Many people loved the aesthetic of the original Era ITX, but it had more than its share of design and performance challenges. Of course, a “look” can be copied, translated, or even reimagined to better meet technical expectations, and Fractal Design set out with the Era ITX's successor to translate that flawed but fetching Mini-ITX microtower PC case into a performance masterpiece. The result, the $199.99 Era 2, is an inspired effort that clearly took cues from feedback Fractal Design received the first time around. It's not cheap, but it's worth it: We hang an Editors' Choice award medal around it for premium Mini-ITX cases.
The Design: A Winning Form Refined
We’ve seen more than our share of Mini-ITX cases that couldn’t perform well due to oddball designs meant to catch eyeballs. Rest assured this isn’t one of those. Instead, the Era 2 is a curvy spin on the typical Mini-ITX vertical-graphics case popularized by models like the Lian Li A4-H2O. Formed side panels reflect the design of the original Era ITX, stretched and squeezed to fit over component-layout options similar to competing models that support vertical graphics. The new Era 2, though, has more ventilation, along with a relocated front-panel-port section.
Fine details like the blackened Fractal logo on the front right corner of the walnut wood top panel accentuate the level of quality that those willing to pay $200 for a small case should expect. The metal shell surrounding it appears to be made of thick aluminum (at least, according to our magnets). You can get the case itself in charcoal gray (as with our tester unit), silver, or midnight blue.
Lined up along the bottom of the front panel (and attached to the case’s floor) are a lighted power button, a headset (headphone/mic combo) jack, a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C port, and two USB 3.x Type-A ports. The power-button light comes on only when the power is on, and you'll see a clear parting line between the port panel and the front panel.
Similar Products
Streacom DA2 V2
SilverStone Sugo 14
Fractal Design Torrent Nano
Corsair 2000D RGB Airflow
InWin POC One
Thermaltake The Tower 100
Cooler Master NCore 100 Max
In Win B1
SilverStone Lucid Series LD03
In back are a larger hole for the I/O shield of a Mini-ITX motherboard, a socket for the power extension cable, two PCI Express expansion slots, and the handle of a slide-out dust filter. The expansion-card hole is wide enough to fit triple-slot cards, but the card bracket extends only two-thirds of the way across that hole.
Looking from above the back panel, we see two stripes on the back of the wooden top panel, which mark the pressure point for tipping the cantilevered panel up. (About thee-fourths of the front sits on magnets, and a gap in the support at the rear allows it to be pushed down here.) You can also see the full-length dust filter pulled partway out, which releases the case's exterior sleeve. The sleeve covers the Era 2's inner structure; more on that in a minute.
With the back of the top panel facing left, we can see the pivot point a couple of inches forward of the back edge of the wooden top panel’s steel understructure.
With the top panel removed, we can also see that the internal pieces under it are two layers thick, and that the bottom layer has two sets of fan-mounting slots. The fan mount takes two 120mm or 140mm fans, and it allows radiators up to about 317mm long and 140mm wide, including those of most 240m and 280mm all-in-one (aka closed-loop) liquid coolers.
What we said about a sleeve three paragraphs back? The front, back, and side panels are all attached to each other, comprising a single-piece sleeve that locks in place on the inner chassis by inserting the dust filter. Slide the dust filter out by about an inch, and the action allows the entire exterior slide up and off the understructure. The front-panel portion of the sleeve is reinforced with plastic, while the sides are primarily bare metal.
The entire understructure can be broken down into individual panels, though it's unclear why most people would need to do that. Two box-shaped finger holes at the top operate a latch to remove the radiator mount. That’s probably all the effort most builders will need to put into their installations.
Closer examination reveals a PCI Express x16 riser cable hanging over the top of the motherboard tray toward the back of the case, an SFX power-supply mount with enough room for SFX-L or even longer power supplies toward the front, and two Fractal Design 120mm intake fans on the bottom. Keener eyes may spot the internal end of the power-supply extension cable next to the front corner of the forward fan, but ours did not: We had to follow the cable from the other end to find this end.
A closer view of the opposite side reveals the actual graphics card slot at the back of the case and a two-bay 2.5-inch drive mount at the front. Two more 2.5-inch drives can be mounted at the front of the motherboard tray, at least in certain configurations.
Fractal Design calls the motherboard tray and integrated parts a “spine” and makes the entire thing adjustable from left to right, closer or further from the side panels. So, by “certain configurations,” we mean with the divider moved farther away from the power supply. Delivered with the “spine” in the leftmost position (3, as shown in the image below of the screw that's the positioning adjustment), it opens up enough space to mount a drive between the power supply and “spine” by moving it to position 1 or 2.
Doing so also increases the available clearance for CPU heatsink and fan combos from 55mm to 63mm and 70mm, respectively, while reducing the maximum supported graphics-card thickness from 63mm to 56mm and finally 48mm. Since the two slots connected to the tray also move with the tray (spine), the transition from position 3 to position 1 closes up the third-slot gap, which would have rendered our test-configuration graphics card unusable. In the end, we used position 3 for our test build.
Here’s a picture with the top radiator mount removed: The expansion slot cable loops over the top of the motherboard tray, with the end facing the camera plugging into the motherboard and the opposite one pointing upward from the bottom of the graphics card chamber.
Building With the Fractal Design Era 2
In its accessory kit, the Era 2 includes eight #6-32 panhead screws, 16 M3 mounting screws (for 2.5-inch drives), four combo-head power-supply screws, and four cable ties.
After installing components, builders can connect front-panel features using the Era 2’s leads for HD Audio, 19-pin USB 3.x (for Type-A ports), Gen 2x2 Type-E (for the front-panel Type-C port), and power button/power LED.
Here’s what the “business” side of our test build looks like, complete with the CPU water block mounted right-side-up on the upside-down motherboard, and the SFX power supply too close to the “spine” to allow drives to be mounted there.
And here’s the “party” side of our build, with the graphics card mounted to the riser cable’s end at the bottom of the compartment (just above the rear intake fan). As is often the case with riser-card-equipped cases, we had to swap the power supply’s included right-angle cable for one that had a straight end, as it would otherwise have been blocked by the motherboard tray.
The sloppy bundle of SATA power wires are placed handily for connecting the closed-loop cooler’s pump, and the only thing the we might have done to further improve the build might have been to zip-tie the cables to the top of the “spine,” had we not been so interested in pulling it apart quickly after our review to move on to our next test build.
Here’s how lighted devices shine through the finished Era 2 build’s right-side vents.
Testing the Fractal Design Era 2: Mini-ITX Is Always a Challenge
We’re using the Mini-ITX variation of our 2024 testing kit for today’s performance examination.
Earlier Mini-ITX case tests here appear to show cooler CPU temperatures for vertical-oriented cases than for horizontal ones: The also-horizontal Era 2 slips right between those two groups, making it a cooler-running version of what appears to be a hotter case orientation. The nearby intake fans pushed it up to fourth place in voltage-regulator temperature, but the lack of airflow assistance to the graphics card drops it to last place in that metric. On the other hand, even its worst result is an acceptable temperature.
Placing our graphics card's intake fans behind the left side panel produced a pronounced difference in sound pressure versus other cases. But the average is still far lower than that of the Era 2’s closest (in design) rival, the Lian Li A4-H2O.
In short, this is acceptable performance in a Mini-ITX case that stays true to the physical form, meaning it's always going to be a challenge to cool a powerful PC at this size. The Era 2 raises no red flags in that regard.
Verdict: It's Got the Look, and Enough Cool Factor
Designed to produce acceptable temperatures while maintaining much of its hot-running predecessor’s aesthetic, the Era 2 is a success on all fronts. A lack of performance superiority for the price is our primary reservation with this stunner of a case, but if you're willing to pay, it looks great and is the rare Mini-ITX chassis that is a pleasure to build in. Those looking for an alternative to Lian Li’s A4-H2O will be pleased.
So will fans of the original who wished for an extra inch or two here and there, and a little more engineering foresight. Fractal Design took that elegant but flawed first effort and straightened out the kinks in this new Era. This one's a keeper.
A lushly appointed compact gaming case, Fractal Design's Era 2 is an excellent combination of internal design genius and external styling mastery.
Like What You're Reading?
Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Sign up for other newslettersAbout Thomas Soderstrom
Contributor
