A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the interior, simply detach the captive thumb screws holding each panel in place. The perforated one actually utilizes a fairly bulky, gray support frame, with the mesh layer wrapping around it on the sides, but not the top and bottom. That is why you see the gray line from the outside when looking at this part of the chassis. The solid piece towards the front of the chassis may easily be removed as well by loosening a single thumb screw, to give you full access to the interior of the North.


The interior of the white Fractal North is actually a gunmetal gray instead of the usual black, which is a nice differentiator. The shroud is made of steel as well and comes with a large opening in the front, along with smaller cable routing cutouts along the bottom edge of the motherboard. A vent above the PSU bay gives you the flexibility to have the power supply fan facing upward if you like. Lastly, you can see a mounting position for a 3.5" HDD tray on the underside ceiling of the shroud. Taking a first look at the backside of the motherboard tray, things look rather simple but also pretty functional with well placed, large hooks for cable management for example.


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 three Velcro strips and neatly pre-routed the case wiring. Lastly, there is a simple yet functional (see a trend here?) 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 out of three possible 3.5" trays. Above those there is the cooling element with the two pre-installed 140 mm fans. Alternatively, you may go for three 120 mm units or a 360 mm liquid cooling setup.


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.


Them fan/liquid cooling mounting element in the ceiling is offset as far away from the motherboard as possible, and Fractal mentions a 35 mm clearance limit for components like heatsinks or memory.


All the wiring within the Fractal Design North is of the sleeved black variety.