A Closer Look - Inside

Once you pull the sled out, you may then lift the whole exterior shell off to reveal the interior, black steel frame. It should be apparent at this point, that Fractal Design has really put a lot of emphasis on the detailed engineering of the case.


The interior is indeed laid out in the traditional sandwich style, where the GPU is vertically mounted back-to-back to the motherboard, with their fans facing outward. There is that apparent space at the top to allow for that aforementioned liquid cooling setup.

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Continuing down that engineering rabbit hole, the top can be removed without the need of any tools, thanks to two spring-loaded sliding hooks. Fractal could have easily resorted to two screws, and it would have been just fine, so seeing this attention to detail aiding in the assembly process is very positive.


The Era 2 includes a PCIe 4.0 riser cable which comes with a cover around the end that connects to the motherboard to allow a tight 180° bend radius. The motherboard tray has two sets of mounting holes for two 2.5" drives if you have the central spine set to position 1 or 2, which gives the motherboard side a bit more of the internal volume. This creates the needed gap between the SFX PSU mounting frame and the spine for those drives to fit. Speaking of the mounting frame, it is held in place by a single screw and can then be pulled off a small rail system easily.


On the other side, which is dedicated mostly to the GPU, there are the two physical expansion slots, with a nifty Fractal logo punched out of them. In the most compact form, the GPU can accommodate a unit of 2.4 slot thickness, but with that side maxed out, you can go just beyond triple-slot with 3.1 slot clearance. That translates to a range of 48 to 63 mm in GPU thickness. At the back just above the fans, there is another 2.5" HDD cage, which is held in place similarly as the PSU mounting bracket. As such a single screw releases it from the rails. It is meant to hold two 2.5" drives no matter how you set up the rest of the system.


The bottom frame of the Fractal Design Era 2 sports two Velcro straps but comes with a total of eight cutouts to use for zip ties and cable management. The chassis ships with two Aspect 12 PWM fans that are set to push cool air up into the case across your components, which is pretty vital in enclosures of this size.