Fractal Pop Mini Silent - First Impressions

[TikPandora]

Good day everyone! I'm fresh out of transferring my build from my old (terrible) Silverstone PS15 to a brand new Fractal Pop Mini Silent. There hasn't been much on this specific model of Fractal case and I just thought it would be worth typing some first impressions out for if anyone would like to get one. I didn't take many pictures due to the fact that I didn't initially plan on writing anything but I hope the two I have are good enough. This is unorganized and somewhat rambly, just a warning in advance.

 

Included in the box is the case, three 120mm Aspect 12 fans, a whole bunch of neatly organized screws, a manual, and one of those sheets that tells you not to return the case to the store if something is broken and to contact Fractal instead. It's a standard box with some really nice Fractal stamped foam inside to make sure the case arrives intact to it's destination.

 

The case itself seems to be constructed very well. It's just standard case sheet metal, so nothing super impressive, but I was only able to find a few imperfections in the black finish. Everything fits together nicely and lines up for a good looking case. You can remove the two HDD bays at the bottom and the SSD tray on the back of the motherboard tray.

 

I had a bit of a problem getting my USB PCI card to go in, but with a bit of force it eventually slotted in to where it was supposed to go. Either the bracket was too wide on it or the case slot just needed some convincing. Also, the SSD tray at the back could have been designed a little better. It seems to not like the fact that SATA SSDs are the shape that they are and requires a bit of force to actually get back into place once you have one installed. No case is perfect though, so I made everything work to the best of my ability.

 

Despite my decision to install a rather noisy blu-ray drive into the bottom of the case, this thing is truly borderline silent. I guess sound -dampened panels and limited intake will do that for you. I was initially worried about thermals...but I seem to actually be getting better temps with this case than I was with my old one...though that could very well be due to how there's so much more room to make things nice and tidy in here compared to the Silverstone.

 

It only accepts three 120mm fans and the ones it comes with are 3 pin Fractal Aspect 12 fans. I can't comment on these as I immediately replaced them with my Noctua Reduxes before I even attempted to boot it.

 

It's nice to have a M-ATX case with a solid side panel as well as a PSU basement, which made cable management even that more easy. Though I totally did a bit of "cable shoving" into the open space that was left.

 

I also never realized how nice having dedicated dust filters that slide out would be in contact to the simple sheets of plastic that the Silverstone had. So that's a plus too. The filters snap nicely into place and give a satisfying click to let you know that they're all the way in.

 

In terms of cable management, there's a lot of space behind the motherboard tray, so even with my super chunky EVGA cables I didn't have to actually apply force to get the back panel to go on. (You almost had to use Linus' knee trick with the Silverstone) There's plenty of tie-down points and even some included Fractal cable ties for your convenience. I would like to have seen the holes be a little bigger so you could actually get cables through them easily. I unfortunately couldn't use the slim hole beneath the motherboard for my VGA cable because it just so happened to line perfectly with the front panel headers of my ASUS motherboard. It was either have my VGA cable come from the side or not have front panel connections. I of course chose the front panel

 

Front panel IO is standard, two USB 3 ports as well as a mic jack and audio jack. There's a tease of a USB-C port that's blocked off by default. For some reason Fractal thought it would be a good idea to make you purchase the cable to make the port functional separately. It's borderline impossible to find without importing it, but that doesn't matter to me as my motherboard doesn't have a Gen 2 header anyway.

 

Basically, I think this is a rather nice case that is worth your consideration if you have no desire for RGB, have modest heat-output, and want something that's nearly whisper silent even with fans going full blast. It's nowhere near perfect, as no case truly is especially at an $80 price point, but I don't regret buying it for my build.

 

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Build is:

ASUS TUF Gaming B550m Plus WiFi II

Ryzen 5 5600x

Sapphire Radeon RX 6600

32 GB XPG Gammix D20

EVGA 650 G5 PSU

WD Black SN770m 500 GB

SK Hynix S31 Gold 1 TB SSD

 

[fonzz1e]

hello fellow pop user

 

ya know it's strange that the pop air mini is more pricey than regular pop air in my region (south east asia)

 

my build

Spoiler

 

i did swap the front intakes to NF-A14 ( i have them lying around anyway lol)

 

i7 4770k + 3060ti

 

using sfx psu while waiting for my cm v750 went for rma

 

 

 

[TikPandora]

I have a feeling the silent model is a bit more expensive due to all of the foam and things, but I could be wrong. Newegg is the only place I could find the case for MSRP, which I thought was strange. But whatever, I had my heart set on this specific sku.

 

I had my Noctua fans from my last build and wanted to have PWM so that's why I just took out the included fans. Heh

 

Looks good by the way!