A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the interior, simply pull each cover off gently, as each is held in place with pins. While the interior frame of the Fractal Era ITX is made out of steel, the exterior panels utilize aluminium instead. The air vents are protected by dust filters as well, which may be removed with a firm tug for easy cleaning.


On the inside, the general layout for a small ITX chassis utilizes the trusted and true placements, with the motherboard towards the rear and PSU and big storage towards the front, as well as an additional bracket for more drives on the side. While we have seen that approach before, Fractal takes it further with their own engineering and design, which eliminates the spacial limitations between all the possible components and gives users plenty of storage options overall.


Taking a look at the top frame, this is where you may install two 120 mm fans or a 240 mm AIO like the Fractal Celsius S24, which we will be installing for thermal tests as well. Towards the front, you will notices two brackets, with the top bracket intended for full-size ATX PSUs and the bottom one meant for SFX/SFX-L setups while also providing additional storage space. If you opt for an SFX/SFX-L PSU, you may install a single 3.5" drive or two 2.5" units to the attached bracket.


For assembly purposes you have to remove the tall plate for either two 2.5" drives or a single 3.5" unit. On top of that, you may also remove the aforementioned brackets as well as the top mounting plate for active cooling. This gives you a bare chassis, so the assembly process is nice and simple.


In the bare front, you won't find too much besides the front I/O ports, which are protected by a plastic housing. While swinging our view over to the rear, the floor of the Fractal Era ITX allows you to install two 140 mm fans, for example, if you opt for a single-slot GPU or general PCIe card. In the rear, the 80 mm fan, which comes with a 3-pin motherboard header, is in clear view, set to push air out the back.


As the Fractal Era ITX does not have a reset button or HDD activity LED, you will only find plugs for power and the power LED respectively. I would have loved to see an HDD activity LED as well, but one could always use the power LED for that purpose by simply connecting it to the right pins on the motherboard. All the USB and audio leads are sleeved black, and it is nice to see Fractal using flat cables for the USB 3.0 and Type-C plugs. But Fractal has for some reason chosen to keep all these cables way too long, which, as we will see on the next page, results in some additional clutter when assembling the system.