- I really liked the last Fractal case
that I covered on this channel, the Fractal Ridge.
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
in 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 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 scuffed 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.
That's 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 343x153x218 millimeters.
We have a USB 3.0 port, a USB A, that's USB 3.0.
So five gigabit per second.
And a USB 3.1 gen 2,
which in case that means nothing to you,
'cause it means nothing to anybody,
that's about a 10 gigabit per second port USB-C
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 charge your phone
or quick charge your controller
or something out at 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,
there's not a sharp edge in sight.
So really, really well done.
Side panel, release.
Side up push.
Okay, instruction manual.
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.
- [Bell] Gullwing doors.
- Like, geez, Tesla nerd.
Instead of taking off the entire panel using detents
across the entire structure, you have these hinges.
Thankfully if they are in your way,
they've just included some Phillips screwdrivers
to remove them from the hinge.
Unless, what is this?
Oh (bleep).
Now that we 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
gonna 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 SFX-L power supply.
Then we have a bunch of nice cables for our front IO.
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
2 1/2 inch SSDs or 2 1/2 inch hard drives.
However, there's no 3 1/2 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 well explained on their website.
You don't just have two modes.
You can actually switch the centerpiece
between up to seven different settings.
So you can, if you have like,
a 2 1/2 slot card and you wanna squeeze in
a taller CPU cooler, this gives you that advantage.
I thought that this was gonna 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, they go all the way
from your slot 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 wanna 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 2 1/2 inch drives.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, so you can fit two in there.
You just sandwich 'em together and then you strap 'em
in with the included Velcro tie downs and away you go.
Depending on your state of cables,
getting this bottom one here
could be a little hard to mount.
That will, we'll 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 wanna replace it
with different standoffs or if your motherboard has
like a thick back plate or something, you can do that.
It's getting hot in here.
I'm getting hot and bothered by this case.
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- Green and wood?
- Yeah, I know right?
- It's a dream come true.
- Taste in the PC space.
- I'm so jealous.
- [Bell] No clout. Blur him.
(cheerful music)
- So we're going with the theme of last gen was better.
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 gonna go right with our color scheme really well.
I also had to get a different power supply than I wanted,
'cause white I was worried was gonna show through
and look weird.
So we're trying to keep things 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 would do is
that there's some standoffs that you can plug in there
and then this would go right along there.
What that causes problems with is
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 gonna 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 very long.
I'm gonna save myself a headache and not use this.
Yeah, even a 7600 isn't gonna fit.
You're gonna have to use a small form factor GPU,
but hey, it's cool that they give you the option.
So credit where credit's due,
they didn't have to do that.
I wanted to use this ID-Cooling IS-55.
It's a really, really great CPU cooler
for the price and for the size.
But I made a booboo with selecting RAM.
And it fits really great if you want to run single channel.
You don't want to run single channel.
Luckily I brought some alternatives like the NH-L9a.
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.
Do you know what's gonna 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 would have to route this
under the motherboard,
but because the power supply's there,
I do not. Like, I just kinda 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 gotta figure out where I wanna put it.
We'll get all the cables in and then I'll just cry later.
That's gonna be the plan.
So, while I talked about you can have this accept
some of the heat from the GPU and exhaust it out,
we're gonna go this way,
'cause we don't really need to do that
and because we're not using a flow-through cooler
like a, we're not gonna be using a Founders Edition card
that's gonna have air that passes through
and needs to go somewhere.
We're just gonna have normal computer.
We're gonna 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.
I'm wondering, and the power's on the top.
This is 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 GPU is fastened in our bracket.
And then installing the case.
And then it'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 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 I don't want to.
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 gonna be able to tie my cables kind of down
along here on the bottom and that'll be,
that'll help keep some of the mess outta the way.
Though it doesn't really matter,
'cause 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 hide a lot of the mess
- [David] Is there no thing on the back?
Like, it looks like there is a gap.
- There is no thing on the back,
which is kind of interesting.
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 a couple of cats like I do,
there'll be lots of dander and stuff that gets inside of it.
But it is 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 could 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've been nice
if maybe we got a little bit of extra room
on the top to get maybe like, oh, 240 millimeter rad.
But it's just, it's the kind of decisions that,
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 see if it boots,
and if it doesn't boot I will cry
and we'll just go to lunch.
I heard something spin, 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,
why don't you check out my video on the Fractal Ridge?
You can fit a 4090 in it.
You might be able to fit a 4090,
you can probably fit, you can fit a 4090 FE in this too.
But yeah, Fractal keeps killing it.
I love it.
Fractal, this video, Fractal.
Cool. I love it.
- [Cameraperson] Keep going. Keep going.