A Closer Look - Inside

To get to the insides of the case, simply remove the back cover and then unscrew two screws that pin the shell down. Once released you simply slide it up and off the inner frame of the Fractal Design Mood. Here it becomes apparent that the sides of the chassis are solid sheets of metal, whereas you can clearly see the openings in the front. This is unfortunate as it has been proven over and over that vents on every surface translates into much better thermals when it comes to these compact ITX enclosures.


Looking at the interior from the front, there is a fan bracket which allows for a pair of 120 or 140 mm fans to be installed. Fractal Design also includes a 3.5" bracket here. Having this option is nice, but it will also block about half the airflow available through the front and limit you to a single fan setup in this area as well. The upside here is that the remaining opening is right in front of the motherboard, so if you go for air cooling, such a setup will draw cool exterior air directly. The internal connectors for the front IO panel are facing upward which is not ideal, but should be cable manageable to stay out of the way.


On the left side, you can clearly see the setback of the motherboard tray from the front to provide enough room for your cooling as well as the SFX PSU. That lack of depth is the main reason why the Mood is limited to a two slot GPU with 2.75 slot clearance. The SFX slot features a mounting bracket design to recess the unit slightly, so that the pre-installed power cable extension connector will fit properly.


On the other side, this surface area is not explicitly used for anything out of the box. However, this is where one of the 2.5" drive brackets goes. This is an efficient use of space and by making it modular, you can easily add it at a later time, even with the system fully built.


Viewing the interior of the Fractal Design Mood from the rear, this part of the chassis is meant exclusively for your GPU. As with most upright ITX enclosures, a PCIe riser cable is needed and the Mood comes with a high quality PCIe 4.0 variant pre-installed. The two expansion slots come with thumb screws and reusable covers, but as there is that additional space, your GPU could be a bit thicker than that.


At the top, you will find that massive 180 mm PWM fan set to exhaust out the top of the enclosure. You may detach it temporarily to include that second bracket for another 2.5" drive. However, doing so also restricts the airflow a bit.


That said, taking a closer look at the PSU bay, it sits right below the fan anyway, so that airflow will be limited regardless. The motherboard tray comes with a large opening, so you should be able to access any CPU cooler backplate without issue. The PCIe cable is wrapped in some protective tape at the area that wraps around to the motherboard as the exterior shell of the Mood will rub up against it.


All cables within the Fractal Design Mood are of an excellent length, so you should easily be able to route things without having to fight any unnecessary excess. All the wiring is black and sports the usual plugs.