Fractal Ridge SFF ITX PC Case Review
Pairing the Fractal Ridge with lian li Li’s SP850 power supply – A match made in heaven
Fractal sent us the white model of their new Ridge SFX chassis for review, so we paired it with Lian Li’s new SP850 power supply for our system build. A white case with a white PSU is an obvious choice, especially when this PSU comes with white cables and can deliver a whopping 850 watts of power. It even has a 12VHPWR (12+4-pin/16-pin) power cable for Nvidia’s latest graphics cards.
Fractal’s Ridge chassis supports both SFX and SFX-L power supplies, though it should be noted that users of SFX power supplies will have a lot more room for potential cable management than users of SFX-L PSUs. In a compact case like this, even a little bit of space can make a lot of difference.
The good news for Fractal Ridge owners is that today’s SFX and SFX-L power supplies can deliver high wattages, making the Ridge compatible with today’s power-hungry graphics cards. That said, this case’s limited space for a CPU heatsink does limit how power hungry your chosen processor can be. That said, today’s CPUs can respond well to lower power limits.
Fractal’s Ridge case features a pre-installed PSU extension that connects to the base of your power supply to an outlet on the outside of the Ridge chassis. For us, tis cable is much longer than it needs to be, and this results in some unwanted cable clutter. Fractal should have made this PSU extension cable around 10cm shorter. To eliminate this cable clutter, we unscrewed the power terminal at the rear of the Ridge chassis and simply allowed the cable to dangle.
Pre-installed within Fractal’s Ridge chassis is a PCIe 4.0 riser card that allows Mini ITX motherboards within this chassis to be connected to modern graphics cards. This PCIe riser card is secured by three screws, though it is worth noting that Mini ITX motherboards with large heatsinks can make the installation of this riser card challenging, as it can make it difficult to install the third lower-down screw.
As you can see below, PC builders can fit huge graphics cards within Fractal’s Ridge chassis. We managed to fit in an RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card with ease, and since it is the same size as an RTX 4080 Founders Edition, you can rest assured that that GPU fits aswell.
For our system build we fitted an ASUS ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming motherboard and a PowerColor Hellhound RX 6700 XT White graphics card. CPU-wise, PC builders will need to be careful with their CPU’s power draw and their chosen CPU heatsink. There is not enough space for both a large AIO and a large graphics card, and that means that most PC builders will need to settle for a low profile CPU heatsink.
At the rear of the Ridge we can see a large motherboard cut-out that make the installation of CPU heatsink backplates and rear-mounted M.2 devices an easy process. Behind the PSU mounting location, we can also see space for two 2.5-inch drive mounts, which is great news for anyone who wants a few high capacity SATA SSDs in their system.
Externally, Fractal’s Ridge chassis is an elegant design that matches a lot of modern gadgets. The fabric dust filter is reminiscent of many Amazon Alexa devices, Ikea speakers, and other modern devices. This makes this case a great option for HTPC systems, or as a console replacement chassis.
