Fractal Era 2 PC Case: Review, Thermal Benchmarks, Cable Management, & Quality

Our review of the Fractal Era 2 mini-ITX case is in. In these Era 2 benchmarks, we're testing it for build quality, ease-of-installation, cable management, some thermals and acoustics, and overall execution. The Fractal Era 2 follows Fractal's Mood, which we didn't recommend, and other case launches like the Lian Li A3-mATX, NCASE M1EVO, and Cooler Master's NCORE 100 MAX tower. The Era 2 is closest to the A4-H2O of the cases we've reviewed lately, but is distinct in several key areas. It ends up a relatively tall ITX case by dimensions, but still compact. The wood top panel on the case also moves wood from the (now typical) front location to a different area. Mechanical complexity is also overall interesting and tooling is good, but execution struggles in some areas: We had a cracked wood panel and misaligned aluminum panels, contributing two of the only marks against it in our testing -- the last being price.