Solid and colorful interior
The Pop series is a new range of cases from Fractal Design. Pop is divided into two categories, Air and Silent, and these into three size variants. We received the Pop Air case, which is the middle sized model. It is the only one in the series to offer a wide choice of colour options. The Pop Air has a perforated front panel, and cooling should be more efficient as more of the mask area is open.
Solid and colorful interior
The Pop Air case is neither the largest nor the smallest case in the new series. A golden middle ground that can accommodate the most common component sizes. Of the motherboards, only the E-ATX format won’t fit. You can have a tower-shaped CPU cooler up to 170 mm high. A graphics card up to 405 mm in length is no problem for the case. But for those longer and heavier cards, I miss a graphics card support here that would lighten the PCI Express slot. An additional bracket can be fitted to the tunnel to hold two 2.5″ drives. It is primarily located at the rear, so it may be possible to purchase a second one separately. Its recommended price is 8,99 EUR.
The cable grommets are not rubberized, but it should be noted that the rubber is not really missed. The edges of the holes are rounded, so there are no sharp edges that could damage the cables. Sizing-wise, they’re off fairly well. I had no difficulty threading and plugging in the cable to power the processor during installation. However, it was more difficult with the 24-pin cable (with capacitors at the ATX connector) for the motherboard power supply. It had to be wiggled a bit but eventually it just came through.
The rear of the exhaust is adapted for 120 mm fans only. It is fitted with the same Aspect 12 RGB fan as on the intake. With seven blades, according to the manufacturer, they can pump 54.4 m³/h at a maximum speed of 1200 rpm.
On the other side of the tray, you have 16 options for cable management where you can attach cables. Two are already fitted with Velcro straps. For the other positions, there are disposable pull-tabs from accessories or thin flexible cables that hold the cabling together from the factory. I can imagine more velcro straps coming with the Pop Air.
Space for cabling is not the strongest point of the case. There are 19 mm available, so you’ll definitely want to reach for other options than just Velcro straps.
There is a bit of a struggle with cable management. Especially with the power supply for the fans and their second cable for the backlight. These are connected to each other to make only one supply. Everything needs to be tightened properly so that they don’t stick out of the side panel. But I have to say that I expected more difficulty to adjust the cabling with a 19 mm space dedicated to it.
For the RGB LED backlight for the fans to work, they need to be daisy-chained together. They are then connected to the I/O panel controller. The entire backlight is powered via a SATA cable directly from the power supply.
Directly on the tray there is a holder purely for 2.5″ storage. It can hold two drives straight on it. It can be placed secondarily on the top of the tunnel from the other side of the case.
In the tunnel, instead of a drawer, there are two universal holders for 2.5″/3.5″ SSD/HDD. They fit into the grooves of the structure and then secure with one screw to hold them in place. If you were to use one or both 5.25″ positions with wider hardware, you would have to remove the bracket from its position or they would clash. Fortunately, one bracket can alternatively be placed directly on the left side of the side panel. The other 25 cm of free space behind the brackets is for the ATX-format power supply. With the brackets removed, you get an additional 12 cm to spare. There is plenty of space for cable handling in either cases.
All hardware and accessories are held together by 0.80-0.85 mm thick sheet metal. The values vary slightly in different places. The tray is stable and does not bend. The right metal sidewall is the same way. In the given price range, the Pop Air case has a respectable sheet metal thickness.
- Contents
- Pleasant exterior
- Solid and colorful interior
- Test methodology
- CPU and GPU cooling tests
- Motherboard cooling tests
- SSD cooling test and temperature underneath the ceiling
- Conclusion
