Temperature behavior
Now we come to the temperature behavior, probably the most exciting part of this review. After the first Era was unfortunately a huge disappointment in this discipline, FRACTAL DESIGN has set itself ambitious goals for the Era 2 and focused on the cooling concept and airflow instead of just concentrating on design and dimensions. I was quite excited, but had already formed certain ideas after my first impressions during the build.
Test system:
The proven ITX platform was used as the test system. Unfortunately, I don’t have a more hot-headed CPU for socket 1700 in stock, but I don’t think in general you will necessarily install a 14900KS hotplate in such a system. As far as the graphics card is concerned, I have once again opted for the RX 7700XT. With its approx. 32cm installation length, I think it’s quite a challenge by ITX standards, although of course it can’t be compared with the latest bolides of the caliber of an RX 7900XTX or RTX 4090 in terms of consumption.
General conditions:
AIO fans: 700rpm
Pump: 1900rpm
Case fans: 700rpm
Room temperature: 23.2°C
CPU Torture
For the CPU stress test, I again used Cinebench R23 in continuous loop. Over the entire test, 80W was applied to maintain the maximum allcore Turbo of 4000MHz. The average temperature of the i5 12400 was 56°C, which is already considered “cool” by today’s standards. For comparison: In the Corsair 2000D Airflow, the same i5 with the thick 360 AIO and ~3°C lower room temperature was only approx. 5°C cooler. Fits!
Gaming workload
Borderlands 3 was again used for the gaming test, as this UE4 game practically fully utilizes the graphics card throughout and therefore generates a lot of waste heat. Especially with AIOs mounted in the lid, this has a significant effect on the CPU temperature, as the waste heat from the graphics card is dissipated outside through the radiator. After a longer warm-up phase, the CPU stabilized in the upper 40°C range.
The graphics card can’t make the Era 2 break a sweat either. Although the fans in the compact case had to turn just over 1600rpm to maintain the desired boost of ~2550MHz, this is only an almost negligible 100rpm more than is necessary in the large ATX cases.
The HotSpot was also nailed down and absolutely harmless. Despite the compact dimensions of the Era 2, there is no need to worry about heat build-up.
Interim conclusion
After the first Era was a total thermal failure and received correspondingly bad reviews, I can only report positive findings about the Era 2. Heat build-up is definitely not to be feared here thanks to the good ventilation and as the layout allows “normal” (vertical) mounting of the graphics card, there is also no need to pay attention to compatibility with the cooling concept of the graphics card, which is something that must be taken into account with vertically (e.g. Corsair 2000D) or horizontally (e.g. Thermaltake Tower series) mounted graphics cards. Overall, the tested hardware could hardly challenge the Era 2 – there are still plenty of reserves for hotter CPUs and hungrier graphics cards!
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