Construction diary
Now it’s getting exciting! ITX systems are always a highlight for me and, given my coarse motor skills, always a bit of a challenge. Excited and “hot as chips”, the components to be installed were taken from the shelf and the workstation was set up.
The following hardware was to be installed in the case for the practical test:
As always, the CPU, RAM and NVME have already been installed in advance and the retention for the AIO water cooling system was also installed at the same time.
Nice detail: Fractal has provided a small indentation for the screwdriver at the point where the board sits very close to the rear wall of the case. This almost makes up for the lack of a centering hub!
And it took me until exactly this point to understand why the PCIE riser cable appeared the “wrong way round”. Because the board is also installed mirrored and the PCIE slot is on top. If it takes longer again..
The holder for the power supply unit can be pulled out like a drawer after loosening a single screw, so that the power supply unit can be conveniently screwed in outside the housing and only needs to be pushed in.
And this is where the finger acrobatics begin. Cable management in the smallest of spaces, every single strand has to be precisely planned, otherwise you’ll be rewarded with the ugly “fffrrrrrrrrrr” sound when one of the cables rubs against the fan wheel.
I thought it was a good idea to squeeze a 32cm long graphics card into this tiny case.
Thanks to the recess at the front, you can maneuver the block into place without having to fumble around.
It was easier than I thought!
Crazy, even a centimeter more would have been possible..
So far, everything had worked so suspiciously smoothly, as I had never experienced with an ITX build before. And it would have been an impossibility if there hadn’t been a slight hint of helplessness with the Era 2. Neither the 280mm BeQuiet! nor the 280mm Thermaltake AIOs could even begin to find a place in the lid of the Era 2. With the idea of first screwing the fans into the bracket and placing the radiator “inside”, there would have been enough space and at the same time no cable or hose could have hung in the fans, but then the hoses would have been too deep in the case and would have practically needed a 90° angle directly at the exit from the radiator in order not to be completely kinked. However, the questionable compatibility with 280mm AIOs is also the only minor flaw that I noticed during the entire build process. The solution was simple: just use a 240mm AIO.
And I countered the risk of cables dragging in the fan with a little helper that probably only the older members of our readership will remember. Who remembers the good old “fan grills”?
Everything inside and yet total freedom of movement for all fans!
I’m really amazed at what you can fit into such a small space.
Time for the test run!
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