Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Checking Out The Fractal Terra: The Most Innovative SFF Case We’ve Seen?”.
Tara incognito more like terra firma, so the unboxing experience on this one was interesting. Fractal has never included a card with theirs. Thank you. Making Tara was the most challenging and fun project. We’Ve ever had the pleasure of being a part of the four of us or Avid sff Gamers, and we were determined to find a new and Innovative way of providing a smooth building experience. We aim to develop a case that exudes a Scandinavian design inspired by Nature with a clean understated surface and a deep, well thought out.
Interior, we hope building in Terra is as thoroughly uh as we hope. Building in Terra is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Oh anything, you can always do with the fractal case if you’re considering any fractal case is to check the manual Download a pdf of the manual online and look at the build guide, they actually put a lot of work into that easy to do the whole design Of the case is predicated around this middle spline and so for CPU Cooler focused designs.
It’S going to give you a lot of clearance for your CPU Cooler, it’ll. Let you use a GPU length of up to 267 millimeters and up to 40 millimeters wide 43 millimeters. Maybe if you stretch things a little bit and your CPU Cooler height can be 70 to 77 millimeters, absolute maximum. Now you’ll notice, there’s orange tabs two on the bottom and two on the top.
That’S how you relocate this spline in the middle and that’s what they’ve done to make the build as easy as possible. There’S a power connector here which has a hidden. You know: 120 volt power; cable, that’s routed around here to fit for your power supply. There’S lots of little pieces of hidden functionality like you could mount a fan on the bottom.
You can slide things around and the manual is a handy, movable spline configuration table showing you how much CPU and GPU clearance you have the various spline settings. Now you might be thinking well what, if I want to install a Founders Edition, GPU, there’s mostly a flow through area at the rear of the card for the GPU, something like the Nvidia Founders Edition. You know, 3090, that’s a triple slot card. Can you install that in here? Yes, you can and it’s going to flow through here you will have to use the offset mounts that are included which will allow the GPU to flow through to the power supply, which is a really nice touch.
So the ITX is designed for this case does consider situations where you have a flow through GPU, which is really pretty clever for the front panel. We have a single USB type, A and A single type c. Sorry, I did away with the headphone part yeah, but you can just plug your headphones in, for USB makes sense. They even have helpful little plastic tabs to prevent you from installing the side on the wrong side.
I really do like this case material, but it picks up my dead skin cells really easily. I’M gon na have to wear gloves for this, build, I think, oh and if you’re going to a LAN party with unscrupulous characters, or maybe just a LTX, hopefully I’ll see you there. You could install screws here and here and here and here on the bottom, which will lock the sides. You do security screws if you wanted to what a new and interesting case from fractal.
Now I just got this before computex, but I do plan to do a build in this, probably with the ryzen 7900 no X, so that I can maximize on the GPU. It’S also occurring to me that if you don’t plan to use a GPU, the GPU accessory stuff is removable. You could fashion this into a kind of Home Server case. It’S definitely very breathable. I like that boy, I’m sure glad that we had a chance to build in this case. It’S Scandinavian awesome, it exudes high-end, it’s thick metal, there’s no flex or give as small form factor cases go. This case has the least flex and give of any small form factor case that I’ve ever laid hands on it’s better than everything I mean it feels substantial. That said, this is not a case that I would recommend for first-time system Builders.
It’S got some really Innovative features, don’t get me wrong the side doors or the the plastic latches that you can remove them. A lot of people are going to copy these features. The movable spline in the middle I’ve got this system set up with a 30 60.
An Oris, 30, 60, 30 60 TI something like that. It’S a triple slot card. It’S a real big card, but you’ve got plenty of room in here, even though I’ve moved the spline all the way to one side to kind of crowd the GPU a little bit. We can put it in tall memory, but a relatively tall air cooler for the system. You can’t really do an AIO, I mean you can do 120 millimeter AIO, but it was a little challenging to do this.
Build it’ll use an sfx power supply, but you can forget sfxl. I looks like there’s enough room. You could cram an sfxl power supply in there, but you can’t, and that also exposed another issue potentially, which is the power connector on our NZXT power supply in this orientation. The right angle, connector comes off this side, which bangs against the side of the case, and even if you rotate it, it sort of goes this way, which is not really super useful or helpful to you.
Are there sfx power supplies out there that have the power cord connector in this orientation? If there are chances, are you’re not going to be able to use it with this case? Also, if we kind of compare this case a little bit to The Cooler Master nr200 or the nr200p that comes with an AIO and a power supply, it’s a lot easier to build in The Cooler Master case, mainly because it’s a physically larger case. It’S got an AIO in the top, so you’re going to be able to run an am5 CPU at the highest end, 7970x or 7950x or 7950x 3D. No problem for The Cooler Master case or The Cooler Master case out of the box. That comes with power, supply and everything else. I think it’d be a little bit more of a challenge in this form. Factor it’s going to be more uh.
Here’S the approved parts list. Here’S a bill – that’s known good here – is the recipe that somebody has come up with paint by numbers build in this case I mean sure, don’t get me wrong Scandinavian design gunmetal. I mean my skin rubs off on the case because it’s basically like a wet stone which is pretty cool. Actually, that’s not. I don’t mean that in a negative way. It’S just it’s so awesome.
You can tell if somebody touched your computer, but it’s not picking up fingerprints. It’S just scraping your skin off. I think I think fractal may have shot a little too close to the Sun with the extreme compactness of this, given the trend of more wattage for CPUs and gpus and everything else.
Maybe that’s why the power cord is so thick, but that makes it hard to sort of Route the power cord around and have somewhere to, to put it The Cooler Master power cord is a lot thinner and a lot more elegant and easier to route and deal With inside the nr200, but you know, are you going to be able to cram a 1200 watt power supply in one of those with that power cord? I definitely feel like you could get 1200 watts out of the fractal power cord. I mean that doesn’t really seem like it would be an issue for it at all, seeing as how it’s the thickness of a garden hose, I feel like a large part of the price it comes down to the pcie4 ribbon cable. I mean pcie4 and Signal Integrity. Those are things that are not cheap, also, the thickness of the metal and the build quality like this is second to none in terms of build quality, construction and everything else. And, of course, you know Scandinavian design, aesthetic, if that’s what you’re after this is kind of a steal, it’s going to look good on any desk and this build was doable for someone, I would say, with like a lower mid-tier skills.
This is your first small form factor build, maybe maybe get a get a friend phone, a friend to help and check your parts list and go everything come to the level one forums I I don’t know, maybe maybe we can. We can help you figure it out and get it done, but for an experienced Builder, this is another option that is very nice and definitely will uh catch eyes. If you know what I mean, I’m model this level, one I’m signing out. If you find me in the level one forums, .