Fractal Design Core 500 Mini-ITX Chassis Review

Interior

The side panels are easily removed, giving you lots of big open sections to get all your hardware easily installed, which is important on such a small chassis. There’s certainly room for a large GPU here, just be sure you don’t pick a PSU that’s too long, or it could limit your options.

There’s a smaller opening on this side, leaving enough room to connect a few cables to the motherboard, and a large cut out on the upper section for passing through hard drive cables.

The PSU mounts here, and there’s a bit of clearance from the side panel to connect the pass-through cable.

The hard drive mounts are located on the side, with anti-vibration rubber mounts for the 3.5″ drives and a simple drop-in and two screws mount for the 2.5″ drives; there’s also a few holes in the frame to allow your screwdriver to easily pass through.

The top of the chassis has a cooling bracket that can support 2 x 120/140mm fans, as well as radiators up to 280mm. The screw holes are elongated to better ensure compatibility with your hardware too, which should ease the installation process.

If it’s easier for you, you can actually remove this bracket completely, which can help even further with the installation process.

The outer shell is a fairly heavy single piece of metal, with plenty of airflow. There are two dust filters in place here, each mounted on the interior with magnets for easy maintenance.