this, as I thought it would be a great match with the red accents on the heatsink of the Asus ROG Maximus VIII Gene board.
While not as cheap as some of our other budget PC case picks, we wanted our cheap Fractal case choice to still retain a lot of what makes the brand’s products so great. This closed-off design works with various sound-dampening material around the R5 to create one of the best quiet PC cases of all time. Many of our top picks remain the same this year, but there’s been a few fantastic releases that I’ve added as alternatives where relevant.
Meanwhile, the PSU pulls its own fresh air from the underneath of the case, and there are also vents in the main compartment. With the help from two exhaust fans in the top, all the hot air gets pulled out of the system. I wanted to highlight the unique radiator layout, and I liked the clean look of just the radiators being on show without fans on top. Thanks to the dual mesh front panels, it was possible to move the six intake fans to the sides of the radiators that face the front panels. Thanks to our rapidly growing PC building Facebook page, we’ve seen many custom gaming PCs, from mods based on existing case designs to scratch PC builds.
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