- I love Fractal.
They're one of my favorite companies
when it comes to making cases.
I've got a Fractal Torrent at home.
I had a Meshify C before that.
And now they've sent us the Fractal North.
I'm from the North so it makes sense for me to build it.
Why not? Oh my god.
There's two colors, either black or white.
Well, there's two really big things actually.
One, you get wood.
Pretty cool, huh?
You can get it with a mesh side panel or tempered glass.
If you're ever taking a case out of a box
and you're having trouble,
it's probably 'cause the little handles are pushed in.
Yeah, see? Boom, easy.
You get a bunch of accessories.
I love Fractal's packaging too.
It's usually just in a big accessories box,
either outside or inside the case.
One thing that's really cool,
the days of fans on your side panel are back, baby.
Yeah, they've gotta mount for it right here.
So you can put two 120 or 140.
Not sure, but you can put a couple of fans
on the side if you want to.
Even though there's this wood grill for the black one,
there's a bunch of mesh behind it there.
And then on the back,
I believe you can mount an 80 millimeter fan.
Another thing is that it's got this little full leather tab
for lifting off the top here to make building really easy.
Always welcomed to be able to take the top off easily.
You're also gonna get either I think brass or steel accents.
So look at this top I/O.
We've got a power button, a headphone jack,
mic jack, couple of USB 3.0 A ports, and then USB type C.
Something that you might not see very often,
especially once it's down
wherever you've got this case located permanently,
is these nice little rings of brass around the feet.
It's small details like this
that I actually really, really love.
Andy loves this thing.
Bell saw it earlier.
He loves this thing. Andrew loves this thing.
Everyone who sees it, even Jonathan.
And it comes with either walnut or oak,
depending on whether you've got the white or the black case.
We do have both.
I'm gonna build in the black one
because I wanna try the cool mesh side panel.
But for those of you curious
about the white and how this looks
with the steel accents and the different wood on the front,
here you go.
This one's got the tempered glass side panels,
so if you want a nice clear look on the internals
before I put a bunch of stuff in.
They're otherwise the same.
And then I think there's probably a steel ring.
Yep. I'm really excited about this personally.
It's meant for like a gamer,
but an older one who doesn't have the luxury
of having their own personal office;
they've gotta match the rest of their decor
in their living room where their desk is or whatever.
So they want something that looks nice
in basically any environment,
and I think they've really kind of crushed it
with that here.
I'm being careful not to scratch anything.
- [Andy] Please don't scratch it.
as per usual with Fractal,
we've got tons of room for cable management.
We've got nice rubber grommets
for when you're pushing cables through.
Otherwise though, this thing
actually seems like it's been sanded down.
There's no really rough or sharp bits.
As you can see, they've got 120 and 140 mounts.
If you could do two 140s,
then this should be able to do a 280 rad,
and then it can definitely do a 360 in the front
with three 120s.
Or at least I'm pretty sure it can.
It looks like the front's cut out,
just to make sure you can get that full rad in there.
Wow, this is the first full mesh side panel
I've really used.
I don't use a lot of small form factor cases,
so I get that it's a bit more common in that scene.
- [Andy] Yep. My T1 has that.
- Your T1 has a mesh side panel.
But Fractal has just been wild
when it comes to getting really crazy good airflow
in all of their cases.
Even the budget ones like the Pop Air,
and it's a solid airflow case.
For reference, this is 130 US dollars.
It's not a budget case by any means,
but it's also not that expensive to be perfectly honest.
Oh, okay. It just pulls off.
Oh there's a little handle.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Thank you Fractal.
This thing comes with two 140s in the front,
and it's got a nice little fan hub
that I didn't even see before.
And apparently, you can mount this guy
in a couple different places as well.
- [Andy] Nice screwdriver.
- Thanks, I got it from lttstore.com.
Would you believe it?
This thing was pretty easy to get off.
It just took like four or six screws.
Basically, just a face plate for the top of this I/O.
But what's nice is if you do have to disconnect
or get into any of this stuff, it looks really easy to do.
You don't have to worry about plastic clips
breaking off on you or anything like that.
And then when you're done,
it should just screw right back into place.
No problem whatsoever.
Oh no.
I'm gonna put this front I/O back together,
and then we're gonna build in it.
But not before a word from our sponsor, Vessi.
Thank you Vessi for sponsoring today's video.
Soggy sock season is upon us, which means it's time
to put those boat shoes back on the shelf.
Vessi makes water-resistant sneakers
that offer you reassurance when the weather report can't.
Their Dyma-tex material will keep you warm in the winter
and cool in the summer.
They're comfy, breathable, and lightweight.
They are also 100% cruelty-free and vegan
down to the glue used.
Keep your feet dry and save $25
when using offer code SHORTCIRCUIT
at vessi.com/shortcircuit.
This is a big accessory box.
These are usually like vertical GPU mounts and stuff.
I don't know what this is.
Looks like a rad mount or something.
I'm not gonna use it.
I think it's for radiators.
One thing that's great is you can actually move around
these storage trays really easy.
So if you wanna store SSDs or HDDs down here,
it shouldn't be too difficult.
This is the one thing
I think Fractal could do a little better.
It's something that Fantech does that I'm really jealous of.
Fantech will give you that plastic tray
that has all the little screw compartments and everything.
But I mean, this is gonna have everything we need.
It's got extra standoffs.
It's got some other board screws.
Let's build a computer.
We're going AMD today.
We got a ROG Strix X670E-E Gaming WiFi.
This is a hell of a board.
Yeah, sorry. AMD new chips is pretty expensive.
But it's nice.
Oh my god, look at that sexy I/O.
I love it.
Where's my CPU?
I'm taking the armor off right now.
Dan's gonna go get us a nicely windowed up SSD that we can-
- [Bell] No free clout. Don't mention Dan.
- What? - Editor, beep that name.
- Don't mention (beep) is the best.
Wow. I like their new packaging.
I haven't opened any of AMD's new CPUs yet.
I love how they've got their cool cutout IHS
really on display here.
I'm gonna pop this open,
get this CPU installed.
AM Five.
Man, it would be embarrassing if I dropped this right now.
AMD still uses the golden triangle,
and you can see the little arrow in that top right corner.
Another way that I personally like to make sure
these go in nicely is I just follow the notches.
Also, these days, it seems most of the time
the logo is facing up, it's not that hard anyway.
I'm gonna take these out
'cause we're gonna put in a sexy aftermarket cooler.
EK-AIO, ba-ba-ba-da da-da-da.
This one is unopened, which is nice.
So I'm hoping the hardware's all here.
This is the LGA 1700 bracket.
I don't need that.
EK-AIO, 240 and 280.
AMD, what's up (beep).
Oh my God. Oh my God.
Oh my God.
It's okay. It landed just right there.
Yay, Windows 10 it is. - Yay.
- 'Cause it has games. That's cool.
Thank you, (beep).
One thing I love about ASUS boards
is the little Q-Latch thing there
that you can just turn to lock your drive in place.
16 gigs of DDR5-6400 CL40.
That's not bad. That's pretty decent: DDR5 speed.
Now that we've got our RAM in,
I'm gonna finally do the brackets for my cooler.
Two to one 'cause we've got two fans,
so we want a Y splitter like this.
These are great by the way.
If you build a lot of computers or even just the odd PC,
definitely pick yourself up a couple of Y splitters.
Or even like, I don't know what they call the tri ones,
but the tri-splitters
where it's a three-to-one fan splitter.
They are great.
They will save you hassle
when you're trying to cable-manage later.
I honestly can't remember the last time
I installed one of these EK boys,
but I'm pretty sure I just screw these guys right in.
Normally, at this point,
we'd do a little, maybe a graphics card install.
Or actually, the new AMD processors
have their own integrated graphics,
and I would do a little self-test.
But it probably works.
Instead, I'm going to install
my power supply in the bottom,
so that once I do put the motherboard in,
I can very easily connect to the EPS connectors.
For our power supply, we're using an RM 850x from CORSAIR.
Should be more than enough.
We're putting a 3070 and a 7600X in here.
So yeah, plenty of headroom
for upgrading down the line if you feel like it.
Should be great.
We've got two 8-pin EPS connectors for our CPU,
so we'll try to find two.
If you only have one, that's probably fine.
You just might run into issues if you try to overclock.
Otherwise, we've got a standard 24-pin ATX.
And then our graphics card is a 3070,
and I think it's two 8-pins.
It is in fact two 8-pins. Cool.
One thing I hate about this design
that we'll talk more about later is these power connectors,
'cause the shroud goes way past them,
and it's kind of hard to plug them in
when they're side by side.
Cool. Ah, do I just use these?
Yes. Okay, I'll just use these for the graphics card.
All right, we're gonna do a few things here.
We're gonna remove one of the hard drive mounts.
This will just make it easier
for us to cable-manage everything.
We'll go boop.
And the reason I'm doing this
is so that when I put the motherboard in,
I can just pop 'em in before I put everything down.
'Cause even with all these cutouts,
it can be a little hard to plug those guys in.
I changed my mind.
I'm not gonna put the power supply in yet.
Now that I've got these here,
I'm just gonna put the board in and then I'll screw it down.
But then I'll put the power supply in.
Then I'll do the top rad.
I am not a fan of installing
with these things vertical like Linus seems to be.
Particularly because I like doing this thing
where I just plug in the EPS connectors
before I pop it all the way in there.
So I'm gonna go down like this, plug this guy in.
There we go. There's one.
You see how much easier it is too
with these cutouts up top?
And then I'm gonna take our other guy, oop.
Then I'm gonna grab my board.
Whoops, see, it's caught on my sweater.
Now I'm gonna pull my fingers around
while holding it nice and firm.
And then I'm gonna not scrape it along the bottom
in case you scrape anything,
and I'm just gonna try to line it up with these standoffs
as well as the I/O that comes with our board.
And boop, that should be pretty much it.
Yeah, look at that.
Center post is also another really good indicator
of where you should be.
Thanks, Fractal.
They also come with a bunch of zip ties
in case you wanna do some cable management after.
These look like motherboard screws.
I'm gonna wire up our power supply now.
First we'll do the EPS connectors.
Make sure that you run these through
the way the power supply is going through.
For example, in most Fractal cases,
they've got a little cover here that comes off.
And then this'll go on the back,
and then you slide the whole thing in.
So we're gonna run these through here like this
instead of screwing up, plugging them in like this,
and then going to put it in: you can't.
For the rest of them, I am just going to plug them in
while the power supply is outside the box.
And then I'll feed the cables through the right way
just to make it a little easier.
I noticed a couple of issues
while going to install the radiator in.
First of all, while this does support 140 mounts
way up here, our cooler,
it won't go any further in.
And luckily we're using 120s.
But basically, our memory is getting in the way
because our board is so big.
And while this case does support it,
we're getting a little tight.
There's also no cutouts at the top here aside from the EPS.
Normally, you get one more on the side over here,
and that's like up in here.
And that's where you plug in all your fans and stuff.
See how all my fan headers are right up here?
We can't do that.
So instead I'm gonna install it right here,
and run all of the fans out through the side here.
But we'll figure out the wiring later on.
For now, I'm just gonna pop this up here.
I got all my cables in the back already,
and I'm gonna start screwing it down.
There's one more.
We're gonna install the AMD brackets
on our handy-dandy cooler.
Our pre-applied thermal paste is ready to go.
We've got our brackets on.
We're actually gonna mount this bad boy.
We're gonna put it down like this.
Boop.
For now what I want to do is get our springs.
So now I'm just done installing these springs here,
and we're gonna screw down these thumb nuts.
Full custom loop is gonna blow an AIO
and a tower cooler out of the water, pun intended.
Like the reality is a good air cooler
is gonna be pretty on par
with like a good 240 or 360 ml AIO.
I made a mistake.
I put the rad in first,
and unfortunately there's like zero room
for me to plug my fan and RGB headers into.
So we gotta take the rad out.
We gotta take the rad out.
The pump's gotta pump.
Pump's gotta pump.
We're gonna plug in the ATX power now,
and then I'm gonna do all the other smaller I/O stuff
like the USB, the USB-C.
If I was keeping this build,
this is something I would spend a lot more time on.
But I'm not. We're gonna tear it down soon.
So I'm just gonna plug everything in.
I'm not gonna worry about crossing wires
and getting it to the smallest amount possible
in the back here.
The reality is the cable channel is plenty wide
for basically all of our cables,
so I'm just gonna start plugging everything in.
And hopefully boot it up really easily after that.
The moment of truth.
We're gonna put the graphics card in.
Boom.
Now we get to the part that I was complaining about earlier
with this graphics card.
Watch. We'll get the first one in without too much issue.
Part of the problem is that since it's not a fixed 8-pin,
this little guy on the left here
is gonna try to disconnect a lot of the time.
And so it'll be hard to seat perfectly.
Yeah, see, even there I can get the first six in,
but not this guy.
Always annoying.
This is why custom cables can be really nice.
Oh my God, I think I've got it.
Yep. Okay.
There's one. Yeah, that took way too long.
This graphics card, I really hate
where those power pins are.
With a six plus a two,
it's just such a nightmare to try to get them in.
But it's done. It's installed.
This thing should boot.
I think I plugged everything in.
Let's see. Nope, almost.
Honestly, for a pretty quick hack job,
that's not even that bad in terms of cable mess.
You could totally take their zip ties,
tie them down to any of these anchor points like no problem,
and really get them outta the way.
And I actually didn't wire up the RGB on purpose.
I don't want any of the RGB to turn on.
The only stuff that's going to is the dims.
The motherboard's probably gonna light up a bit too,
so whatever.
I love mesh.
Let's see if I did it right.
Hey, look at that.
Fans are spinning.
PC is booting up.
Man, that's nice.
I gotta look at it from the front through the mesh.
That does look good, hey?
Man, I really do like this thing.
I would probably change a couple of things.
Like I would definitely add an outtake fan here.
I probably wouldn't personally bother with the side fans.
I just don't think you need them to be honest.
With this whole thing being mesh,
and mesh on the top and then mesh on the front,
there's airflow in this guy.
You don't have to worry about that.
I'm putting these side by side
so you guys can decide for yourselves
whether or not you want the mesh
or the tempered glass panel.
Both of these cases are super nice.
And whether you want the charcoal or the chalk,
you can get either of them with the side,
a mesh panel, or you can get the tempered glass.
I thought the build experience was mostly pretty good.
I would definitely wish for a bit more room up top here,
or maybe even another cutout at the top
so you can do fan headers through the top
instead of through the side.
If you're going to do an AIO,
then you definitely wanna plug stuff in first.
Because unless your board is small,
you're not gonna be able to reach inside
and plug in fan headers after the fact.
I love it. I really do.
I think that if you don't care for RGB,
if you want something more understated,
something a little nicer
with the wood finish and everything,
then this can absolutely be the case for you.
I'm gonna go ahead and recommend them.
I mean, I'm sure the airflow's good,
whether you get the mesh panel or the glass.
But if you're getting beefier components,
then you might want to go with mesh just in case.
Just in case.
This is the Fractal North.
It's a beautiful case.
Comes out soon.
This is Short Circuit. I'm Ploof.
If you wanna check out other short circuits-
- [Bell] What is this outro?
- I don't know.
- [Bell] why are you introducing yourself?
- I don't know, dude.
I hate outros.
This is Short Circuit.
If you wanna watch more Short Circuits,
check out the Pop Air.
I built a PC in the Pop Air.
This is Ploof signing off.