Well, here we have something from Fractal Design to test again, something that goes beyond the usual formulas. The Terra case falls into the SFF (small form factor) category, but unlike many similarly sized solutions, there is room for a large graphics card. This makes the Terra an attractive small case for a gaming PC or a workstation reliant on the power of the GPU. But all this is traditionally discussed in more detail.
Interior layout
The inside contains more cables than it may appear on the outside. Two are routed from the front I/O panel and the other two are extensions. One is for power and the other is for PCI Express, which is for the graphics card. The latter interests us the most though, due to a recent issue with the PCIe extender in the Ridge case. The connector extension had a problem working in PCI Express 4.0 interface. The extension in Terra should be equipped with the same standard. I hope nothing like this will happen again. If for no other reason than that the problematic piece was composed of two parts. Here the extension cables are from one piece.
The tray located in the centre of the case is also the most adaptable part of the case. Longitudinal holes on the case floor allow the tray to move in a precise 29 mm range to the left or right. This creates the necessary space for the graphics card or CPU cooler, unfortunately not both at the same time. This span is divided into seven positions to which the exact height of the graphics card or CPU tower cooler is defined.
The orange clips ensure that the tray is stable during transport, even if only in one position. If you don’t have the tray with the components in the position marked with the number four, then only well tightened screws will help.
The maximum height of the graphics card can be 62/72 mm (depending on its depth). The height of the CPU tower cooler is 77 mm. Both values are dependent on each other – while one is gaining millimeters, the other component is losing them. Thanks to this, even with such small case dimensions, you are not completely limited to certain hardware and can combine them with each other.
The entire case can be disassembled even more than necessary for installation. The thickness of the aluminium side panels hovers around two millimetres, while the steel tray is thicker. Specifically, 2.6 millimetres. This makes even such a small case sturdy. Slight bending occurs when pressure is applied to the perforated parts. Because of the holes there, they are weakened, so this is acceptable.
