A Closer Look - Inside

Looking into the Fractal Design Focus 2, you will immediately notice the lack of a shroud. Instead, the floor of the chassis is intended to be used for accessories like controllers, pumps or reservoirs.


The backside of the motherboard tray has some resemblance to that of the Pop as you can clearly see the elongated cutout through which to route most of your cables. However, Fractal has omitted the Velcro strips within the Focus 2 chassis unfortunately. The SSD mounting system no longer uses any trays either. Instead, Fractal has opted for plastic pins against which you are meant to mount the drive. While this works in theory, the reality is that this will not hold well. There is no reason why Fractal could not have employed the same mounting mechanism as with the Pop line. This is especially disappointing as the Focus 2 does not allow for any mix of the four possible drive positions. As such you can't simply forego these 2.5" mounting points and use a different one for your SSD unless you buy their optional $8 bracket.


For the 3.5" drives, you may install two towards the front of the chassis, hidden away from view. A single rubber ring has been pre-installed and will be used to securely hold any hard drive in place, while the other three meant to be screwed unto the storage device. The total drive count of four is perfectly geared to the target user group. Alternatively, you may install up to two of the optional 2.5" brackets here with each replacing one 3.5" drive for a total of six 2.5" units. However, Fractal could have easily punched a few extra holes and including a few extra screws for more flexible 2.5" drive placement without the need of an optional accessory.


Towards the front, you can clearly see the two retail grade 140 mm Aspect 14 fans which come with hub mounted ARGB and 3-pin PWM connectors. Seeing 140 instead of 120 mm variants will be beneficial for cooling the system, but also looks far better when viewed from the front.


In the rear, the PSU bay is straightforward, with rubber pads as vibration barriers. Above that are the expansion slots with covers held in place by thumb screws. In the very top, there is that empty fan mounting position. It would have been great to see a third fan here, but considering the pretty aggressive pricing, the lack thereof is not such a big deal.


Looking at the ceiling, you can see that the front third is completely solid. Some may say Fractal could have enabled 360 mm AIOs by extending the vent all the way. While probable, it would have adversely effected out-of-the-box cooling as the solid piece means any air pushed into the chassis from the front is more likely to move across the motherboard before escaping out the top or back of the enclosure.


All the cables within the Fractal Design Focus 2 RGB are of the default variety. As there is no reset button or HDD activity LED, you won't find any wiring for those either. A SATA power connector provides juice to the ARGB controller as well as the ARGB LED element inside the power button.