... and interior details of the Fractal Design Era 2
The Era 2 case is an evolution of the original model (Era ITX), where Fractal Design also changed the approach to the ventilation holes. Be it in terms of the top panel or the side, larger perforations. How the Era 2 will make its mark and stack up against competing SFF cases remains to be seen. Despite the detailed analysis, this is still the first case to pass our new testing methodology.
… and interior details of the Fractal Design Era 2
The quickest way to see inside the case is through the top. This view also reveals the support structure for a liquid cooler. Its radiator has to be up to 280 mm (inclusive). That is, as long as it fits within the maximum dimensions. Fractal Design spells this out in the specifications in fairly great detail. Also, if the radiator is thinner than 52 mm, its length can go up to 315 mm, while it’s only 300 mm for those thicker than 52 mm.
The maximum officially supported thickness of the radiator with fans is 58 mm, although we measured the distance between the radiator bracket and the motherboard tray structure to be up to 70 mm.
To be able to proceed with the mounting of anything, it is necessary to remove the aluminum casing. This slides out in a very simple way by pulling upwards. Before that, however, you have to unlock the lock/latch that the casing shares with the dust filter.
The graphics card can only be mounted vertically with a length of up to 326 mm. It must not exceed 137 mm in height to avoid collision with the 230-volt power connector. When it comes to the thickness of the graphics card, you then have to stay within 63 mm, with which you can also fit a GeForce RTX 4090. Beware of the specific design, however. Nvidia’s Founders Edition is admittedly only 61 mm, but many non-reference designs are significantly thicker.
The graphics card is installed parallel to the motherboard, which means a PCIe ×16 riser is required. This is already pre-installed, namely the Flex 2, which we also tested separately a while ago. The supported PCI Express standard is 4.0.
The fans (Aspect 12 PWM) are pre-installed in number of two on the bottom of the case with intake orientation. This position apparently assumes that a liquid cooler will come in on the other side (top) to be connected to the system cooling configuration. In our tests, this will not happen and that is why, in addition to the factory configuration, we also test the cooling performance in a configuration with the fans moved to the ceiling, on the outtake.
The interior of the FD Era 2 is vertically divided into two sections, where one receives the motherboard and the PSU in SFX or SFX-L format. There are virtually no options for managing the cabling of the PSU in this case, there are no removable Velcro straps or the typical eyelets in the top where they would come in handy. So the important thing will be to bundle and tidy the cabling so that it doesn’t interfere with any fans. We recommend using only modular PSUs, to which only the cables that the build absolutely needs for its operation will be connected.
The PSU, by the way, is mounted in a dedicated bracket.
The latter is slid out before the installation, screwed onto the PSU and then slid back on. And then, of course, it’s secured with a screw. The power supply of the PSU is “internal”, which means that the case has its own power cord that plugs inside the case.
Its connector is between the rear bottom fan and the PSU itself. The power cord that runs from the PSU also connects to the case from the back, but already at the top of the case.
Support for coolers other than liquid coolers is actually only for top-flow models (i.e. with a fan) that are up to 70 mm in height.
You can’t fit more powerful coolers of this type or tower coolers into the Era 2 case.
The second chamber is reserved for the graphics card (up to 326 mm long, up to 63 mm thick and up to 137 mm tall, as mentioned above) and one inch-type storage drive.
Internal storage (except for those on the motherboard – M.2 SSD) can only be installed in 2.5″ format. This may bother some people. Especially when the original FD Era ITX case also allowed you to mount a 3.5″ HDD. But now we have to be modest. The lone position for a 2.5″ SSD/HDD is located at the bottom, above the front fan. the other two inch storage drives can be installed on a tray next to the motherboard, behind the PSU. For SSDs/HDDs with varying thicknesses, a 15 mm adjustment of this tray is also possible from the rear. However, this potentially worsens compatibility with graphics cards, where in the extreme position with the largest slot (see illustration in the manual on page 35) you can no longer fit the RTX 4090 and will have to reach for slimmer variants (under 48 mm).
The installation of components into the Era 2 is relatively simple and we did not encounter any serious complications during the process. However, it is naturally necessary to have the components ready in the appropriate dimensions.
Please note: The article continues in the following chapters.
- Contents
- Exterior details...
- ... and interior details of the Fractal Design Era 2
- Testing methodology
- Results: Maximum performance
- Results: Higher performance (45 dBA)
- Results: Medium performance (42 dBA)
- Results: Lower noise level (39 dBA)
- Results: Low noise level (36 dBA)
- Results: Very low noise level (33 dBA)
- Results: Limit of audibility (31 dBA)
- Results: USB port speeds
- Conclusion
On testing methodology:
1. Going for L9 over L12x77 is certainly a better choice as the former is basically guaranteed to fit in any cases (if you must only use two coolers). Still, I think having more coolers in the arsenal would be more “fair” to the cases being tested. The inability to use larger air coolers like the L12S, or liquid coolers like what this case is designed for, heavily penalizes this case.
2. There’s a good reason that the stock fans should be used when provided, but I wonder what you would do if the case comes with no case fans but intend you to use some?
3. I think there should be additional noise and spectral analysis for when fans are pressed against the side panels and/or fan mounting hardware. Somewhat related, removing cooler from noise level may not be appropriate in some cases, where the intake panel is located close to the cooler.
4. Can you explain why E-cores are disabled?
Specific for this case:
1. “Both side panels are heavily perforated. Firstly on a relatively large area (approx. 50 %)”…
By 50%, are you referring to the area where the vents are present? If we’re talking about open area %, by my rough estimation it’s only around 25% at the most open areas.
2. The bottom dust filter looks interesting, seems similar to the metal filter you have tested. I’d imagine it being quite favourable to airflow.
3. Despite Fractal installing the bottom fans as intake at stock, it is in fact inferior to bottom exhaust, even when using liquid coolers on top. Machines and More on YouTube (https://youtu.be/vyNmPt6nBTI?si=3IF5SPVDaiIT2EmF&t=890) has extensively tested various fan layouts and load scenarios, and found that flipping the bottom fans to exhaust are always better (for both CPU and GPU). And this makes a lot of sense in sandwich layout cases – you’re aiming to pull air from the sides and exhaust hot air via other routes. When there’s airflow from the bottom, the case internal pressure increases, which means less air will be pulled in from the sides, leading to marginal gains or even negative effects.
Yes, the NH-L12Sx77 cooler does not fit in the Era 2 and we had to adjust the fan position in the case of the Mood case as well. The NH-L9i cooler has better compatibility due to its smaller dimensions, but at the price of lower cooling performance. Of course, I agree that in an ideal world, tests with liquid coolers would be great too. But these are already beyond the available capacity in terms of time.
In the future we will deal with spectral sound analyses with respect to different fan modifications in the framework of the evaluation of the level of psychoacoustic optimizations. Unfortunately, there is no time for this now due to too much pressure on tests of components from other categories.
The E-cores were disabled because of the higher heat flux achieved on the P-cores, which the coolers are also able to keep cool while maintaining a stable performance.
The 50% is not meant to be the “open area”, but the “total area covered by the perforation”. I accept that the wording could have been clearer. My head was already in other topics when writing the article, haha. And you probably know which ones… 🙂
On time requirements, a reasonable compromise would be to reduce the resolution of sound tests… that is, test fewer sound levels. I don’t think testing 6 sound levels so close together would lead to a different conclusion than, say, 3-4 sound levels spread wider apart (e.g. 31, 33, 39, 45 dBA). I’d say it’s the same for fans too, and the extra time gained could be better used for other things (for example by testing more fans, or by expanding the range of sound testing to something like 31/33/39/45/51 dBA etc.)