North: a case that is designed to be closer to the modern home. In some places, Fractal Design has replaced plastic and metal with wood and faux leather. The tested variant of the North case, with the additional Mesh designation, not only has a perforated front, but also the side panel, which makes new cooling options available. In addition to the factory configuration, we will also test the case with fans in non-traditional positions.
Interior
You can mount the accessory fan holder directly behind the perforated side panel. It can hold two 120 or 140 mm fans. You can use the holder in three places. The top position is exactly opposite the CPU and according to the parameters, the tower cooler should not be more than 145 mm in height (width). The Fuma 2 test cooler has a height of 154.5 mm and I was able to fit the holder, but with the fans on there’s not enough space. Maybe a two to three millimeter smaller cooler and it would have worked. In the middle and bottom position, the holder again limits the graphics card in width. It should not exceed 148 mm including the power cable. But in order to mount the holder, one more panel had to be added. With it, of course, there is less space for handling in the case and so it is possible to remove it with a single screw on the ceiling.
You can fit Mini-ITX, mATX and ATX motherboards into the spacious interior. There is no space left for E-ATX. The mounting positions of the motherboards are marked according to their formats. The standoff posts are already pre-installed from the factory. Without the fan holder on the side panel, a tower-shaped CPU cooler can be up to a respectable 170 mm in size, giving you complete freedom in its selection. With a graphics card, you also don’t have to limit yourself to the 355 mm size with a fan mounted on the front.
Only the vertical grommets for cables have rubber caps. I certainly don’t see the lack of them on the top and on the tunnel as a minus. What I do see as a hindrance, however, is the size of the vertical grommets. Running a thicker ATX cable, for the motherboard power supply, will make it harder for you to go through them.
The top and bottom grommets are two centimeters wide, which is sufficient for a convenient pass-through of the EPS cable to power the processor. The largest opening in the case is at the front behind the panel. In it you have up to eight centimeters for a liquid cooler radiator.
As is Fractal Design’s usual practice, this new product brings decent cable management with three pre-prepared Velcro strips in the trough. This provides up to 30mm of depth space for cables. In addition, there are a further 14 cable attachment positions on the tray. For these, you can use, for example, the zip ties from the accessories. In addition, the tray also has a holder for two 2.5″ storage drives on it. This can be easily removed with a single locking screw. You also have space for storage in the tunnel. Not a standard drawer but two additional holders. This gives you a lot of flexibility in cable management, as they don’t get in the way and so you don’t necessarily have to take them out if you don’t need them. These are hybrid mounts, but not just any kind. You can fit both 2.5″ and 3.5″ storage at the same time on one bracket. You can also specify their position in the tunnel. Two of the spots are at the bottom and the third, alternative, is on the ceiling of the tunnel. With the bottom mount, the maximum length of the power supply can be 140 mm. If you use only one bracket, the length can be up to 255 mm. Without them you have a free tunnel length of 375 mm.
On the top there is a small hub for four fans. Leaving the ones supplied with the case, you can cover up to five fans. The two can be daisy-chained together to save one position in the hub. If its top positioning doesn’t suit you, you can use an alternative position. This is located at the back of the case, where the standard exhaust fan is mounted.
All of the above are held together by solid sheets of an incredible, perhaps even exaggerated, thickness of 0.9 mm.
When installing the hardware, I encountered one, quite annoying shortcoming. As the manufacturer indicated the possibility of mounting two 140 mm fans on the ceiling, they probably did not count on less flexible cables for powering the processor. Because of this, my cables clashed with the position for the fan and it was not possible to fit two, but only one. Likewise, other hardware such as the liquid cooling radiator will also be a problem. At least with the wider ones.
Except for the top mounting of the 140 mm fans, the installation went smoothly. The cables were very easy and intuitive to arrange and then connect. The free space in the tunnel and the 30 mm deep cable management trough helped the most.
