Experience a fusion of style and function with Pop Series. Pop Air brings attitude to airflow, melding precision engineering with dynamic design. Vividly colored motherboard plate, drive trays and exterior accents (Pop Air RGB TG Cyan/Magenta/Green/Orange Core) If I am honest, after the triumph that was the Fractal Torrent ( review here), I was excited to hear that we had a new Fractal case to grace our offices. Better still, the case had Air in its name, signifying that airflow was a priority and that we should expect staller cooling performance. Expectations were here, and hearing that this case was a more budget-oriented offering from Fractal potentially signalled great things for the low-cost PC market. One of the nicer things that we can say about the CPU temperatures we measured (after mounting our platform into the Pop Air RGB) is that they’re only a few degrees worse than average. In fact, they’re right beside the premium-market O11 Dynamic EVO from Lian Li.

The right image indicate how you change the mode and colors on the controller. By pressing and holding in the button for 2 second, you can change the mode in which it lights up. By just pressing and releasing the button straight away, you change the color of the LEDs. Note that the Northern Lights mode disables any color change, as it has its own color theme. If the two above steps are done, you can try and disconnect the fans that are chained together and connect them separately to the controller. If one fan in the chain is faulty, it could lead to all fans in the chain having issues with lighting.Each of the three RGB fans includes ARGB inputs and outputs, plus three-pin fan inputs and outputs. All outputs are designed only to enable daisy-chaining of these devices, with the original connection leading to a motherboard header. Unique, honeycomb patterned mesh front creates a striking effect and provides access to fan-powered cooling We have seen some issues with the RGB controller in combination with the Arctic P12 and P14 A-RGB fans. It seems like no matter how these are connected, if you connect two of them in a row, the third fan will not light up. If you have a mix of these fans in combination with other models, we would recommend mounting the other fans first in the chain and keep these two fans last in the chain for all to function.

In sum, all this isn’t an argument of poor performance, by any means, but rather that the case doesn't distinguish itself for doing especially well on our thermal and acoustic trials. In addition to fan cables, the Pop Air RGB includes a SATA-style power input, and header cables for a motherboard power button, HD Audio, and first-gen USB 3. The SATA-style cable powers both the Pop Air RGB’s ARGB controller and its power-on indicator light. (As for the USB 3 lead, most case manufacturers call these "USB 3.0" despite USB-IF’s "USB 3.2 Gen 1" nomenclature.) Builders who would rather use the case’s RGB controller will find an ARGB header on the underside of the switch panel...

Pop Air

Presenting the Fractal Pop Air, one half of the new Fractal pop series. As the name suggests, the Pop Air is an airflow-oriented design with a mesh covered front and an external aesthetic that is a mix between NZXT’s popular H510 Flow and Fractal’s Meshify series, both of which are great case designs. To say the least, we expected a lot from the Pop Air, despite is more modest pricing.

With the launch of the Pop line, Fractal is truly going all in with the attempt to capture the budget-minded market segment, offering three general sizes: the Pop Mini, Pop, and Pop XL—each with some variations. In this review, we will be looking at the Pop Air RGB, which ships in a slew of bright internal colors. There is also the Pop Silent SKU with a solid front and toned down looks using the same body. Experience a fusion of style and function with Pop Series. Pop XL Air melds precision engineering with dynamic design, while offering the space and flexibility of its generous format.We'll map the results against some recently tested large ATX cases, some of which have at least a modicum of EATX-board support. Among them are Cooler Master's HAF 500, Corsair's iCUE 5000T RGB, Lian Li's O11 Dynamic EVO, and In Win's N515. Yes, Fractal’s Pop Air supports optical disk drives, up to two of them! While this is uncommon for modern PC cases, it is a useful feature for those who still value their optical drive bays. The top panel features a mesh panel with magnetic tape on its periphery covering a dual fan mount that, like the front panel, supports two fans of 120mm or 140mm sizes. Since space is very tight around the top panel’s 140mm fan mounts, Fractal Design recommends using nothing larger than a dual-120mm (aka 240mm) radiator here.