A Closer Look - Outside

Out of the box, the Fractal Design Ridge makes an excellent first impression. The metal housing with its rounded edge end pieces feels very sturdy, while the 6 mm thick aluminium front is a serious cherry on top. With all that in mind, the material mix is also quite unique, with a gray cloth front panel.


That gently textured gray cloth is stretched across a solid support structure and encased in the aluminium beautifully. In the rear, you can see that the GPU compartment takes up the top half, while the bottom is meant for the motherboard and PSU.


One side panel is perforated for the most part, to allow for cool air to be drawn in for the CPU and GPU fans, while the other only has an opening for the fan mounting positions within the Ridge.


You will find a clean, understated set of IO at the bottom of the enclosure in the form of two USB-A 3.0 ports, a single USB-C and a combo audio jack. The power button is completely solid, and at first glance, there is no LED to let you know that the system is powered on. However, as we will see later on, Fractal has managed to embed one in quite the unique fashion.


In the back, the slim area for the motherboard also holds the outlet to route power to the internal SFX or SFX-L power supply. Due to the slim size, the Fractal Design Ridge can hold a cooler of up to 70 mm in size, which provides you with a few good options from quality brands. The top half of the chassis sports three expansion slots, which would mean that you should be able to put a latest generation GPU into the chassis, as long as it's short enough. The downside of using a three slot GPU is the fact that you will have to remove the included fans. As long as you stick to dual-slot variants, you may also retain that additional active cooling element.


Both the top and bottom covers of the case look quite similar, and are perforated to further aid in ventilation. The bottom also has mounting holes for the long base that ships in the accessories kit.