A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the interior of the chassis, simply detach the captive thumb screws holding each panel in place. With the glass panel removed, you will also have access to the solid piece towards the front. It may easily be removed as well by loosening a single thumb screw, to give you full access to the interior of the North XL. The interior of the black Fractal North XL is also black to match the exterior, whereas the white chassis sports a gray interior.

The shroud is made of steel and comes with a large opening in the front, along with smaller cable routing cutouts along the bottom edge of the motherboard. Unlike the original North, the XL variant has a vent across the entire surface area of the shroud, forgoing the ability to hang one of the HDD cages from the ceiling. While that was a unique approach, it did mean that you could retain the use of both 3.5" trays in combination with a large PSU and bulky front liquid cooling assembly. Unfortunately, as this is no longer the case with the North XL, there will be scenarios that will limit you to a single 3.5" despite the larger size of the case.


Underneath the cutout for the CPU cooler bracket you will find a tray for two 2.5" drives, which is held in place by a single thumb screw. Fractal has also pre-installed six Velcro strips and neatly pre-routed the case wiring. With two full rows of grommet covered cable routing openings, you will have a clean build, even if you utilize an E-ATX motherboard. Lastly, there is a simple yet functional PWM fan hub, which allows you to power and control up to four units using a single motherboard header.


In the front, there are the two 3.5" trays. Above those there is the cooling element with the three pre-installed 140 mm fans. Alternatively, you may go for three 120 mm units or a liquid cooling setup of up to 420 mm in size. Thanks to the dimensions of the North XL, this area is also capable of holding thicker radiators or push/pull configurations, while also retaining sufficient GPU length clearance for all the latest and greatest pixel pushers.


In the rear, the PSU bay underneath the shroud is pretty straight forward, with some foam pads for your unit to rest on. Above that are the seven expansion slots, where Fractal also employs thumb screws to hold each cover in place. As there are no dividing elements in the chassis frame between the expansion slots, you will be able to use horizontal GPU mounting brackets as well. In the very top, there is that vent/fan mount as noted before. If you look closely, you will notice the hooks for cable management in this part of the chassis, which should make it easy to cleanly route fan wiring to a header of the motherboard, while keeping the cable mess to a minimum.


The fan/liquid cooling mounting element in the ceiling is offset as far away from the motherboard as possible. On top of that, thanks to its additional height, the enclosure offers lots of room above the motherboard, once again meaning that you can install thick radiators or push/pull configurations for liquid cooling here without interfering with the motherboard. With the XL, Fractal has also included a round cutout where you may install a fill port for your custom liquid cooling setup.


All the wiring within the Fractal Design North is of the sleeved black variety. None of the North series cases come with a reset switch or HDD activity LED. The latter being something that would always be useful to have in certain scenarios where the system may appear hung, but actually just taking time loading something.