Fractal Design North XL

[Darksaber]

The Fractal Design North XL is truly an upscaled version of the North. As such it offers more room for larger form factors, longer GPUs and bigger radiators. While that all may seem obvious, the North XL also manages to provide a few interesting tweaks and changes.

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[Chaitanya]

For a Full Tower case IO is a joke, no reset button and drive activity LEDs.

 

[Event Horizon]

Sad this wasn't available when I was building last year.

 

[JasBC]

It feels completely backwards that they have abandoned the front-out PSU-filter on this, I don't know if it was the same for the vanilla-one but either way it is for the worse.

 

[Xajel]

So, how long we will have to wait to get more than USB-C port in the front IO?
It doesn't need to be USB 3.2 gen bla bla bla (10 or 20gb), just replace the Type-A with type-C, or at least make the thing modular so the user can choose what they want !!

 

[Aleksandar_038]

Another fancy looking case with zero versatility and dumb IO? Great...

 

[wheresmycar]

thanks for the review!!

i like!!

The only negative i can think of... i would have liked a full visible glass window without the black panel to the right side. Then again it does compliment the front wood element which is pretty much the focus.

Other than that... fantastic looking case + good thermal performer!

 

[Chaitanya]

So, how long we will have to wait to get more than USB-C port in the front IO?
It doesn't need to be USB 3.2 gen bla bla bla (10 or 20gb), just replace the Type-A with type-C, or at least make the thing modular so the user can choose what they want !!

CoolerMaster tried modular Front Io with their MC500/Master Case 5 back in the day, even Fractal offers option to add Type-C port on their Pop series of cases and have offerd it for some older cases as well. It may not have been as favoured by users so it was eventually dropped off by CM.

Edit: Define R6 had replacement panel with USB-C port.

Watched Hardware Canuks video review and overall not a good case for asking price.

 

[Vario]

Good looks and good temperatures

 

[Scrizz]

imho this should just be called the North and call the current North the Compact. This is definitely not an XL case. The Meshify 2 XL is an XL case. It has more space for drives, GPUs, more expansion slots, etc.
Missed opportunity.

 

[starfals]

Not bad, but there are better cases out there. Also.. what's up with the front IO?

 

[Vario]

For a Full Tower case IO is a joke, no reset button and drive activity LEDs.

Reset buttons have sadly been left off most case designs for the last couple years. I bought a reset button mounted on a PCI slot cover because of this.

 

[Aleksandar_038]

Eh, I am old... But still kinda remember time when cases had great thingies in front that could be used for many things, instead of just looking fancy. Like optical drive (OK, we do not use that anymore), water cooling (OK, we kept that one), controllers, modular drive bays, hot swap bays, new or improved I/O for the case...

Reset buttons have sadly been left off most case designs for the last couple years. I bought a reset button mounted on a PCI slot cover because of this.

I can hardly fathom how manufacturers can't combine design and functionality. It is nothing less than a cost-saving decision from their side. So, case prices go up, and functionality goes down...

 

[BSim500]

Eh, I am old... But still kinda remember time when cases had great thingies in front that could be used for many things, instead of just looking fancy. Like optical drive (OK, we do not use that anymore), water cooling (OK, we kept that one), controllers, modular drive bays, hot swap bays, new or improved I/O for the case...

I can hardly fathom how manufacturers can't combine design and functionality. It is nothing less than a cost-saving decision from their side. So, case prices go up, and functionality goes down...

The case industry peaked about 5-10 years ago when even budget £30 cases came with full front I/O and 4x USB ports. They were cheaper to make in some areas (no window) but more expensive in others (drive bays / cages, etc). Adjusted for inflation that works out to just £40-£55, yet most of today's inflation-adjusted equivalents are wall to wall dumbed down junk where even a 3rd front USB port on £90 cases is "Case DLC" (Fractal Design's Pop) and still lacks HDD LED, reset buttons, etc, costing $0.05 each. What's truly sad about this isn't the industry dumbing down itself, it's tech reviewers quiet acceptance of it as some form of silent gaslighting where almost every modern self-build component from otherwise ordinary PSU's, Cases, CPU coolers, etc, gets a "Gamer Branding Premium" auto-applied regardless of quality / averageness because of some cheap aesthetic (oooh a window / rainbow LED!), a doubling / tripling in price is still "budget minded" as long as something else was a greater ripoff that quadrupled / quintupled in price (GPU and case industry in a nutshell) and this is passed off as "it's always been this way" when the ugly "pay triple for form over function" trend for cases only really reared its ugly head post-2015...

 

[Vario]

The case industry peaked about 5-10 years ago when even budget £30 cases came with full front I/O and 4x USB ports. They were cheaper to make in some areas (no window) but more expensive in others (drive bays / cages, etc). Adjusted for inflation that works out to just £40-£55, yet most of today's inflation-adjusted equivalents are wall to wall dumbed down junk where even a 3rd front USB port on £90 cases is "Case DLC" (Fractal Design's Pop) and still lacks HDD LED, reset buttons, etc, costing $0.05 each. What's truly sad about this isn't the industry dumbing down itself, it's tech reviewers quiet acceptance of it as some form of silent gaslighting where almost every modern self-build component from otherwise ordinary PSU's, Cases, CPU coolers, etc, gets a "Gamer Branding Premium" auto-applied regardless of quality / averageness because of some cheap aesthetic (oooh a window / rainbow LED!), a doubling / tripling in price is still "budget minded" as long as something else was a greater ripoff that quadrupled / quintupled in price (GPU and case industry in a nutshell) and this is passed off as "it's always been this way" when the ugly "pay triple for form over function" trend for cases only really reared its ugly head post-2015...

HAF912 and related designs were peak cases for overall function, even if a bit ugly.

 

[Chrispy_]

Fractal aren't solely to blame, most manufacturers are cutting front IO.

It's dumb; The cheapest, most IO-lacking ATX motherboards on the market still have headers for two USB2.0, two USB3.2, one USB-C, Analogue audio, Power and reset buttons, Power and disk activity LEDs. Cases should have that at a minimum, because that's the IO of the minimum motherboards.

This Fractal North XL is better than the very worst offenders with a whole three USB ports but failure to include a drive activity LED is criminal. I'd be surprised if it costs fractal more than 3 US cents when purchasing in bulk. All it has to do is sit next to the existing $0.03 power LED, they don't even need to make a dedicated window/diffuser for it because simply jamming it in next to the power LED is more than sufficient enough to see it pulsing away.

This aversion to ports is one of the many cancers that Apple has brought to the industry and we're all morons for voting for such stupidity with our wallets.

 

[trsttte]

This Fractal North XL is better than the very worst offenders with a whole three USB ports but failure to include a drive activity LED is criminal. I'd be surprised if it costs fractal more than 3 US cents when purchasing in bulk. All it has to do is sit next to the existing $0.03 power LED, they don't even need to make a dedicated window/diffuser for it because simply jamming it in next to the power LED is more than sufficient enough to see it pulsing away.

We all know that a 0.03$ cost optimization multiplied by thousands of units quickly becomes a lot of money but I can't quite point when did cutting features started being considered a cost optimization

It's something that we sadly see everywhere, like when phones lost FM radio capability for example (though at least that was also motivated by wanting people to use cell data and subscribing to streaming services - evil but smart)

 

[wheresmycar]

am i the only one who is glad to have the HDD LED eliminated? It was annoying! flash flash flash... like a non-stop military morse code dying helplessly. I didn't have it on my fractal C and its also absent on my Corsair 465X. The HDD led is going hard on my other cases, S340 ELITE and Silent Base 601... luckily not always sitting in front of me.


Question is, is it still important nowadays as a diagnostic tool?

 

[Scrizz]

am i the only one who is glad to have the HDD LED eliminated?

I mean.. you didn't have to plug it in. At least we had the option back then.

 

[Fietser]

Probably the best looking case at the moment. Very classy! And with class you leave things out like a reset and a hdd led, both someone of class won't use anyway.

 

[Anymal]

Dust gulping.

 

[Chrispy_]

am i the only one who is glad to have the HDD LED eliminated? It was annoying! flash flash flash... like a non-stop military morse code dying helplessly. I didn't have it on my fractal C and its also absent on my Corsair 465X. The HDD led is going hard on my other cases, S340 ELITE and Silent Base 601... luckily not always sitting in front of me.


Question is, is it still important nowadays as a diagnostic tool?

I mean, you don't need it - you can fire up task manager and switch to the performance tab instead - but when the system is running like a pig because the disk is getting violated by something, it can take 10-20s for task manager to drag itself out of bed, respond to mouse clicks, and then populate with data. Compared to a quick glance at the case LED it's a distant second place.

 

[FeelinFroggy]

If you need or complain about missing IO on the case then this case is not for you. Why buy this case to just run a bunch of wires out of the top? It's supposed to look classy, not like a battle station.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

am i the only one who is glad to have the HDD LED eliminated? It was annoying! flash flash flash... like a non-stop military morse code dying helplessly. I didn't have it on my fractal C and its also absent on my Corsair 465X. The HDD led is going hard on my other cases, S340 ELITE and Silent Base 601... luckily not always sitting in front of me.


Question is, is it still important nowadays as a diagnostic tool?

I mean, you don't need it - you can fire up task manager and switch to the performance tab instead - but when the system is running like a pig because the disk is getting violated by something, it can take 10-20s for task manager to drag itself out of bed, respond to mouse clicks, and then populate with data. Compared to a quick glance at the case LED it's a distant second place.

My lament for HDDLEDs got quieter as of W10. Background processes are continually polling storage, so the light never stays off very long, even at idle. However, they are still valuable to clue you in that storage is thrashing, particularly with SSDs. With HDDs, at least you had seek noise to raise a red flag. If I really wanted one at this point, I'd just hang an LED from the header inside the enclosure.

 

[AusWolf]

I love the wood bits, although it's way out of my budget. I wouldn't mind spending half of this price for a micro-ATX version, though.