Leo Waldock 4 days ago Cases, Featured Tech Reviews, Reviews

Fractal Design has launched a range of cases named Pop that stretch from the mATX Pop Mini, through this ATX Pop and onwards to the EATX  Pop XL. The title of this review is slightly click-baity as we are confident the Fractal Design Meshify will continue its separate and happy existence, however there is a serious point that Pop airflow cases are named Air without any mention of Mesh.

00:00 Start 01:09 Introduction, versions and accessories 03:02 Pulling off the panels – drive mounts 03:58 Storage container! 04:17 Front panel / interior bracket 04:38 Dual Optical drive support 05:46 Cooling support / ARGB/ fans 07:18 Installing radiators 08:10 Hardware for install 09:50 PC Built – Leo’s Thoughts 11:24 Testing / Noise levels 13:36 Cooling Performance 14:20 Leo’s Closing Thoughts

To put this case through its cooling paces we will be using a test system consisting of an Intel Core i9-12900K processor, RX 6800XT graphics and an SSD. This system allows us to produce a substantial amount of heat and effectively test the Fractal Design Pop Air‘s cooling capabilities.

The cooling performance of Fractal Design's new Pop Air was pretty much exactly what we expected. The chassis is a compact mid-tower ATX with reasonable air flow through the various panels and no obvious problems, but it lacks the volume that is typically required for really good airflow. Having said that we battered the Pop Air with a heavy combination of CPU and GPU workloads and it survived so if you dial back the hardware to sub-Core i9 we are confident the Pop Air will do a fine job for you.

The next time we visit CES or Computex we fully intend to meet up with Fractal Design and interrogate them about sales of the various coloured options of the new Pop cases. Is Cyan more popular than Magenta? Do the customers check out Green and Orange before clicking on White?

While the painted finish is a fairly trivial matter, however it makes the ATX Pop Air stand out from the competition and that is a neat trick when you consider just how many PC cases there are on the market.

We are impressed to see that Fractal Design has packed a host of features into Pop while keeping the cost low. With their Define range you get a number of options included at a fairly high price. By contrast Pop relies on optional accessories such as extra drive mounts and USB Type-C for the front I/O panel to keep the price low.

We are confident that Fractal Design is directly targeting Phanteks Eclipse with the Pop series and we are very keen to see how this welcome competition helps the enthusiast that is working on a tight budget.

You can purchase Fractal Design Pop Air for £81.99 from Overclockers UK HERE.

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KitGuru says: Fractal Design Pop Air is worthy and does a decent job.

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Tags ARGB fractal pop fractal pop review MESH Review Tempered Glass

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