Fractal North PC Case Review
Cooling Performance Â
Thermal performance is an essential factor for any PC case. Your system may look fantastic and seem silent from the outside, but all of that is for nought if your PC has the internal temperature of an oven. Your PC case needs enough airflow for your components to remain cool under load and to prevent any form of thermal throttling. For our test, we used the following hardware using fixed fan speeds (so that only the case and its included fans can influence thermal performance).
Fractal North
Intel i9-9700K @4.8GHz at 1.2V
ASUS ROG Strix Z370-F Gaming @ 100% Current Capacity/ LL lvl16
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition @ 9V via Fan Speed Reducer
Nvidia GTX 980 Reference @ 60% Fixed Fan Speed
Corsair LP Vengeance LP (Grey) @ 3200MHz
Corsair MP500 M.2 NVMe SSD
Corsair RM550X Power Supply
The graph below showcases Delta temperatures with a controlled ambient temperature of 20 degrees Celsius.
1000 RPM Fan Tests
At stock, Fractal’s North chassis sits in the middle of our case performance graphs, which means that while the case is a relatively strong performer, it is not sitting amongst the best performing PC cases on the market. That said, adding additional fans to the North could improve things.
If you want stronger airflow from Fractal, there is the Fractal Torrent series, but it doesn’t have the wood-fronted styling of the North. Let’s face it, if you are interest in the Fractal North, you are interested in its styling, not its cooling performance.
Max RPM Fan Testing
At higher fan RPMs, our thermal results for Fractal’s North chassis do not get much better than before. Even so, it remains around the same location within our case thermal graphics. Fractal’s North chassis is not one of the best performing cases on the market, but neither is it a slouch when it comes to cooling.
