I'm going to be honest coming into the fractal suite at compex 2024 here was a
little bit of a different experience for me I've never had a brand come up and
just right off the bat say we understand everyone hated this the last time we did
it but I promise we fixed it that's new for me but to be honest I didn't really
follow the original fractal era when it came out but if you aren't familiar the
problem was airf flow they had kind of a solid bottom panel which just a little
bit of ventilation on the side and a solid top panel look at this wood not
not solid I mean it it's solid Walnut but not in the way that you're thinking
there's there's machined lines in it for air flow very good last time it
overheated if you had any sort of high-end gaming computer and they were
straight up about that but this is supposed to fix that problem and it
looks nice too that's kind of the theme here if you haven't noticed we basically
took apart their entire set and built our own little ShortCircuit set here
but to unbox a case that has no box I mean it's kind of a box itself I'm going
to need another computer oh luckily they have this one right here and I figured
if we're already taking apart their entire set why not take apart their computers too this is the era 2 and it
comes in three different colors I've got silver here this one is charcoal gray ah
I got it right and this one midnight blue honestly I'm kind of a
blue guy this is pretty nice now apparently there's going to be a bunch
of cool engineering nerd stuff that I'm going to realize as I go through this so
hopefully I pick up on it otherwise maybe maybe I'm stupid in terms of specs
we'll kind of get into those as we go through it let's see if I can figure out
how to take it apart hold on I don't think I'm getting the right side here
but I do see a lock thing here oh it's just a fan mesh filter on the bottom
it's a nice touch not what I was looking for whoa ah never mind it was what I was
looking for damn look at that so easy so
this is the fancy anodized aluminum shell on the back just a big open space
which is where this stuff will go on the top here's
that walmut panel we were looking at earlier each one is unique it's actually
wood that they Source from North America I tried to ask them if they get it from Canada given that it's wood and we
export a lot of that but I have not heard back yet have we heard back yet
damn it you know what close enough it's we're like the America mini or whatever
let's move on to the actual case itself I'm going to unbuild this one and put it
into this computer because I feel like it's weird to do a case unboxing
experience without actually building a computer so let's start that now that I
know how to take the thing apart wow that's a lot of stuff in there maybe
this is more than I bargained for the back panel here is adjustable it has a
adjustable spine at the back and yes this is the screwdriver I'm going to be
using the entire time deal with it I forgot my LTT screwdriver LTT Store.com
and if you haven't gotten there yet the reasoning for this is the size of the
graphics card say you have no graphics card or just a really small one you can
put it in position one here with the graphics card space trun drunken down
and that gives you 70 Ms of CPU clearance and then if you have a big
graphics card you go to position three and then you have 55 mm that might
matter to you if you have an air cooler but if you have an AO you're probably
good in either yeah PCIe Riser right there that's nice maybe let's put the
graphics card in I might just instead of tearing apart this entire computer I
might just move a couple Choice components just to like get the vibe
pass through power cable that makes sense the power supply is not sitting
right here fits sfx and sfsl power supplies like this one here let's try
and take it out are these all on trays is this just going to slide right out
wow look at that it's just on a slighty tray what so you just screw the power
supply into this little tray and then I mean mash the cables in there don't
forget about the cables but let's pretend like I've remembered and put it
back in easy and that's it oh I mean the screw
there's still a screw but that's pretty much it that's like very good what about
an AO what what what what have I been
doing with this power supply you just watched me do that it just pops off I
told them to not tell me things because I just wanted to experience it that
feels like something you could have mentioned I don't know here let's try
this one more time with the top off yep
it's not that hard look at that goes right in there it still feels like very
sturdy good job for that I mean I've had oh cuz I guess it's braced in the middle
I've definitely played with cases like this where the the top comes off and it just feels like it dissolves into
nothing and that the thing is going to fall apart but because that spine is
mounted down the middle and can be movable it holds it all together this is
a new feature to the era 2 the original one didn't have like the fancy removable
tooless top like that but this is a very
well thought out case in my few minutes experience here you can see on the
bottom here much more ventilation than the last one which just had the side
ventilation and there's two 120 mm fans unlike the original which just had a
single 80 mil up front we've got a power button
it's fine it's not a it's not my favorite but it it makes sense with the
style 3.5 mil combo audio jack a 20 gig
USB type-c assuming you have a motherboard that supports it and what
looks like two 5 gig type A ports around
back like I showed you before motherboard cutout we've got the power
pass through the little screw holes for adjusting the spine and then two PC
slots it can fit up to a three slot card
assuming that this is in the maximum GPU
configuration which is limiting your CPU Cooler space I didn't look at this too
closely earlier but the little thing with the accessories in it holds two 2.5
in drives assuming you have the space and don't have a stupid long graphics
card what comes in here screws and cable
ties other than that it's just a very
nice clean good looking very easy to
build in seemingly case we'll try a little thermal test on it a little bit
later but before that I want to look at the other new case the mood it's a very
small form factor Tower style case it's
a little tricky given the orientation to
like get your fingers under there and pull like I need to pull this way but
not this way and that's kind of hard but
I guess if you just tilt your computer a little bit now hey the fabric lined top
comes off and it's just like the other one where you have like 360° access the
fabric is nice I like it it's um you're going to probably need to vacuum it at
some point but it will also act as a filter for your room I don't think that
they're rating it for that and definitely will not say that it gives
you any sort of filtration but I imagine if you have a cat or a dog it'll take
some cat hair out of your room which is something you all know I have problems
with top mesh good for air flow the
front is mesh the back is open sort of
of this filter is there the top is open but the sides are not I was kind of like
huh but I guess it makes sense they're channeling the airflow and I did just
determine that you can't actually put this on incorrectly it stops you and
there is some helpful labeling that says rear as you can see it comes in two
different colors they are arguing about what this one is called but let's go
with gray for now this is more my vibe I like the gray I'm not a black PC kind of
guy to be honest I like to be able to see the components although I'm not getting that with this regardless on the
back here is the graphics card compartment that's why it's right next
to the ventilation if you were to have the graphics card over here on this
solid panel obviously wouldn't work that well as the astute among you might have
already guessed there's a big ass fan at the top 180 mil oh my God it's thick so
this is making a from these sides yeah that's the right size a chimney effect
sucking in air all along here and shooting it out the top it's officially
a two slot GPU limit here but if you look at the back you can see there's a
little extra it's honestly actually it's quite a bit extra it looks almost like
three slots just not with the third slot
they don't recommend putting giant horrible power efficiency graphics cards
like a 4090 in here but if you got creative I wouldn't be surprised if you
could get one to fit pciu Riser included
here it's got this funky like angle on it here to fit in there we've got a 3.5
in hard drive Mount here that also can fit a 2.5 in SSD and if you want a
second SSD they ship a bracket in the box that allows you to mount one like
right here Mini ITX motherboard mount it
also supports up to 2 140 mm fans or a
280 mil aiio that being said it's kind
of a unique form factor so there are some size constraints apparently the
majority of 280 mil aiio will have some
sort of clearance issue whether it's like the radiator Dimensions or the
clearance between the motherboard which is right you know here CPU block
probably right right about here apparently they haven't tried it without fans on the AO I mean they have this Big
Ass Fan on the top I think that that could maybe work but your mileage will
vary do some Googling if you're buying this case right off the bat maybe stick
with a 240 cuz those should just pretty much work across the board although they
definitely have not tried them all this is a good button it's also got 20 gig
USB and likely 2 5 gig type A ports like
the other case and combo audio to mount an AIO in this one it's just these two
screws here to take this bracket off and then you can mount it separately and plop it in or if you don't want an AO
and you like air coolers like me it fits up to 110 mil tall cooler which if
you're wondering in noctua words it's like an NHD 9l uh which is a probably a
pretty good pairing for the amount of Hardware that's going to be in a computer like this but I know you guys
will do horrible horrible things and make very cool
computers let's see if this one overheats but not before telling you
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risk-free 30-day money back guarantee maybe not the world's most intensive
game ever but we're running valheim Max settings I think we're getting around
180 FPS this is the same configuration with a 14700 K and an RTX 470 I'm just
running around in valheim and I have HW info open in the background I'm going to
let that heat soak for a bit and in the meantime let's check out the other
product which is definitely not sitting on the desk right here their headphones
it's called the scape ooh damn this is
nice okay we've got the stand we'll talk more about that in a sec and I've been
told that all the packaging is biodegradable in one way or another even
the plastic got the headphones
themselves little cable here also in cardboard and the removal microphone
that's pretty much it for the box that foam has some memory I believe they call
that memory foam hey there we go okay they pop off that reveals the custom
in-house tuned 40 mm drivers here they H
don't necessarily have plans on making these ear cups purchasable yet but I
guess in theory you could probably contact customer service and they want
to know what the community has to say if people are asking for it I'm sure they
will do it nice adjustability this is metal which is nice it should be pretty
durable then but the top is of course plastic for flexibility in terms of
buttons we have a crown here this adjusts the volume as you can probably
guess you can pause skip track or skip track back with three clicks there
they've got a mode selector on here which I really like I hate when products
have like a stupid like gesture to switch or like
XYZ cheat code to switch this just a
little switch to go between Bluetooth and the 2.4 GHz USB dongle which I'll
show you in a sec what's the bottom button what's this one do is that oh
that's just a power button yeah okay that makes sense you shouldn't need the power button I've been told that putting
it in and out of this very fancy magnetic case oh there look at that oh
it just snaps into place wow is what turns it on and off automatically what
other buttons we got here this is for the audio presets you they have a
balanced profile a treble optimized and a base optimized but you can also do EQ
uh with their app which I've been told is not an app it's a web page which
sounds awesome you don't have to run it in the background on your computer and
lose 20% of your FPS or whatever the hell this is for the LEDs looking oh
there we go I just had to wait a second ah these LEDs can indicate things like
the battery level or if your Bluetooth
is connected like you just saw earlier when it was flashing blue they also have
a removable microphone but not just this microphone which obviously mutes when it
goes up or can hang out down here and it's nice and flexible with some memory
they also have a mic integrated in here so if you're like on the bus and you've
taken your fractal headphones which to be fair these are Nic looking headphones
they don't look gamery at all you totally could just wear these out and about you can still make a call maybe
not as good as if you had your your gamer microphone but definitely probably
still functional oh USBC um in theory as
I'm sure you've imagined this charges the headphones wirelessly through these
little pads here but you can also charge it with USBC if you'd like does it work
with USBC like with it's plugged in it still functions nice thank God and
that's the St like look at that it just sits like that so you have this on your desk it's pretty your headphones have
somewhere to go and underneath there is
that little USB dongle I was talking about earlier so it integrates nicely
into the stand but if you don't want it there and you want to just plug it back
into your computer and you're not using this stand you can definitely do that
the rubberized feet thank
God do I look like a gamer a stylish
gamer at least like in this area
speaking of gaming if you're planning on gaming and you're uh Esports gamer or
what have you the latency on these with the the USB dongle is around 27
milliseconds that's what they've tested take that and do with it what you
will I am pleasantly
surprised they sound great actually like considering the scope of like gaming
headphones like very good good job I'm
actually like genuinely impressed in terms of battery life they're looking
around 40 hours in optimal circumstances which means LEDs off or around 20 to 25
with the LEDs on they're hoping that that doesn't really matter given that
they made this nice stand and you don't have to plug it in but if you're on the go it's definitely something to keep in
mind but decent figures they sound pretty good they're not cheap but
they're not that expensive either if you think about premium kind of gaming
headphones they are premium gaming headphones that are very expensive and
this includes the charging stand does Bluetooth 2.4 has nice memory foam ear
cups is pretty comfy I usually prefer a suede material but I'm sure they'll be
aftermarket ones or maybe they'll make some suede ones later on
they look nice seems like a pretty decent buy let's check on that computer
all right it's had about 20 minutes or 10 minutes or whatever to heat soak for
reference they're running a fractal Lumen 240 mil AI liquid cooler on the
CPU we're running around 70° on that at
140 Watts on the CPU and our GPU temperature has settled in around 63 to
64 at around a 160 to 180 watt power
draw what is the fan running at C U fan
for reference running at about 1,600 RPM
and the GPU fan oh the GPU fan is running at 30% like it's it's pretty
quiet and this is according to Hardware info around 90% of the TDP of the GPU
and we're pulling 30% on the fans it's pretty quiet like this is fine it's
totally fine which is all it needs to be really it's quiet I guess considering
the form factor this is pretty good it's not the absolute craziest high
performance components in in this computer but still a 14700 k and a 4070
are no slouch by any stretch of the imagination so in terms of like the
temps working and it being a functional computer it seems like mission
accomplished but that's not even the last thing they have look at this comfy
chair I have Colt in here to show you oh Hey Jake what's up I'm dude it's so
cringe it's so cringe I'm sitting in one of fractal's new refined Ergo gaming
chairs fractal has five different skews of this chair so they've got two
colorways they've got a light and dark both in a mesh and a fabric variant and
then they've also got a fifth skew check this thing out alcanta baby these chairs
are inspired by Scandinavian design as you can see they're pretty minimal which
I really like The Branding the only branding you're going to get on these chairs it's just right here on the
headrest itself we're going to stick with the Alcantara for the rest of this video so I'm going to move these guys
out of the way so you'll notice probably the most gamer thing about this chair is
a silhouette but these things like many other fractal products are built for
Form and Function there's a lot of things that I really like about this
chair first being that's got hubless casters so you'll notice ooh nice and
smooth you can't really feel it when you're watching the video but these
things are really smooth another thing that I really like about this chair and
something that a lot of chairs get wrong is they very clearly identified what
each handle does in the chair so you can know that this goes forward this goes
backward this goes up this goes down
this is awesome this saves you from having to Fumble below the chair and
figure out what each thing does on this side we've got what I'm assuming is the
tilt lock wait let me undo it ooh
similar to how smooth the casters feel this chair has a Synchro tilt mechanism
which is very very smooth we got about
125 to 130° of reclining ability here
another thing that's really interesting about this chair is the headrest so this
headrest is memory foam which is common in a lot of chairs but what isn't common
is the way that it affixes to the chair itself you've got this little release up
here you can press you can actually take the headrest off you're not messing
around with magnets you don't have your headrest falling oh crap where did it go
there's actually a button that it fixes to the chair which is really cool wow
you just got to hit it but then when it's actually locked in you can move it
down and up as well without having to take it off and then the last thing that
I really want to highlight on this chair is the lumbar support system pretty
straightforward you've got this knob again clearly identifying whether you
can get the lumbar support to go in or out and then you can also go up and down
like so but what about Comfort obviously when you're buying a chair you're making
a big investment you're making an investment into something that you plan
on sitting on for years to come I think this is comfortable I feel like there
probably could be a little bit more padding under my butt but I feel
supported all of the materials even on the fabric and the mesh variant feel
really good and like I said the things that you're touching engaging with the
casters like everything feels premium at a not so premium price point which is
probably the most interesting thing that I'm finding with this chair the one that
I'm sitting in the Alcantara this is like their premium premium variant this
retails for $899 but both the fabric and mesh
variants which you can get in the light or dark colorways retail for 549 USD and
they're expecting to launch in Q3 of this year here another thing that I want
to talk about especially when we're talking about chairs is warranty fractal is offering a three-year warranty on
soft components and they're offering a five-year warranty on your structural
components which is pretty competitive with chairs in this price point
obviously it's not going to be something like a Herman Miller that gives you a 12year warranty but you are paying for
that warranty as well oh they just rolled me the instructions fractal told
me that these are works of art just like their products their instruction manuals
are art and plof I think would agree so
we didn't build these chairs just to let everybody know you do have to build them
yourself but it's very straightforward as you can see here from this guide and
that's it for chairs thank you very much for watching everybody make sure to like the video if you liked it leave a
comment below with your thoughts what you what do you guys think of these
products that we talked about here today but I always do outros so long outros
aren't supposed to be long right they're supposed to be short bye