This is even better than I thought! – Fractal Terra

Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “This is even better than I thought! – Fractal Terra”.
I really liked the last fractal case that I covered on this channel the fractal Bridge. It was a great console style case that was nice and thin, but here is the fractal Terra, a beautiful wood, clad 10.4 liter small form factor case that I don’t know. First, impressions from here looks pretty dang good, but it doesn’t look as good as this. That’S right, green. The best part about green is that it’s a color which is pretty crazy. I mean we’ve seen tons of silver and black cases, even white cases getting a case.

That’S actually a different color is a amazing change of pace, which is why I’m getting rid of this guy he’s got a texture to him. This one has like almost a painted texture on the outside and it seems like it’s very prone to scuffs. We just took this out of the box and we’ve already kind of scoffed it up. What you get inside the box is not a whole lot. You get a manual and a card that says thank you for buying it, it’s very sweet and nice. Oh, that’s. The warranty stuff fractal has always done a really great job of their manuals and a lot of the time when you’re building these small form factor cases that have unusual layouts, you’re actually going to want to read the manual, because it will include a lot of important Tips and features that you might not immediately discover so we’re going to keep the manual. I know that seems unusual for this channel. I will probably look at it once and then forget about it and then screw something up, and this will take half an hour longer than it needs to, but heck yeah case dimensions are 343 by 153 by 218 millimeters. We have a USB 3.0 for a USB. A that’s USB 3.0, so 5 gigabit per second and a USB 3.1 Gen 2, which in case that means nothing to you, because it means nothing to anybody. That’S about a 10 gigabit per second Port USBC. It doesn’t say anything about power. Delivery. That’S a premium feature that I would love to see in more cases is getting a power delivery Port.

So you can like charge your phone or quick charge, your controller or something out of the front of it. But that’s asking for a lot on the back of the case. That’S where you plug it in there is nothing obvious on the outside of the case for mounting fans looks like at the bottom. There are spaces for 120 millimeter fans so for two, but this one’s blocked by your power extension.

The entire case is made of incredibly well machined, aluminum par for the course for fractal. They’Ve always been really really great, like all of these little rivets, not a there’s, not a sharp edge in sight. So really really well done. Side panel release foreign okay instruction manual, so ah okay, so at the bottom right there you pull out there there’s a couple of detents and this slides up like that. That’S actually really interesting. I think geez Tesla nerd, instead of taking off the entire panel using detents across the entire structure.

You have these hinges, thankfully, if they are anyway, they’ve just included some Phillips screwdrivers to remove them from the hinge. Unless what is this? Oh now they have the case open. We can get a really good look at the inside layout.

So it’s a typical sandwich layout, where you’re going to have your GPU here connected with a riser cable. This is a included Gen, 4 Riser cable. On this side. You have your mini ITX motherboard and your sfx or sfxl power supply. Then we have a bunch of nice cables for our front. I o now one interesting thing about this case.

Is you can put it into two modes? You have Max CPU or Max GPU mode. So basically, you can adjust where this midline is in Max GPU mode. You can fit a three slot GPU, but you’re limited to just 43 millimeters of height on your CPU Cooler. If you move it to Max CPU, you get 77 millimeters of height for your CPU Cooler, but are limited to a two slot GPU, it’s a really smart way. This is the first time I’ve seen this kind of feature in a mass-produced case.

It’S been a boutique small form factor feature for a while, and the great thing about it is that it allows case manufacturers to build for more people when you get to these really really small sizes. You start really limiting your audience, because if I’m somebody who cares a lot about CPU performance, I don’t want to sacrifice that and have to do a very, very short cooler. 43 millimeters is Tiny and if you’re a gamer, maybe you want the bigger GPU with this solution. They can serve both audiences and also it allows you flexibility in the future.

If you ever decide to upgrade, which is always great. I forgot to talk about the accessories inside. We get a bunch of mounting screws, a cleaning cloth, that’s kind of nice, cable ties, velcro spacers and an SSD tray. That’S right! This has support for up to two two and a half inch ssds or 2.

Two and a half inch hard drives. However, there’s no three and a half inch mounts to be seen. I mean I don’t know where you’d put it and that’s one of the sacrifices that you make from going with a 10.4 liter case back to that adjustable Center. That’S what these transport locks are for.

This is just positioning it. Oh, I didn’t realize it was modular I didn’t realize there was. This is not ex well explained on their website. You don’t just have two modes.

You can actually switch the center piece between up to seven different settings, so you can, if you have like a two and a half slot card, and you want to squeeze in a taller, CPU Cooler. This gives you that Advantage. I thought that this was going to be like a flipping mechanism that meant that you could only use two different spots. This is even better than what I thought you can also remove the pcie. This will probably be great for when we install our GPU removing these two screws by this Riser board, and this one screw on the back.

You can take out the entire GPU bracket, so you can get a little bit more space to work, install it on your card and then plunk it in one of the problems with pcie Riser cables. Is that these traces that go all the way from your slots? Back to your motherboard are very delicate and bending them too tightly can just break them, and then you have you’ve lost 40 50. So what they’ve done is that they’ve actually put these little brackets that allow it to Round the Corner nicely without kinking, so to reduce the odds of you, bending this cable Beyond repair. I just want to talk about this front panel for a second.

This is really cool, so it’s like one thick hunk of metal right, but they’ve milled out some recesses to allow you to route your power supply extension all the way around here and reducing the amount of space it takes up. It also that depth provides you room for your two and a half inch drives oh cool yeah, so you can fit two in there. You just sandwich them together and then you strap them in with the included velcro tie, downs and away you go depending on your stated cables.

Getting this bottom. One here could be a little hard to mount. That will will burn that bridge when we come to it.

Also something that I appreciate is that it looks like everything is screwed in there’s no rivets anywhere in this case. As far as I can see, which means you can kind of totally take this apart. If you need for any reason whatsoever yeah, even the standoffs are screwed in. So if you want to replace it with different standoffs or if your motherboard has like a thick backplate or something you can do, that it’s getting hot in here, I’m getting hot and bothered by this case, yeah take off all your merch at lttstar.com, where you can Buy new stuff: well, I guess we should start putting in some Hardware, but not before we tell you about our sponsor Newegg, look on the sunny side of Technology with Newegg and their wide variety of computer hardware, software and electronics is your rig at home? Fried? Did someone poach your favorite monitor, Newegg offers competitive prices fast, reliable shipping, 30 day hassle, free returns and excellent customer service to ensure that you have the best shopping experience possible? It boils down to this there’s a reason: Newegg is the go-to destination for all your Tech needs check them out at lmg.gg, Newegg, Greenwood yeah. I know right true taste in the PC space, I’m so jealous. No, no Cloud blur him. So we’re going with the theme of last gen was better uh. We got 5800x3d, but most of all, we get to use this cool Halo edition green 6900. Xt.

Look at that! Isn’T that classy that’s going to go right with our color scheme really well. I also had to get a different power supply than I wanted, because white I was worried, was going to show through and look weird, so we’re trying to keep things, uh mean and lean and not RGB. Another interesting thing is that they say that they have room for a 120 millimeter rad.

I am not sure where. So there is space for a 120 millimeter rad, it’s on the opposite side of the power supply, and what you do is that there’s some standoffs that you can plug in there and then this would go right along there um. What that causes problems with is uh.

One you’re blowing heat directly into your power supply, which might not be a big issue, because your power supply is mounted this way so intake from your power supply is going to take that heat and pump it out the exhaust. The real downside is that it really really limits the length of your GPU to just 200 millimeters and, as you can see, that’s not that’s not very long. I’M going to save myself a headache and not use this yeah.

Even a 7600 isn’t going to fit you’re gon na have to use a small form factor GPU, but hey it’s cool that they give you the option so credit where credits do they didn’t have to do that. I wanted to use this ID cooling is55. It’S a really really great CPU Cooler for the price and for the size but um.

I uh made a boo-boo with selecting RAM and uh. It fits really great. If you want to run single Channel, you don’t want to run a single Channel. Luckily, I brought some alternatives like the NHL 9A.

This is the very small low profile cooler that you would have to use if you’re using the max GPU mode of the case. As you can see very different size. Uh do you know what’s gon na suck? I fell for the great I fell for the age-old mistake of not plugging in my CPU cable. Before I got my motherboard mounted. Oh, it won’t be so bad hooray.

So I was worried that I’d have to Route this under the motherboard, but because the power supply is there, I do not like I just kind of have it here. There you go, might as well get the 24 pin plugged in this is unusual oftentimes. This is a very important part of building in a small form.

Factor case is figuring out what step you need to plug your cables in. They tell me to not plug my cables in, and I didn’t trust them, but I should have no. They actually never tell you to plug your cables in. I trust nothing.

I trust no one. I hate this world okay. This is a lot of cable that I have to contend with now and I got ta figure out where I want to put it all the cables in and then I’ll just cry later. That’S that’s going to be the plan. So, while I talked about you can have this except some of the heat from the GPU and exhaust it out we’re gon na go this way, because we don’t really need to do that and because we’re not using a flow through cooler like a we’re not going To be using a Founder’s Edition card, that’s going to have air that passes through and needs to go somewhere we’re just gon na have normal computer we’re going to be using the 6900 XT which blows things out the sides.

I appreciate that they give you additional power supply screws in the fractal case, because sometimes you lose your power supply screws and it sucks got the GPU in there and then it slots in like that wondering and the power’s on the top. This is a very, very clever. I like this whole mechanism, so now we just we’ll get our thumb screws in on top here, so that our GPS fastened in our bracket and then installing the case and then there’s a bunch of cable time.

One thing that, yes, I admit I’ve made a mistake – is that I didn’t plug in my cables before installing the power supply, but I do kind of wish I could remove the bottom of this. That was a feature in the Dan Case, where you could take out a little bit of the bottom, just so that you could route cables easier, and it really makes them building a lot more accessible and easy, as opposed to now, where I’m just kind of trying To jam things in and it’s kind of frustrating, I know it’s my fault, I could just take it out, but uh I don’t want it. The nice part about the included straps is that there’s lots of places that we can loop our cables thanks to the way they’ve done cutouts in this case, so I’m gon na be able to tie my cables kind of down along here on the bottom and uh That’Ll, be a that’ll help, keep some of the mess out of the way, though it doesn’t really matter, because it’s like it’s how visible are the cables when the side panels are on, I guess we’ll find out yeah you don’t even really need to do the cables. I think it looks pretty slick and the layout of the case does uh hide a lot of the uh a lot of the mess. Is there no uh? There is no thing on the back, which is kind of interesting um, so there’s no way to seal it. I think that’s a fine concession to make for the flexibility, and I think it also will allow just for some more free airflow. One thing: that’s also of note: there’s not a single dust filter on this. This is all just these slits, so this might be a higher maintenance than you’d want if you live in a dusty place like if you have like a couple of cats like I do, there’ll be lots of dander and stuff that gets inside of it, but is A pretty cool system – and I found it surprisingly easy to build in and it’s very feature Rich. What I would consider doing is maybe putting slim fans at the bottom. Yes, you can pass through cables through here.

I have it in the middle position right now. I have it at four, so that’s why we have gaps on both sides. It’S actually pretty cool man and I really do enjoy the fact that I could give myself a little bit more CPU Cooler height, and I probably would do that if you were doing a dual slot. Gpu there’s no reason to not push it all the way up.

It would have been nice if maybe we got a little bit of extra room on the top to get maybe like a 240 millimeter Rad. But it’s just it’s the kind of decisions. It’S the hard decisions that you have to make when you are making a 10.4 liter case, but yeah, oh man, it looks slick, let’s, let’s see if it boots and if it doesn’t boot uh I will cry, but we and we’ll just go to lunch. I heard something’s been, we got some lights, it’s a good sign, green and gold on this master chief Edition GPU looks Stellar in the build and I would actually push it towards the side to make it more visible. If I was building this myself, so it costs 180 US Dollars and for that price, you’re, getting a really premium, build quality, with lots of like nice, thick machined Parts, you’re, getting a cool color you’re, getting a nice wood accent, a very flexible building space for being 10.4 liters, I do think they might have been able to get away with some fan mounts on the side, you’re very, very dependent on the airflow of the components in your case and your CPU Cooler and stuff. But all in all, I think this is an awesome case and I know I was very enthusiastic about the Dan Case in our video on LTT, but this might be where I go.

Thank you so much for watching. If you like, this watch check out my video for fractal Ridge, you can fit a 40 and 90 in it. You might be able to fit a 49. You can probably you can fit a 490 Fe in this too, but yeah fractal axles keeps killing it. I love it. Fractal uh this video fractal uh cool, keep going yeah, keep going. The video .