Fractal Design ERA ITX chassis review

PC Cases and Modding 229 Page 4 of 10 Published by

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Product Showcase


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The top panel can be removed by removing is and pulling it upwards. It's attached and locked up there with magnets. 


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And then once you have a  side panel removed, the top side dust filter can be removed as well. The size of the chassis, by the way, is chassis is (W x H x D):  325 x 166 x 310 mmmm with a Net weight of 4~5 kg.



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Once we pop the chassis on it's back we can see the bottom side, the case is resting on four rubber feet preventing resonating noises. The PSU will be located at the front side of the chassis, you will notice that the bottom side does not have a mesh for ventilation, however, the side strips have been designed to replace that function, for the chassis chimney effect (moving air from bottom to top), and despite what you might expect, the graphics cards actually rests at the bottom. That graphics card can be  295 mm (210/190 mm with low-mounted SFX/ATX PSU) and dual-slot.


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Front panel IO then, as stated. Here's you'll find two USB 3.0 ports alongside the audio I/O, Power button with LED (white), there is no reset button.

  • USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C with fast charging (up to 10Gbps)
  • Two USB 3.0 ports 
  • 3.5mm CTIA jack with combined mic/audio supports standard mobile-compatible headsets (adapters for connecting traditional two-plug PC headsets are readily available but not included)

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Internals then. The first impression, that's definitely not a lot of room to work in but it does offer surprisingly innovative features that allow you to install quite a bit. 

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Here we can already see the innards a bit better. The ERA accommodates up to four hard drives, however, we do need to elaborate on that as there are two storage brackets, each capable of mounting a single 3.5” HDD or two 2.5” SSDs. However, the configuration options change if you opt ATX or SFX power supply wise. 

Basically it goes a little like this:

3.5" drive support

  • SFX PSU: 2 HDDs or 1 HDD + 2 SSDs
  • ATX PSU: 1 HDD

2.5" drive Support

  • SFX PSU: 4 SSDs or 2 SSDs + 1 HDD
  • ATX PSU: 2 SSDs

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