Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “They told us it couldn’t be done…”.
Computers, I love them, you love them, but don’t you think they’re just a little too dang big gross. What I’d rather have is something small like the fractal Ridge. Look at that. It’S just little.
I mean it’s, not the littlest you can get, but it’s pretty dang small at just 12.6 liters. It supports up to a three and maybe even a half slot graphics card. That’S over 337 millimeters in length. Let’S take a look. I live in a small apartment because I live in Vancouver and real estate prices are absolutely obscene, which is why I, like small computer, this fractal Ridge comes in white, but it also comes in black and that’s the one we’re going to unbox today and build a Computer in oh what fun, so we got Ridge accessories. I appreciate fractals attention to detail and uh just putting in a clearly labeled box. It’S not just a nondescript box that you will forget in the future.
We have a block that I am uncertain as to what it’s for, and we have a base stand, so this case can be mounted both vertically and horizontally, depending on where you want to put it, we got a bunch of screws, we got a pce Gen 4 Adapter interesting, I thought we had a riser cable inside the box is the case itself, a nice recyclable paper packaging and some nice. I can’t remember what this is PF pftft. This is the styrofoam that the keyboard nerds want. So I’m going to give this to ploop as a gift for front. I o we have a combo, 3.5 millimeter headphone microphone, Jack, two USB 3.0 and a USBC. It’S 3.2 Gen 2, not gen 2×2. I don’t believe. Oh and it’s a magnetic front panel.
This has a nice fabric, it is pretty thick every single panel on this is removable, which is going to be great because when you’re working in a small form factor case, things can get a little tricky trying to get into all those tiny crevices. And so here we see the included 140 millimeter fans, as you can see right here, there’s a split down the middle. You would put your motherboard and the rest of your components here and then an entirely separate section and intake on one of the sides for your GPU, so these two fans will affect the thickness as you can. I don’t know if you can really see it Mark, but, as you can see, it goes it kind of Clips over into the or the third slot, so your mileage may vary. I also appreciate captive thumb, screws that makes things a lot easier. So these side panels they don’t like just slide off. They actually have these two ball mounts or what are these called? I don’t know they got those two balls that you stick in there, so this top panel is actually screwed in on both sides. On a 140 millimeter fan, and no one does that anymore.
So here’s what you already can mount the 80 millimeter fans. Sadly, we can’t mount on the top because we have our. I o cables that come in here as well as a pass-through cable, so that we can mount our power supply, which is going. I think this is where the power supply is.
We do have to take this off to get our power supply in there. So we’re just taking off the top panel because we’re gon na get to building now from what I’ve seen so far it looks like there is two two and a half inch SSD mounts for three and a half inch Drive mounts. It looks like there actually isn’t any options which is disappointing.
I tend to store a lot of media and like having backups and stuff like that, and so usually my computer always includes some sort of large capacity hard drive. Instead of a riser cable, you can see they actually have a riser board, so this will plug into the motherboard, and then it passes on through to this side so that you can plug your GPU in a great value. Add it’s nice that they include that there are still some cases that don’t include it or they include it for an extra cost. Usually it’s like 30 or 40 dollars. Cable Management looks okay in an empty case. Uh, it looks like we’ll have a decent amount of space in this kind of middle area, but it can always get hairy once you get Hardware involved, we have some mounting channels along this middle bar right here that are actually specifically for cables. Other than that, I don’t see other specific mounting points I guess around here, if you’re running a cable along the edge, but we’ll see what happens when we build it after this message from our sponsor thanks to secret lab for sponsoring today’s video secret lab chairs are Engineered to keep you incredibly comfortable for long hours at work and play their new Titan Evo 2022 chair keeps you feeling comfortable for longer, four-way, lumbar support, Ultra comfortable line of different seat materials and even more, I sit in one every single day and it served me Quite well, all chairs come with up to a five year, extended warranty and a 49-day return policy.
And if you don’t know, if you love a chair by 49 days, then you don’t know anything. So that’s a pretty solid return policy head to the link in the description and check out secret lab today for a bill. Today we have a few options. We’Ve brought some things because I want to make some tests for sizing and fitting we’re using ASRock Phantom gaming. B650E, it’s it’s! It’S the only am5 ITX board.
We have we’re going to be putting in some Kingston Fury, Beast ddr5. We got 32 gigs of that a ryzen 7600 X and it will be cooled by an NHL 12.. Now, CPU cooling is going to be probably the biggest sacrifice.
You’Ll have to make if you’re going for a gaming machine here there is just not much vertical space for cooling you’re not going to be able to get a super large cooler. This does have radiator support. Basically, where these fans are, you can fit a 280 millimeter rad that basically will limit you to probably a single slot graphics card at best and those don’t really exist unless you’re water cooling, which would be a pretty bold Loop to try and put a 240 ML Or a 280 millimeter rad in here, I’m not going to try it. I’Ve also brought a selection of gpus, so we can do some size tests to see what you can fit in because sometimes they say the dimensions, but if you really believe and are willing to Force things into their spot, you can fit in a little bit more.
So I’m going to break a 40 90. Today, the maximum cooler height is 70 millimeters, which is not very tall. Yes, 66 millimeters tall, so it just slides in under it. Something we won’t be able to do is put a 120 millimeter fan on the top.
I we probably will not have space for that. We’Ve encountered some fitment issues with our selected cooler. The issue is that, with the way we’ve currently installed, the brackets it’ll either go over the top or, if we pronounce it the other way, it’s going to block that pcie slot just barely and because we’re using a because it uses a board and not a cable. Pretty close, actually, I think, we’re okay, so while the cooler does technically fit, we also kind of need to be able to screw this riser in, I think from that side, maybe we can screw it in from the other side and be okay.
No because you need the pressure coming in, so this is going to be a not ideal. Okay, I’m trying to put the motherboard in it’s something to note this pass through from the power supply to the back is going to get in the way of you installing your motherboard, so we’ll need to just quickly take this out in the accessories you get some Rubber washers for vibration dampening some SSD mounting screws. Ssd surf screws case screws, which ones are the motherboard screws.
It would be nice fractal if you labeled these in the future, so this case can support a sfx or an sfxl power supply, sfx sfx long just to make my life easier, I’m going to go with the sfx power supply because it’s going to give me more Space to work around in so this is going to be fun. I got a screw. I got to screw through all of that. This is pretty bad. Okay, all right! Let’S try this again! Oh you know I did this a little backwards, don’t make fun of me! Internet because sometimes I forget the good advice that I’m supposed to provide and I put the power supply in without any of the cables plugged in and now it’s going to be a whole pain in my took us to get everything wired incorrectly mistakes were made fun Fact about these fans they come with a four pin and a three pin header, so you can daisy chain them together, so you only use one port on your motherboard for both of the fans wow.
You know how I talked about how this is going to be an issue screwing it in it’s. Not because look at this look at what fractal thought about you can take out that and now I can screw this back on and insert it directly into the pcie slot on the board. Also the computer’s not posting, but we’ll figure that out. Don’T you worry.
We put everything into the case. We tried to test to see if it worked and it uh didn’t after a little bit of troubleshooting we’re here on another day, and we have a new entire system in. It turns out that it was the CPU that was the issue. So now we have a Rog strix x570i motherboard, with a ryzen 5800 X CPU. We have 32 gigabytes of ddr4 3600 Mega transfers per second to RAM and then the rest is the same. One of the nice features is that they have this great pass through, so you can get cables to the other side of the computer. That’S a lot of extra cable that I’m going to have to contend with, especially because this is just going to have the side panel on it. So, as with any ITX case, you should always consider maybe getting custom length cables, since this is a tool-less amount.
It should be as easy as just uh just kind of pushing around there hey. Look at that yeah I was like fractal gave us the included cable ties, which is great because uh, as you can see, there’s a lot of cables here, as I showed earlier. There are these 80 millimeter fan mounts just in here. You won’t be able to fit them in with the 140s.
Just because of this lip you might have to do the 140s afterwards. Also. You should note that this removes some of the potential height of your GPU. I think using these 80 millimeter fans at the top. It’S not a terrible idea. This is the divider. That means that this case is not separated into two Chambers. So, as your CPU heats up, that’s going to kind of just exist because there’s no intake or outtakes on the CPU side, you’re kind of going to rely on your CPU fan, just pulling away heat or blowing heat out.
We have it configured to blow upwards and exhaust heat taking away from the motherboard, but if you start to saturate it, it is going to kind of just linger in the case, so this might be a better way to get some more exhaust man. It is so nice that you can take off literally every side of this that made building in it so much easier, but what about a 3080 TI that looks like it’s going to fit? No problem with the founders Edition at the very least now there’s a lot of really beefy 3080 TI’s. This is a 40 90.
famously thick, I’m not hopeful. That’S a that’s a no-go! I think it’s it’s gon na, be the plastic shroud. That’S! I can’t like see what happens I’ll, get it get rid of the other fan, yeah yeah. I know right and they’re gon na and because it’s like a four slot GPU, it’s gon na go right up against the intake. It’S three! It’S four slots: it’s more than three, it’s automatically four there’s no such thing as a three and a half slot GPU Moment of Truth.
So dang close. If we just get a little bit of a extending action going, oh yo shut the front door. Does it actually go in? What is it? What is what is preventing me from succeeding here, holy crap if this actually works? I don’t think that this is actually designed to support cards this big uh uh, but we’re going to places where fractal would probably not recommend going. Who says I need a 40 90, but I also need small form factor again. It’S slightly separated, so probably gon na be okay, come on just a little bit of that, there’s a little bit of a and then are they supposed to go in there. They slide to these little these little brackets.
I got ta slide. This thing into this is such a heavy card. What huh, but then this is not mounting. I don’t know how it would work with another card. Then, oh, my god, what have I done? I’M bending the this case. It’S okay, it’s metal that bends back yeah. That came off. They give you this little extender that extends the height here.
So now we’re cooking with gas. If you want a 40 90 – and I don’t recommend doing this – you’re going to want to have at least one of these little bracket Parts unattached because you’re going to need, you can you’re gon na need some bending to happen here. Yeah, it’s just it’ll get back into shape. It’S just like. I me I say that every year, how am I going to connect the power? That’S going to be the issue it’s in all the way this is just needs to be. This just needs to be a pressed up, so I think we’re gon na freaking do oh! No.
I forgot about this piece shut up, we’re still good we’re still good, so we’re using a little bit of extra Manpower. Yeah yeah you’ve got ample extra man. Power Bell. Um because uh, this is not how it’s supposed to go, and we need to put a little bit of extra pressure to get these screws to line these screw holes to line up uh we’re almost there.
I’M just getting this last panel screwed on. We put a 40 90 in it. I guess through our bending in tomfoolery this uh. This button doesn’t really press at the front now when we put the magnetic front panel on so that doesn’t really press in like it used to and maybe even is actually pressing.
It right now and it’s turning it off. I think that’s literally what’s happening. This is 130, which is a really good value for a small form factor case. These can get very, very expensive. There’S lots of 250 dollar like specialty cases that are going to be of a similar size to this thermally. This looks like it won’t be the best performer, it’s probably not as ideal as say, a sandwich layout where you can fit a couple more radiators, but at just 12.6 liters. I think fractal has really succeeded in making a product that is both accessible, not just by price, but to build in and would be a great place to begin.
If you want to start messing around with small form factor stuff, so you can either put it vertically on this stand, you put it on the stand like this or you can mount it horizontally. Now the Eagle Eye among you might have noticed that there’s some random little big holes all over this – that’s not just for mounting fans. It’S also for mounting this case on its side, and then you can have your case in a console like fashion. So if it fits it, so it can fit in as a home, theater PC, you can keep hearing it. Turning on and off, I think fractal has a winner on their hands.
This is a great case at a great price. It’S easy to build in it’s very flexible in terms of configurations thermally. I think it would perform pretty well. I have heard some other reviews saying that there have been some issues just because you’re limited by your CPU Cooler height, you could put in a Rad, but then that’s going to get all sorts of complicated over on this side, but 130 bucks.
It’S an awesome, deal good job fractal. I really like this case. I kind of want it for myself. If you like this video, why don’t you go and watch our video on the fractal North, which is a bougie ass? Looking case I can say, bougie ass. Can I say that .