Fractal Era ITX Review

Introduction  

Fractal Design has taken its latest case design in a bold new direction, offering PC builders an ITX design which focuses on elegant design and minimal compromise. 

Meet the Era ITX, Fractal’s next-generation ITX case design, a compact enclosure that’s designed to be free of many of the limitations of ITX while offering the flexibility to utilise a wide range of potential components. 

The Era ITX was designed in collaboration with Intel; and is designed to accommodate Intel’s most powerful 9th Generation Core processors dual-slot graphics cards, all-in-one liquid cooling units and several HDDs/SSDs. All while delivering sufficient airflow. 

The entire enclosure offers PC builders a modest 16-litre footprint, making the Era ITX easy to fit onto any desk. The case also supports graphics cards up to 295mm in length, though other limitations will apply depending on your chosen hardware. 

  

The Era ITX Range

Fractal’s Era ITX will ship in several forms, arriving with five colour options and several top panel designs. Depending on your chosen colour scheme, you will have a solid wood top panel or a tempered glass top panel, though those who prefer mesh will be glad to know that Fractal has provided a black mesh top panel alternative with every Era ITX chassis. 

Below are all of the Era ITX’s available colour options. 

– Era ITX Silver (White Oak and Mesh Top Panels provided)
– Era ITX Titanium Grey (Walnut Wood and Mesh Top Panels provided)
– Era ITX Carbon TG (Dark Tinted Tempered Glass and Mesh Top Panels provided)
– Era ITX Gold TG (Dark Tinted Tempered Glass and Mesh Top Panels provided)
– Era ITX Cobalt TG (Dark Tinted Tempered Glass and Mesh Top Panels provided)
  

Below are the specifications of Fractal’s Era ITX enclosure. The MSRP of this case is £139.99 in the UK, $159.99 in the US and €164.99 in Europe. The case is comprised primarily of a steel frame and aluminium panels. 

Storage-wise, the Era ITX features two mounting locations which can support dual 2.5-inch drives or a single 3.5-inch drive, giving the case the ability to hold up to two 3.5-inch HDDs or four 2.5-inch SSDs at stock. One of these HDD/SSD mounting locations is only available when SFX power supplies are used, limiting the Era ITX’s storage options when used with larger ATX sized power supplies. 

  
Cooling

Fractal’s Era ITX supports up to five fans and ships with a single 80mm rear fan in its stock configuration. The top of the Era ITX supports up to two 120mm fans and can support radiators that are 120mm or 240mm in size when configured correctly. Alternatively, dual 120mm radiators can be used, allowing this case to support an AIO liquid-cooled CPU and graphics card.

The base of Fractal’s Era ITX also supports dual 140mm fans, though these fans would interfere with most dual-slot graphics cards making them unusable by a lot of PC builders.