Fractal Design Core 2300 Mid-Tower Chassis Review

Peter Donnell / 10 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

This is a budget focused chassis, so naturally it comes with a wallet-friendly price tag. Right now, I can find it at Scan.co.uk for a the modest price of £28.94 + shipping, while those in the US can pick it up for $49.99 from Newegg.

Overview

This chassis is nothing special, but then again it was never designed to be. It’s pretty modest and in terms of exterior design, it’s actually rather boring at best. Of course, that’s not really a bad thing, as not everyone wants a LED infused chassis with huge window panels, some just want a neat and tidy box to house their system and their components, while also keeping the bulk of their budget for fancy internal hardware, which is exactly what the Core 2300 delivers.

Build quality is great, it is a Fractal Design chassis after all. Sure there’s a lot of plastic on the front panel, the filters on the front are foam, the one on the bottom is a mesh, it’s nothing fancy, but at this price, it exceeds my expectations for what you normally find in this price range. The main build of the chassis is tough, so those planning on housing heavy water cooling gear will have nothing to worry about.

The vertical hard drive bracket is a nice addition too. More often than not, I find myself removing hard drive bays to accommodate high-end graphics cards, but this solution gets around that issue and frees up the front of the chassis for cooling components, meaning you can spend more time fitting your hardware, less time worrying about how.

Cable management is nothing special, but it’s competent enough to get a smart looking build. There’s enough room for high-end hardware and cooling, there’s limited filtering, but at this price range, it’s certainly better than nothing. The Core 2300 certainly ticks the right boxes and it would be well suited to virtually any type of system build.

Pros

Good build quality
Vertical hard drive bay
Water cooling support
Cable management
Air filters (albeit rather basic)
Plenty of additional fan mounts
Clean looking front panel (although a little bland)
Fiercely competitive price

Cons

Not a huge amount of hard drive bays, but enough to satisfy most builds
Basic air filters
No mesh on top fan mounts (could cause debris to build up in system)

“This chassis isn’t perfect, but it is certainly very wallet-friendly. Even when you’re not on a tight budget, this is still a versatile and competent solution for a system build. It looks neat and tidy, is easy to work with and Fractal Design is always a name you can show off with pride.”