Review System

Assembly

installing a motherboard is done by traditional means. Fractal does help by having the center standoff as a guiding pin instead of a screw mount. With well over 400 mm clearance for GPUs, installing the pixel pusher of your choice in the Fractal Pop Air RGB should pose no issues.


The multi-purpose hard-drive trays require screws for both drive sizes, but the 3.5" variants are decoupled with rubber rings. You may install a 2.5" SSD first and place a 3.5" spinning drive on top of it with a bit of an air gap for good measure. Once filled, simply put it back into one of three spots and secure it all by tightening the thumb screw.


The PSU easily slides in underneath the shroud and is secured by four screws. Fractal for some reason only mentions 170 mm length-wise clearance for the power supply, but there seems to be more room than that.


To add an AIO to the ceiling of the Fractal Pop Air RGB, you first have to install the offset brackets, which gives you up to 46 mm clearance for the motherboard. In our build with the ASUS Strix Z690 motherboard, the offset makes all the difference, but with the compact dimensions of the Pop Air RGB, you have to connect all the wiring to the top of the board before installing any such liquid-cooling unit in the ceiling.


With everything installed, the Fractal Design Pop Air RGB interior looks nice and clean. We routed the PCIe power cable through the bottom opening to keep it away from all that bright green around the motherboard, which seems to work well In the rear; cable management is very good and works well in tandem with the two Velcro strips.

Finished Looks

With everything fully assembled, the Fractal Design Pop Air RGB really does pop when you turn it on. Thanks to the ARGB fans and built-in controller, you can adjust the lighting effects. Interestingly enough, there is no way to get that single bright green color seen in press imagery. A quick press offers white as the only static, single color option along with several dual or triple color mixes. A long press of 2 seconds cycles through modes like breathing, for example. That is a generally odd limitation and rather unfortunate.


The power LED lights up in the same colors as the fans, which is a really cool touch. This is not the first time we have seen this type of general color coordination, but it is the first with multiple colors at the same time.


Looking at the front of the Fractal Pop Air RGB, you can clearly see the fans and interior of the chassis through the mesh grille, which bodes well for cooling performance. All the hardware may also be viewed easily, as the glass panel is completely untinted. In the rear, everything is where you would expect it for a modern ATX enclosure.