Fractal Era 2 Mini ITX Case Review

The Beginning of a New Era

A little over four years ago, Fractal released their original Era ITX enclosure. It was something new for Fractal, and a departure from the somewhat generically styled, yet very high quality enclosures they were known for at the time. The Era was an elegantly styled aluminum shell chassis with a wood panel at the top.

Unfortunately, like so many ITX enclosures of the time, the Era suffered from poor ventilation. In a time when so few people can agree on anything, reviewers were pretty much unanimous that the original Era was beautiful, but did not have enough airflow to be recommended.

Fast-forwarding to the present, Fractal has taken those four years to rethink their design philosophy, while introducing several other very good ITX enclosures along the way (see the 2023 release of the Fractal Terra as an example) and finally brought us an update on their original, the Era 2. I hope that I am not the only one excited to see what Fractal has done.

Overview

It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but to my eye, the Era 2 is one of, if not the most beautiful PC enclosure I have ever seen. Honestly, photos do not even come close to doing justice to this case. The Midnight Blue sample I received is simply stunning. The subtle shaping of the angles and curving of the edges of the outer shell turn the Era 2 into a PC work of art.

Of course, the original was beautiful too, but Fractal has really taken everything they have learned from their more recent cases and incorporated those lessons into the Era 2. The Walnut top panel is now vented as is the bottom of the chassis as well. To aid in air intake, the bottom has been curved to increase the surface area, and allow more airflow, and includes a full length, pull out dust filter which ingeniously also functions as the locking mechanism for the removal of the outer shell.

Fractal has also increased the perforated area on the sides of the outer shell to assist with the cooling characteristics of the Era 2. Improving on the Terra’s option to add a single 120mm fan at the bottom, the Era 2 includes two, 120 mm 2000 rpm Fractal fans.

It really looks as if Fractal wanted to insure that this new enclosure not only corrects the issues of the original Era, but is simply an outstanding performer. At an MSRP of $199, Fractal believes highly in the Era 2. We’ll have to wait for the testing to see if the price is justified.

The Build

The time for my gushing about the appearance of the enclosure is over (at least until the conclusion). As mentioned in the introduction, to unlock the outer shell, simply partially pull out the bottom fan filter from the rear of the enclosure, and then slide the entire shell up.

Underneath we find a center spine, sandwich-style ITX frame which places the GPU and Motherboard back to back. This style of frame has become almost the standard in the small form factor community at this point, as it allows for a maximum usage of space within the chassis. Taking another design feature of the Terra, Fractal has made the center spine of the Era 2 adjustable so that the builder can prioritize a taller CPU cooler, or a thicker GPU. Depending on your preference, the CPU cooler max height ranges from 55-70mm, and the GPU max thickness is from 448-63mm.

The top fan/radiator bracket is removable, allowing for easier access to the rest of the frame, and it uses a really interesting tool-less design: just pull the two release triggers towards the right of the frame and the bracket releases. The bracket for the power supply is also an interesting design as it is mounted on rails, and releases with a single screw. I did find that this design allows for some play in the power supply once installed, but I don’t believe this would be a problem with the possible exception of shipping a complete system. Some expanding foam packing would probably be necessary in such a situation.

Unfortunately, that is not my only issue with the build process, and a lot of it is because of the PSU mounting. I’ll be honest, the Era 2 was one of the more difficult enclosures to build in that I’ve encountered. SFF systems are often challenging, but the design of the PSU bracket takes up a bit more space than I feel is needed, and in a system this small, every millimeter counts. There is a small portion of the bracket that bends towards the motherboard and on both motherboards I tested in the case, this obstructed the 24 pin connector. It was still possible to plug in, but it did make it more difficult.

The positioning of the PSU I feel was also too far towards the motherboard. This both limited cable space between the two, and made it difficult to mount the motherboard, especially if the motherboard has built in WiFi, as both the boards I mounted had issues with the antennae connections on the rear I/O causing interference with the frame while I was trying to install them. Again, this issue did not prevent mounting, but made the process more difficult.

Really the biggest issue I had was with the space between the PSU and motherboard. Not only does the 24 pin power need to be connected here, but also the front panel connectors, which are power, power LED, USB 3.2, and a USB-C internal header. Then all of this has to be crammed into this small space so that the outer shell can fit back over it. This is often a problem on these sandwich style SFF enclosures, but it was more of an issue on the Era 2 than just about any other case I’ve tried.

At the front of the frame, is a large opening that allows for larger GPUs to be installed from the front. This is mainly an issue as the power supply connector plug on the Era 2 is quite bulky and sits directly above the GPU, which prevents larger GPUs to be installed from the top. Still, the Era 2 supports GPUs up to 326mm in length and a full 3 slot design.

Lastly, if building in the Era 2, I would recommend a PSU with either very thin and flexible cables, or order custom length cables from one of the many reputable custom cable companies. As the connector side of the PSU is facing upwards in the Era 2, there are only a couple of inches between the PSU and the power connectors on the graphics card. The cables on the Cooler Master PSU I was using are quite stiff and did not really want to tuck out of the way very easily. I’ve recently used an ASUS ROG Loki SFX-L power supply on another system and the included cables were very flexible. Those would not have presented the same issue here. This is once again, a good example of making sure to choose components even more carefully when doing a small form factor build.

The good news is that none of these issues I encountered prevent a build, and just make it a bit more difficult, and once the system is built, most people won’t worry about it again for three or four years. Once the system is built, everything is in position to function perfectly well for a long time.

Performance Testing

I tested the Era 2 in stock configuration (bottom fans as intake) with the case fans at both 100% fan speed, and 45%. At 100% the fans were very loud (they are 2000 rpm fans after all) and I would not recommend this configuration. At 45% the fans were just below detectable over ambient noise and the temperature differences were minimal in comparison to the jetliner setting.

As the Era 2 is configured for it, I also added two 140mm fans, configured for exhaust, at the top. These were also set to a fixed 45% fan speed.

I considered testing with a 280mm AIO, and there is definitely room for it at the top, but I feel that while this would benefit the CPU temps, the extra restriction of the radiator in the top of the case would cause the GPU to run much hotter. In my opinion, a radiator only makes sense in the Era 2 as a full system loop, but a custom loop in this case will be very challenging due to some of the space limitations I mentioned earlier.

As the ID-Cooling IS-55 cooler I use on this test bench is 55mm, the Era 2 was set to allow for max CPU cooler height.

Specification of Test System:

• Intel Core i5-12600K CPU
• Gigabyte Aorus Z690i Ultra Lite motherboard
• ID Cooling IS-55 Low Profile CPU cooler
• 16 GB (2×8) G.Skill Trident Z 3333 (@ 3600) DDR4 memory
• PNY RTX 3080 12GB XLR8 OC GPU, fan speed set to standard curve

All tests conducted at a controlled ambient temperature of 23.5° C. Motherboard CPU Fan Curve set to “Performance”, Case Fans Set to 1000 RPM.

• CPU Temperature Testing: Cinebench R23
• GPU Temperature Testing: Unigine Heaven set to Ultra Detail, Extreme Tessellation, and 8x Anti Aliasing at 1080p for 30 minutes
• Sound measurements were conducted using a Dayton Audio UMM-6 calibrated measurement microphone positioned at 20 cm from source
• Gaming Test: Performed for 30 minutes using Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, 1920×1080, Ultra Settings with Ray Traced Lighting and Reflections on, DLSS set to Quality mode

Even without the addition of the exhaust fans, the Era 2 is one of the best performing ITX enclosures I’ve reviewed. The CPU temps were the lowest in both the stress test and gaming of any case tested with the current methodology. While the GPU was lower in GPU only load, it was relegated to second place in the gaming test. Once the two 140mm fans were added, the temps got even better for both the CPU and GPU.

I will be completely honest here. I did not expect this level of performance. Despite the changes Fractal made from the first generation, I was really only expecting about average performance. I was so surprised by these results that I actually ran the tests again to verify the performance. It really is astounding.

Conclusion

Let’s see, we’ve got a beautiful aluminum enclosure that offers amazing performance for its size. It can be a bit of a pain to build in, and at $199 it is not a budget (or even a mid-range) priced case. Even with the price, and the issues I had with the build process, I feel that I can highly recommend the Fractal Era 2.