Table of Contents

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Intro

This article is an entry in our GN Mega Charts series. All Mega Charts are listed on the Features page, including these:

• CPU Power Consumption & Efficiency Mega Charts
• CPU Cooler Mega Charts

This section contains disclaimers, limitations of the process, and disclosures relating to data quality control. We think that this is all important for your understanding of how this page works and so that you can adjust your own expectations and potential reliance on the data to calibrate with the two groups (“Active” and “LTS”); however, if you’d like to just jump straight to the charts and ignore all of that, you may bypass the wall of text and auto-scroll down with this link.

This article contains our ‘Mega Charts’ for CPU performance benchmarks, including our production tests (commonly referred to as “creation” benchmarks) and gaming tests. Our power testing can be found on the above-linked page and is isolated, as it tends to be more static.

This page will be regularly updated with the latest of our CPU benchmark performance numbers. It will consist of two types of charts: Long-Term Support (“LTS”) and Active. The long-term support charts have several special caveats, but are intended to be available to help people better determine upgrade paths. The LTS charts are more likely to contain older CPU results.

The page also includes links to CPU reviews and comparisons, such as historical AMD vs. Intel benchmarks. It will be updated on a slower cadence from our latest reviews (so you should always defer to those for the most recent numbers), but will be updated a few times a year with larger charts than are found in our reviews. This is for a few reasons, but one is that we shorten review charts due to video height limitations (16:9 aspect ratio). The other is that it’s just too crowded for the regular updates.

This page is intended to be used long-term for our Mega Charts. You can bookmark this page, as our future updates for CPU Mega Charts will land at this same URL. The update log will be posted at the bottom of the page so that you always know the latest data set. It will be updated a couple times a year, with more frequency updates in the CPU reviews themselves.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing

Patrick Lathan
Mike Gaglione

How to Use This

Even as data ages, it is often still relevant for comparison -- particularly for older CPUs which mostly stop receiving performance-affecting changes, such as microcode updates or Windows patches. We are constantly re-running our CPU tests to keep data fresh, but unfortunately, this refresh cycle means that it is difficult to stack more CPUs on the charts before some sort of major change comes in. For example, major Windows updates necessitate full re-tests for reviews, but may not be as important for someone who just wants to see their older CPU represented for a “good enough” gauge of where things fall.

That’s why we split these into the LTS (Long-Term Support) and Active charts. It allows us to maintain one older dataset that has more CPUs represented, at the cost of reduced insights gained from our most modern test methods. Active gives you that for more of a modern head-to-head. It’s the difference between precision (Active) and quantity of CPUs (LTS). This is the best balance that a small team can produce, especially since we provide this website completely ad-free (you can support us on Patreon or by buying something useful for your PC builds on our store).

Current Best CPUs (Generalized Recommendations)

The below is a simple list of CPUs that, at the time of writing (dated in the columns below), we think make sense or would make sense with caveats noted.

Pay careful attention to the second column. We may only recommend some parts under certain pricing conditions. Generally speaking, we do not recommend buying CPUs above MSRP. They come down pretty regularly, especially with launch cycles. For instance, when we first posted this, the 7800X3D was about $250 overpriced. It's still on the list so that people are aware of it, but we advise waiting for it to approach that MSRP marker or to be replaced with the pending 9000X3D parts.

For a better and more thorough list of Best CPUs, please check our Best CPUs of 2023 article. We will update for 2024 also.

Is Your CPU Missing From This Data? Here’s What to Do

We frequently receive questions from people asking where their particular CPU would land on a chart. There are thousands of CPUs that could be tested, so we obviously don’t have all of those listed. The best bet is to approximate the positioning by just thinking through the data that is present and using deductive reasoning. Newer builders may not realize that it is often this simple, so we’ll outline some concepts so that you can at least get a rough idea of where your part might fall. You can apply this to any reviewer’s charts. And of course, if we’re missing a part, there are plenty of qualified reviewers out there who may have something we’re missing (and we likewise try to cover what they miss) -- that’s the value of multiple qualified reviewers.

CPU Performance Interpolation/Deductive Reasoning Examples

Example 1: The Ryzen 5 1600AF is not present on the charts.

Solution: The Ryzen 5 1600AF is functionally an R5 2600, just at slightly different clocks. Looking up original reviews would get you this information, which you can then apply to modern charts. Looking at the R5 2600 in a chart is close enough to the R5 1600AF that you could base your decisions off of that part.

Example 2: The Ryzen 5 2600 is also missing from the charts.

Solution: Pull up a few old/original reviews of the R5 2600 and identify parts that are nearby or adjacent in performance. Look at a few charts, as some games can differ. Once you have found the most commonly comparable part, you can use that as a rough gauge on charts.

Example 3: The i7-10700K is missing from the charts.

Solution: If the i5-10600K and i9-10900K are present, it’s reasonable to assume that the 10700K is between them. Although this can have a relatively wide range, the reality is that, especially upgrading from something older, it won’t matter enough to hurt decision making on new processor purchases (since anything will be a huge upgrade).

Example 4: The Sandy Bridge i7-2600K is present, but not the i7-2700K

Solution: In situations such as these, where the part is basically just a slight change (example: 2700X vs. 2700, 2600X vs. 2600, 7700X vs 7700), you can just look at the one that is present and assume close enough performance to compare. This is again where it’s important to keep perspective: If the goal is to upgrade, being 2-5% off on the estimate isn’t going to meaningfully impact decisions if the alternative is no good modern data as reviewers move on.

As a last-ditch solution: You can look at games or benchmarks which are least likely suspected to have had major patches, such as GTA V, and calculate the percent difference between the target part and mutually present part on both an older chart and the new one. Then apply this to the modern chart to approximate or interpolate the rank. For example, if you pull up a chart from two years ago with the 8700K and 12700K on it and calculate the difference (typically, (new - old) / old), you can then apply that on the same game chart from modern times. This is the least perfect method because newer games may have architecturally evolved and may not be linear and older games get patches. You’d frankly be better off finding it somewhere else on the internet, but if you really can’t, this is a method that helps get at least something to work with.

DISCLAIMER: Data Accuracy Standards & Reduced Vetting Practices

For standalone reviews that receive full video treatment, we run through a quality control process that is intensive and often takes several days to complete. These are time-intensive, cost-intensive, and critical to the accuracy of our mainline reviews. We would never skip steps for the fully produced reviews.

But we want to publish more of the data we collect outside of the reviews process because it’d help people with purchasing decisions. We have been resistant to publishing the extra data because the ‘extra’ data doesn’t go through the same validation processes. It’s still useful and rarely has issues; however, our QC standards are high and we are careful with what we release. Anything we’re uncertain of or haven’t vetted fully is withheld until it clears those bars. 

But a lot of people would benefit from knowing where an AMD R7 1700 lands today, and outside of full revisits, we don’t have a good avenue to release data that is useful, likely up to our usual standards, but just not quadruple-checked. That’s what the Long-Term Support (LTS) charts are for. 

We’ve decided to release the extra data to try and cast a wide net to help people upgrading from older or more obscure parts, but are doing so with the upfront disclosure that the difference between the Active charts and the LTS charts is the validation process. In other words, data which exists on LTS charts but not Active charts should be understood by the audience as more likely to have some sort of data confidence issue or possible deviation from expected results. It is still unlikely, but more likely than Active charts. With that transparency and understanding, here’s the difference in our processes:

Active Chart Vetting Process

One of our biggest hangups for publishing a full list of our “Mega Charts” for CPUs has been that we simply cannot sustain the intensive QC process for a secondary dataset that contains CPUs that haven’t been published on the channel recently. We often still collect data for older CPUs, but may not publish it for time reasons (meaning that it was collected for internal review, but not fully vetted for publication). 

Here’s the full process, with some specialty confidential steps removed:

• The Test Lead for the tests (typically Steve) establishes a strict SOP for the test suite to ensure data consistency. The Test Lead also determines which software is tested, performs benchmark analysis for standard deviation and consistency, and determines the testing methodology
• The Test Lead (typically Steve) establishes a Test Matrix containing all CPUs to be tested, which tests they get, and data exporting practices
• The Subject Matter Expert (Patrick) builds software in collaboration with Steve for the test suite and builds the operating system configurations, establishing a “pre-flight checklist” for testing
• The Technician who runs the tests (primarily Mike, with assistance from Patrick and Steve and occasionally Jeremy) will check the results for correct resolution, correct settings, captures that prove the test completed correctly, image quality, and general errors. The technician performs re-runs as needed
• The Subject Matter Expert performs a secondary quality control pass on data. Any data which looks suspect of a bad pass, which requires manual filtering & removal prior to retests, will be deleted and flagged for the technician to rerun
• The Technician performs re-tests and then re-evaluates the results
• The Subject Matter Expert reviews them again. They are typically resolved at this stage and occasionally rejected entirely to move forward
• A Writer & Technician (typically Jeremy) performs a full pass on CPU export names, the hierarchical stack of the data and whether the hierarchy makes sense, and identifies potential areas where additional data may be necessary to confidently come to conclusions, then passes it to Steve. If Steve authorizes any of the re-evaluations from the Writer & Technician, they go back to the lab again for testing.
• Steve performs final intensive review, including running a variety of formulae for data consistency and evaluating results against archival results for consistency of scaling
• The Writer & Technician double-checks the finals. Any disagreement with what Steve passed is voiced and revisited. Once both are in agreement that it makes sense (or the suspect data is removed until validated), the data is sent to publication
• The video editor, who is often technical enough to identify obvious oversights, performs a ‘passive’ QC while editing and flags any issues. If any are found, they go through Steve for review, analysis, and either sign-off as accurate or correction

You’ll notice that a big part of the process is passing the results through multiple team members -- typically 4-5 people look at it before publishing. This is slow, but important. 

Long-Term Support Chart Vetting Process

The Long-Term Support charts will contain data which is not in reviews, but was used as internal gauges for where parts should sensically land. As a result, this is the process it has followed since it has not previously been published:

• (Same) The Team Lead for the tests (typically Steve) establishes a strict SOP for the test suite to ensure data consistency. The Team Lead also determines which software is tested, performs benchmark analysis for standard deviation and consistency, and determines the testing methodology
• (Same) The Team Lead (typically Steve) establishes a Test Matrix containing all CPUs to be tested, which tests they get, and data exporting practices
• (Same) The Subject Matter Expert (Patrick) builds software in collaboration with Steve for the test suite and builds the operating system configurations, establishing a “pre-flight checklist” for testing
• (Same) The Technician who runs the tests (primarily Mike, with assistance from Patrick and Steve and occasionally Jeremy) will check the results for correct resolution, correct settings, captures that prove the test completed correctly, image quality, and general errors. The technician performs re-runs as needed
• (Removed) The Subject Matter Expert performs a secondary quality control pass on data. Any data which looks suspect of a bad pass, which requires manual filtering & removal prior to retests, will be deleted and flagged for the technician to rerun
• (Removed) The Technician performs re-tests and then re-evaluates the results
• (Removed) The Subject Matter Expert reviews them again. They are typically resolved at this stage and occasionally rejected entirely to move forward
• (Removed) A Writer & Technician (typically Jeremy) performs a full pass on CPU export names, the hierarchical stack of the data and whether the hierarchy makes sense, and identifies potential areas where additional data may be necessary to confidently come to conclusions, then passes it to Steve
• (Removed) Steve performs final intensive review, including running a variety of formulae for data consistency and evaluating results against archival results for consistency of scaling
• (Removed) The Writer & Technician double-checks the finals. Any disagreement with what Steve passed is voiced and revisited. Once both are in agreement that it makes sense (or the suspect data is removed until validated), the data is sent to publication
• (Removed) The video editor, who is often technical enough to identify obvious oversights, performs a ‘passive’ QC while editing and flags any issues. If any are found, they go through Steve for review, analysis, and either sign-off as accurate or correction
• (New) Steve performs final quick review, including ad-hoc comparisons between CPUs from which we have a known relative % scaling, to rapidly vet additional information. Data with low confidence is removed rather than investigated. Not every single data point is inspected, unlike reviews

This allows the team to continue work on important next reviews without forcing us to skip more important upcoming projects, but still allows us to get helpful data out. You’ll notice that this approach cuts at least 2 potential internal reviewers from the process, including reducing the amount of times the SME looks over the data, and reduces the review of every single data point down to ad-hoc glances to see if anything “jumps out” as obviously bad.

If you see anything that looks out of order, you are welcome to email us at team at gamersnexus dot net.

We are hopeful that this will allow us to publish more data to help people make upgrade decisions, with a middle-ground understanding going into it as to the limitations of the process.

With all the helpful information on how to use these charts and the disclosures out of the way, let’s continue to the data set.

Long-Term Support CPU Charts (1H24)

LTS DATA SET: Zen 5 Review Cycle (pre-Arrow Lake)

The below CPU charts are those found from our long-term support list. These will be updated only a few times a year, but contain the most data for some of the older CPUs.

Production Benchmarks

This section contains the “production” benchmarks for workstation, creation, and development applications.

Blender 3D Rendering on the CPU

The above chart ranks CPU 3D rendering performance in Blender by best to worst (faster, or lower time, is better). This should help you identify the best CPUs for rendering in 2024; however, GPUs are heavily relied upon and would be a separate benchmark.

7-Zip File Compression & Decompression Benchmarks

The above charts contain our tests for 7-Zip file compression and decompression. If you frequently work with compressing and decompressing data, such as for large file transfers in compressed formats or for certain game loading tasks, these will give an idea for performance.

Adobe Premiere Video Editing & Rendering CPU Benchmarks

This chart uses the Puget Suite to benchmark Adobe Premiere for video editing and rendering tasks, focusing on CPU performance. Adobe Premiere cares both about the CPU and the GPU, and relies upon a strong combination (rather than biasing toward one component, like 3D rendering might do) for reduced scrubbing or playback ‘lag’ and improved rendering and encode performance.

Adobe Photoshop CPU Benchmarks & Comparison

This chart is for Adobe Photoshop and compares some of the best CPUs currently out for Photoshop. Testing is done with the Puget Suite and includes warps, transforms, scales, filters, and file manipulation.

Chromium Code Compile CPU Benchmarks

This chart looks at a Chromium code compile. It’s a CPU benchmark for programmers and developers, with the caveat that (like any of these tests), we can’t realistically represent all compile scenarios. Because we try to represent a wide range of possible use cases, we don’t cater too much to any one specialty. This should give you an idea for at least how this specific compile behaves. If your workloads resemble this, you may be able to assume some level of linearity.

Gaming CPU Benchmarks & Best CPUs

Even if your specific game isn’t represented here, the best way to use our charts for determining CPU differences is to look at the relative ranking across a number of games. Our intent with this approach is that you can determine the best-value upgrade (our reviews are very value-oriented) by comparing the typical or average gap between two parts.

In most scenarios, the CPUs will scale similarly from game-to-game, barring any unique behaviors of a particular game. If CPU A is better value in Game A, B, and C, it is very likely also better value in Game D (though not always). 

For individual per-game benchmarks, we’d recommend our Game Benchmarks section that deep-dives on new releases whenever we get a chance.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 CPU Benchmarks

This is for Dragon’s Dogma 2, which is one of the newest games in our CPU test suite. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is still getting regular updates, so the CPUs shown on this chart were all run on the same game version. The game remains CPU-heavy in the cities with dense NPC populations, which is where we test. We published a separate deep-dive benchmark of Dragon's Dogma 2 here.

Stellaris Simulation Time CPU Comparison

This chart evaluates simulation time in Stellaris using a late game save file. The number is represented in time, with lower being better. Faster simulation (shorter time required) is noticeable in 4X or Grand Campaign / Grand Strategy games where AI turn processing requires significant CPU effort. 

Baldur’s Gate 3 CPU Benchmarks

Baldur’s Gate 3 is tested at 1080p/Medium in the above chart, which allows us to see CPU scaling all the way up to the top of the stack for the best gaming CPUs.

We test in Act III in the city itself, near a market with a lot of NPCs.

F1 2024 1080p & 1440p CPU Benchmarks

This chart gallery is for F1 24 and includes both 1080p and 1440p results. Typically, in scenarios which remain primarily CPU-bound, we see roughly the same hierarchical lineup across both resolutions. The top of the chart truncates maximum FPS, which means that CPUs which occasionally bounce off of the GPU bottleneck will be less reliable to differentiate from one another (as they are externally bound).

FFXIV: Dawntrail CPU Benchmarks (1080p & 1440p)

This set of 1080p & 1440p charts is for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, tested at Maximum quality settings.

Rainbow Six Siege CPU Benchmarks

Rainbow Six Siege is a problematic benchmark as it updates frequently, causing entire wipes of our dataset. This is a list of results that were all run on the same game version. Unfortunately, we don’t have as much data for it as a result of the regular wipeout.

Starfield CPU Comparison

This chart is for Bethesda’s Starfield at 1080p/Low. Despite the game’s memeable launch, it remains a useful benchmark for CPU performance comparisons.

Total War: Warhammer III CPU Benchmarks

This gives us a look at a Grand Strategy / Grand Campaign Total War game, which tend to be CPU heavy. We’re using a battle for the benchmark.

Active CPU Benchmark Charts

ACTIVE DATA SET: AMD R9 9900X CPU Review

The below list of charts is our most heavily-vetted, most recently-published data set. Due to maintenance overhead and our focus on new content, we won’t updated it after every single review, but we will update this upload after major review cycles are fully complete. For example, if both AMD and Intel are launching CPUs across a 2-3 month spread, we’ll update this list at the end when we can breathe again.

These will lack some of the data found on the LTS charts; however, they may contain more recent data (such as newer CPUs).

There may be discrepancies between the LTS and Active charts. They are not necessarily comparable, and often are not. This is for reasons such as Windows version differences, game updates, and test platform changes.

Active Charts: Production

Rather than individually break them out into headings like above, we’ll just dump all the production charts below:

Active Charts: Gaming Benchmarks

And the same for gaming. You can find each game at the top of the chart:

CPUs Present on These Charts & Their Reviews

This table includes a simplified list of all CPUs on these charts, including links to the original GN reviews where present. Be advised that CPUs often have several follow-up pieces of content in rapid succession as the landscape changes. To keep things simple, we’ll just link the original reviews. You can still find the follow-ups on the channel.

Update Log

The below is an update log of changes to this page. The format is MM/DD/YYYY:

• 10/13/2024: Created page with initial dataset following Zen 5 reviews and preceding Arrow Lake reviews

Update process / house cleaning (externally visible, but used internally):

• Apply changes
• Append to update log
• Modify "Data Set" for both LTS and Active charts to identify the replacement dataset
• Modify current recommendations at the top of the page
• Append table of tested CPUs
• Update to link the latest Best CPUs article

Table of Contents

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Intro

Today we’re reviewing the $68 SilverStone FARA 515XR with 4 included rainbow fans, not traditional cycling RGB. It was intended as an Asia-exclusive case, but SilverStone is experimenting with bringing it to the US as a budget option. We’re also reviewing the SilverStone 514X, this one has 4x traditional ARGB fans and is priced at $100 to $110.

There was a period of time where Silverstone made our #1 recommended sub-$100 case with the RL06 (watch our review). It’s been a few years, but we’re back to see if they can repeat.

Editor's note: This was originally published on October 3, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Patrick Lathan

Testing

Mike Gaglione

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

The 514X is a conventional mesh-fronted budget case, the kind SilverStone has been selling for years. 

As for the 515XR, SilverStone has been reluctant to bring it over to the US because the company feels this market has different expectations -- primarily for size, as this isn’t as deep as typical towers. This is a unique opportunity for us to compare a normal budget case versus the absolute minimum viable version and see what it takes to shave off that final $30.

Specs

Specs copied from manufacturer materials, please read review for our own measurements and opinions

The Build (514X)

We’ll start with the 514X and move to the 515XR to look at what cost-saving they did.

The 514X is doing what the majority of competitive cases were back in 2019, which is shoving four fans into a $100 ventilated box. This is done with careful cost saving and has become more difficult in recent years, though there are still good options: We’ll soon be reviewing the Lancool 207 as a budget high airflow case, as another new example.

In the 514X, there are several areas of obvious cost-saving, and SilverStone directly acknowledged some of them to us: the expansion slots have punch-out disposable covers and there are no rubber grommets on cable cutouts. SilverStone pointed out that it still made an effort to ventilate the slot covers, even though they're disposable, but disposable slot covers on a $100 case does seem a little bit too cheap even for this configuration.

As for the lack of grommets, SilverStone advertises that a steel cover plate hides the cutouts and the cables routed through them. That's the theory, at least; we couldn't get the cover installed in its stock position. Fortunately there are two options for placing the cover (or it can be removed entirely, although the built-in GPU support relies on it. It's our policy to leave everything in place as much as possible for stock testing, but we were forced to shift the cover forward to get the 24-pin power cable connected. Moving the cover only requires removing one screw.

The HDD cage itself is only compatible with 3.5" drives: 2.5" drives must be mounted behind the motherboard tray.

The fan ARGB hub uses a SATA power connector and takes input from a button on the front panel (for built-in patterns) and an ARGB header (for external control). 

The hub doesn't have PWM speed control (though there are unpopulated pads for it), and even if it did, all four case fans are 3-pin. That’s not something we see very often these days. We always connect case fans to motherboard headers for thermal testing, which always allows speed control via voltage. The only advantage of the hub is that SilverStone uses it to pre-manage the rats' nest of cables.

Each of the fans has a daisy-chained ARGB connector, so if you have one free ARGB header and four free fan headers, you can get rid of the hub and connect everything to the motherboard. 

The front fan mounts are limited to 120mm exclusively. We’d recommend planning to use the stock fans with the 514X. On the plus side, there's space to move the front fans back into the interior of the chassis, which would give additional intake surface area at the cost of GPU clearance.

There's support for radiators up to 360mm on both the front and top mounts, but the front mount is easier to work with due to the case dimensions. We had to angle the top in. 

There are a couple of other minor budget-related points: no thumbscrews for the expansion slots, a loose square of mesh for a PSU filter, and a chassis that was originally built for a different case, evidenced by the unused side panel snaps and slot for a PSU shroud extension that doesn't exist. 

On the other hand, the 514X's front panel is almost entirely metal, including the snaps, and a GPU support is included with the case. The snaps are good, and although a GPU support in that location isn’t the most helpful, it doesn't hurt. 

In spite of the low price, the front I/O includes a USB Type-C port. The Type-C port in particular is still one of the more expensive case features, so we're happy to see one here.

We've spoken to manufacturers before about colors and pricing. Black has been the most broadly popular color for years, so it's the most common and the cheapest. Low-margin budget cases are the most likely to reflect paint price differences in retail prices, like the King 95 PRO, where it’s a little costlier for white version. The white version of the 514X also costs $110 whereas the black version costs $100. 

The Build (515XR)

Let’s move on to the 515XR, which is the cheaper of the two.

The 515XR is much cheaper than the 514X, about a 33% price reduction when comparing the like-for-like color SKUs. It's not necessarily worse than the 514X, but there are a few reasons that SilverStone has been reluctant to bring the 515XR to the US market, like the case’s shorter depth, which won’t fit longer GPUs. The company has been very open with us about this release being a trial run.

SilverStone is also concerned that the rainbow fans are going to lead to confusion and returns in the US market. In Asia, we’re told that rainbow fans are common and are understood. 

The fans in the 515XR aren't ARGB, which is fine, but since most cases are photographed with a rainbow pattern for RGB now, this will lead to confusion. The term "rainbow fans" combined with marketing images of multicolored fans implies baked-in RGB lighting patterns. 

Instead, each of the fans has a set of static non-animated multicolored LEDs that can't be turned off since they're powered by the fan connectors. This is an older school approach for price. We wouldn't mind some old-school solid-color LEDs with that, or no LEDs at all, but we’re not sure about the rainbow choice. According to SilverStone, rainbow fans are more common in the Asian market from which the 515XR originates.

Out of the box, the fans are all connected to a single 4-pin Molex adapter. We recommend leaving this alone: the fan cables are too short to reach anything on their own, and if you drop fan speeds, the LEDs dim (they run on the same circuit). Those of you who built computers in the early 2000s will remember this behavior from the older LED fans.

The 515XR is nearly identical to the sawed-off form factor of the old Fractal Meshify C. The Meshify C was a case that came out back in 2017 (watch our review), in the brief span after optical drive bays and before really massive GPUs. This is 2024, though, and 4090s exist, so SilverStone is worried that the 515XR is "only" compatible with GPUs up to 350mm long. 

We don't see this as an issue. Most people buying a $68 case are probably not buying super long video cards. We recommend limiting GPUs to ~300mm to give the case fans some space: if your GPU is bigger than that, there are better case options.

Like the 514X, it doesn't make sense to replace the 515XR's stock fans; however, unlike the 514X, the 515XR has 140mm front mounts. 

The 515XR's drive support is also more flexible, since the drive cage can mount either 2.5" or 3.5" drives. The cage has a removable sled with vibration damping, and the dedicated 2.5" mounts are separate and held in with thumbscrews, all of which are improvements over the 514X. The PSU mount in the 515XR also has foam supports that the 514X lacks, and there's a single reusable expansion slot cover.

The 515XR has two internal 120mm fan mounts on top of the PSU shroud. We generally don't see much thermal improvement from shroud-top fans without careful planning, like in the Antec Flux Pro. The 515XR's shroud is mostly sealed. Still, it's an option that the 514X lacks.

We do not recommend putting a 360mm radiator into the 515XR. There's only a 32mm gap left in the shroud for a radiator (with the stock fans installed), and the drive cage may also interfere with the available space depending on which drives are installed. The top slot technically fits radiators up to 280mm, but this would make it difficult to use any of the cutouts at the top edge of the motherboard.

There are some cheap quality of life improvements we'd like to see. First, the cutout nearest the 24-pin power header is almost too small, and the cutouts along the bottom edge of the motherboard are partially blocked by the PSU. Second, the reset and power buttons aren't marked. Finally, the rear fan is positioned so that it needs to be fully removed before installing motherboards with built-in rear I/O covers.

As a final note, we asked SilverStone why the black version of the 515XR is 20 grams lighter than the white one, assuming it could be a typo. Its product manager says that white paint requires a thicker coat, and that the white fans also weigh slightly more than the black ones, so the 20 gram difference is real.

Thermals

We're covering two different cases in one review, so most of our comparisons here will be between the 514X and the 515XR. We don't have many sub-$100 budget cases on the charts yet, so these will serve as a starting point as we add more, like the upcoming Lian Li Lancool 207. Of the cases that have been tested with our current methodology, the aging Fractal Pop Air RGB is the closest match to the SilverStone cases, so we'll be using that as a representative example of existing budget mesh-fronted enclosures. We've seen the Pop Air drop as low as $50 for the non-RGB variant. Montech's Sky and Air cases are usually strong competitors in this space, and we'll add those to our charts as we test them.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

Our first test is for noise-normalized thermals, where we set all cases to the same noise level in our hemi-anechoic chamber. Neither the 514X nor the 515XR offer fan control out of the box, but we were able to perform noise-normalized tests by connecting the fans to motherboard headers as usual.

The 514X averaged 48 degrees Celsius above ambient all-core and 52 degrees for the P-cores, while the 515XR was significantly worse at 53 all-core and 57 P-core. The 515XR's dual-layer front panel is more restrictive, while the 514X's front panel is a single layer of steel mesh. 

The 514X isn't especially impressive outside of its price when compared to the rest of the cases on this CPU thermal chart, but it's tied with the Pop Air RGB (watch our review) -- which has been on heavy sales lately. The 515XR has some of the worst results on the chart, tied with the stock HYTE Y60. This is a letdown, and it's not at all what we expected: we've seen plenty of cheap mesh-fronted cases punch above their weight, like the Lian Li Lancool 215, Montech X3 and Air 1000, and several Phanteks cases like the P400A (read our review) with the mesh front. We’re adding the 216 back to the charts later this week along with the 207, so that’ll help give some perspective as well.

The industry has moved away from using multiple layers of material in mesh front panels, which has led to better performance in many cases. The 515XR could be something special if it had not made this design decision.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

Our standardized fan test replaces all stock fans in each case with the same set of three Noctua fans: two 140mm intake, one 120mm exhaust. We have explained why there are limitations to this testing, such as worsening performance of cases which include more or larger fans. However, we run this test due to popular demand from the audience. You can find our methodology and limitations of this testing linked here.

This is the perfect chance to see how the stock fans affect the performance of the SilverStone cases, versus the designs of the chassis themselves.

GPU temperature in the 514X averaged 43 degrees Celsius above ambient, 49 on the memory, and 56 hotspot. That puts it in the middle of the chart, tied with several other similar mesh-fronted front intake configurations like the Flux Pro, Torrent, and Pop Air RGB. That's confirmation that the 514X's front panel and general layout are at least as good as other cases in the same category. The 515XR averaged 49 degrees, 57 on the memory, and 64 hotspot, which puts it among the worst results on the chart for the second time in a row. Again, all of these results were recorded using the same set of fans, so the difference comes down to the 515XR's front panel. The 514X seems fine. The 515XR is a let-down.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

In the same test, the 514X's CPU temperature average of 40 degrees above ambient still came close to the other mesh-fronted cases, but the Flux Pro (read our review), Torrent, and Pop Air all averaged 38 degrees with the standardized fans. The 515XR was again worse at 44 degrees, but the bottom of the chart is stacked with bottom-intake configurations, so it's not among the worst results. Front or side intake is significantly better for CPU thermals with our test bench.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

Back to the noise normalized results, neither of the SilverStone cases did well for GPU thermals. The 514X averaged 50 degrees above ambient, 58 memory, and 65 hotspot, with only two previously-tested cases doing worse, one of them being the Pop Air RGB. 

The 515XR is the new hottest result on the chart. We express all temperatures as degrees above ambient to account for fluctuations, so the average GPU temperature of 54 degrees above ambient translates to a logged steady state temperature of 75 degrees. That wasn't enough to cause any throttling, but in a warmer room, the GPU might lose some boost headroom.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Full Speed

This is the full speed chart with the stock fans.

The 514X's stock fans topped out at 1300-1400RPM, while the 515XR's were 1100-1200RPM. Those limits are a little low for 120mm fans, which makes them relatively quiet, which is important given that both cases are set up to run all case fans at 100% speed out of the box. With all four fans maxed out, average all-core CPU temperature in the 514X was 44 degrees above ambient while maintaining a noise level of 34.6dBA. It matched some louder cases, like the 36.8 dBA King 95 Pro, but only slightly outperformed the quieter 31.3 dBA Pop Air RGB. 

The 515XR tied the Pop Air for noise but had worse thermals, as usual. The front panel design really prevents it from doing as well as it could.

VRM & RAM Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

In noise normalized testing, VRM and RAM thermals aligned with the CPU thermal results. The 514X averaged 34 degrees above ambient for the VRM and 28 degrees for memory, putting it in the middle of the chart, while the 515XR averaged 39 for the VRM and 32 for the memory, the hottest results on the chart in both categories.

Conclusion

The 514X is an extremely normal case: it costs about $100, it has the basic features you'd expect from a budget case, but it also has a full set of four ARGB fans. Thermal performance doesn't look amazing compared to the rest of our chart, but we haven't yet fully populated our chart with comparable $100 cases. Performance is similar to the Fractal Pop Air RGB, so you can look back at that review for a rough comparison versus a wider selection of older cases. The 514X isn't bad, but we aren't excited about it, and we've seen the Fractal North on sale recently for as low as $110. Anyways, the 514X is okay.

We were excited about the $68 515XR mostly for the price, especially after seeing that it has almost every feature we care about from the 514X (except the Type-C header). Sub-$68 is the domain of DIYPC and SAMA, and there are few name-brand options with reasonable ventilation at that price. Unfortunately, it reminds us strongly of the Thermaltake Versa J24 (watch our review). The J24 was extremely similar to the 515XR in several ways, but most importantly it had a layered front panel that hurt its performance. For that review, we were able to remove a filter and improve the J24's performance without changing its appearance, but that's not an option with the 515XR. The 515XR is almost a really competitive case at its price. We’re just a little hung up on its front panel. We have to admit that there aren't easy alternatives to recommend at this price (other than cases on sale, like the Pop Air), but the 515XR could have had a wholehearted recommendation with some alterations to the front panel.

Table of Contents

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Intro

The brand new Fractal Design Era 2 ITX case is heavy on the mechanical features.

The entire case disassembles without screws or traditional snaps: Its walnut panel pops up on press, its dust filter acts as a locking mechanism for its shell, and then its shell removes in a single piece on slides. Its spring-loaded latches release the radiator mount to fully open up the case for building, and 4 screws can be loosened to move the central spine between 3 positions to trade-off between GPU and CPU cooler clearance. There’s also a single screw that controls a rail-mounted dual SSD cage.

But the case also does some weird things and has some problems: For one, our wood panel is cracked. This is primarily concerning because it’s a point that Fractal really pushed when it unveiled the case, stating that it had a reinforcement that specifically prevented cracking. Second, the PSU exhaust and bottom intake are in conflict with each other.

Editor's note: This was originally published on September 18, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Jeremy Clayton

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

We made another 3D airflow animation to help explain the configuration that Fractal created where the power supply fan is fighting the intake fans. We’ll talk about this down below.

So, it’s mechanically complex and costs $200. We’ll go over build quality and thermal performance in this review.

Fractal Era 2 Overview and Competition

Let’s go over the basics and competition first.

The Era 2 comes in blue, black, or silver and is a sandwich-style ITX case. The case has two pre-installed fans in the bottom for intake, room for a 240mm or 280mm liquid cooler in the top, and a continuing trend of higher cost ITX cases. A good portion of that cost is probably tied-up in the stylized aluminum shell and slotted walnut wood top panel. 

The side panels have ventilation via a hole pattern that ranges from sparse to useless, mixing an artsy approach with at least trying to hit the basics of cooling. These holes are a good indicator that Fractal is looks-first on this case. We’ll talk about thermals later in the review.

The original Era Il ITX predecessor is a smaller case with a similar look, but also one which Fractal has openly told reviewers it felt it had underperformed on. The company is trying to fix its shortcomings with the Era 2. 

Internally, the Era 2 has a lot in common with the $180 Fractal Terra. The motherboard, GPU, and PSU are in the same basic layout on a moveable spine, but the power supply is rotated 180 degrees in the Era 2. This results in the cables facing up – nice for ease of access – and the PSU exhaust facing down, which is awkward from an airflow standpoint. 

Other than its own Terra, competition to Fractal’s Era 2 would include these cases:

The $150 Lian Li DAN A4-H2O, which is smaller, more rectangular, has no extra fans, and still supports a 240mm liquid cooler. A much larger and cheaper comparison would be the A3-mATX we recently reviewed, but they exist in totally different market segments. We did like that case, though. We also recently reviewed Fractal’s Mood, but would not recommend the case; its thermal performance was overall poor and some of its compatibility choices were odd. The M1EVO (watch our review) is another relatively expensive, specialized ITX case you could look at. 

Fractal Era 2 Dimensions and Fitment

Getting into the dimensions and compatibility: The Era 2 is 365mm long, 165mm wide, and 315mm tall, which calculates to a 19L volume and is nearly spot-on with Fractal’s own measurements. 

If you’re keeping track of our ITX reviews at home, add one more to the tally for “not lying on the spec sheet.” That’s not as common a tally as it should be.

The movable spine has a major impact on internal fitment and can be set to three predetermined, stepped positions. This is a big difference from the stepless nature of the Terra’s spine adjustment. 

Position 1 gives the most CPU-side clearance and fits up to 70mm tall coolers while reducing GPU-side clearance to 48mm (or just 2.4 slots) of available thickness. Position 3 changes those values to 55mm for the CPU side and 63mm (3.1 slots) for the GPU.

Maximum GPU height is 137mm regardless of spine position, but you’ll want to be aware of the cable bend also. Fractal recommends a max GPU backplate thickness of 4mm. Bear in mind that larger GPUs will restrict air movement within that side of the case and power cable management can become problematic with larger cards. As always, just because it fits doesn’t mean it is a good fit.

As another point of reference, the RTX 4080 FE fits, but will have its flow-through cooler heavily limited due to having only 11mm of clearance behind the card in spine position 3. So we’re back to “it sort of fits” but isn’t necessarily a good choice.

For cooling: The top bracket can hold 280mm radiator and fan combos up to 52mm thick. 240mm liquid coolers can be slightly thicker depending on exact placement, but will quickly encroach on power cables and their own tubes.

Both SFX and SFX-L PSUs are supported. Space for cables is greatly hampered by SFX-L, so we’d favor standard SFX.

Internal drive support is pretty good for the size. There are 4x 2.5” mounts in total – two in the rail-mount drive cage (blocking off a large portion of the intake fan below it) and two on the spine behind the PSU, though are only usable with the spine in positions 1 and 2, and would be detrimental to flow-through GPUs. 3.5” drives are not natively supported in the case.

The Build - Positives

Time to run through positives and negatives. We’ll start with positives.

There are a lot of things the Era 2 does right, and the build process was relatively straightforward for ITX standards. The top radiator mount was a major help, as was the PSU orientation with the internal terminals facing up. Accessibility overall is excellent, which is a major factor in ITX cases.

The GPU side of the case is essentially wide open, and a cutout at the front helps with installation of the longest supported GPUs. You’re able to angle the far end of the card into the hole first, then move the PCIe slot side into position.

Cable management is also excellent overall and is one of the most difficult things for an ITX case to accommodate successfully. There are tie-down points and small channels for cables everywhere – like around and in between the bottom fans. Even in the most GPU-biased spine position (3), you end up with just enough space around the edge of the motherboard to get the job done tidily for cable management. The manual is also well-made and offers actually helpful cable management tips.

Fractal’s attention to detail in the design of the Era 2 is overall great, as it was able to make an objectively complex case remain easy to use through thoughtful engineering.

There’s a number of other small features that we thought were well done. To quickly go through them:

• Tapered plastic rails at the front and rear ensure that sliding the shell on/off is smooth
• A slight inward angle along the bottom interior edges to help keep cables tucked in
• Flared leading edges on the rail interface for the drive cage and PSU bracket are well done
• The opening at the front of the internal chassis to assist with long GPU installation is rounded over to be completely smooth
• A small strip of fabric glued to the top edge of the front I/O to keep the aluminum from rubbing
• The dust filter doubles as the lock mechanism, causing two spring-loaded plastic lugs at the front to pivot into place
• A bowed-down filter at the bottom to match the bowing of the underside of the case, which Fractal claims gives better access to air

The Build - Negatives

Moving on to the negatives, one of the only difficult aspects about the build was access to the motherboard’s top edge. Since it’s inverted in the Era 2, it ends up down at the bottom. You may want to pre-connect cables there before installation or get comfortable with using a plastic spudger to poke them on after the fact.

The wood top panel on our sample is cracked in one place between the edge and the interior slats. We don’t know at what stage the wood cracked -- possibly at the factory or maybe in storage and shipping as it crossed climates, humidity, and temperature gradients. Either way, wood is a relatively sensitive material, and this makes us concerned about the durability of the part, despite the steps Fractal took to reinforce it. Fractal emphasized in its early meetings that it was reinforcing this panel with metal to prevent cracking in a way that seemed like shots taken at competition, but now we wonder if it was actually because of their own experiences. Using two separate pieces of wood might have avoided this, despite creating a seam. This isn’t extremely noticeable, but it is disappointing. 

By pressing the sides together, we see the crack fit perfectly back into place. This makes us think that Fractal may be better off with 2 crossbars rather than one, as it seems like the wood curing and aging may have pulled apart horizontally. Another crossbar to hold the sides uniform to each other might help.

Also in the realm of build quality, one of the side panels on our sample is Tesla-like, in that it doesn’t line up perfectly with the panels around it, resulting in a visible jump from one to the other. These are both QC issues at the core, and are things Fractal should definitely look out for on a $200 case.

A final minor annoyance is the fact that the shell has a crossbar at the bottom of the rear I/O area, meaning that you have to remove all of the cables before you can slide the shell on or off. Fractal could have built this in a way where it’d be easier to get into the case for maintenance without that bar, though this may be a sacrifice for rigidity.

Fractal Era 2 Airflow

For the potential airflow downside, we turn to our animation.

As we mentioned before, the PSU’s exhaust side faces the intake fan. The case orients the power supply for the easiest cable management at the cost of potential airflow conflict between the PSU’s exhaust and the bottom intake. Most modern power supplies stop spinning the fans when load isn’t sufficient, so at idle, this should actually work pretty well. It’ll force air “backwards” into the power supply, allowing it to flow past the PSU’s passive fan and out the traditional “bottom” of the power supply. That air will then exit through the perforations in the side of the chassis. That much is good. When the power supply fan becomes active, it’ll suddenly directly fight the force-fed air from bottom intake, and it’s likely that bottom intake will overpower the power supply fan. There’s enough of a gap where it won’t cause major problems, as opposed to a directly attached opposing fan, but this could still be sub-optimal for some power supplies. It’s going to be highly PSU-dependent. It’s not something we think is a critical issue, but it is one that was a little odd.

Fractal Era 2 Thermals

Now we’ll take a look at the thermal performance of the Era 2. As a reminder for anyone new to our ITX reviews, our current ITX testing methodology prohibits competitive comparisons between cases, but allows us to be much more flexible when it comes to testing a single case against itself in multiple configurations.

For the Era 2, all testing was performed with locked frequency and power on the 13600K, locked fan speed on the 4070 FE, and 100% fan and pump speeds on the 240mm CLC and case fans. We treated spine position 1 as the default, since it’s the intended setup for this size GPU.

CPU Thermals

Starting with CPU thermals, all of the tested configurations resulted in a narrow band of only 2.1C. The stock result has a slight lead with the P-cores at steady state average at roughly 45C over ambient.

Removing the top panel didn’t result in any meaningful thermal change, showing us that despite appearances, it isn’t actually restrictive to flow, at least not in this configuration.

Setting the spine to position 3 hurts CPU thermals slightly, but not significantly. We were curious if the holes on the side panels actually did anything, so we covered them with tape. The answer for CPU thermals is “no,” since it’s tied with the position 3 result.

The biggest impact was from populating and installing the lower drive cage, resulting in 46.8 degrees over ambient on the P-cores. If you have just a single SATA SSD, we recommend mounting it to the forward-most spine mount behind the PSU to avoid this blockage.

Generally speaking, the two sets of fans at full speed are somewhat brute-forcing the situation, but the noise levels aren’t actually that high or unpleasant due to the fans’ middling 2000RPM maximum. 

GPU Thermals

GPU thermals are next and post a wider range. Results are also consistent here and well within normal operating ranges. The stock results have the GPU die at 50C over ambient at steady state, with roughly 68C hotspot and 43C on the VRAM. Removing the top again has no appreciable effect.

The spine position 3 result isn’t meaningfully outside of variance, but suggests that keeping the GPU’s intake fans closer to the side panel is helpful.

Installing the drive cage raises core temperature of the core by about 2C, but could be further exaggerated by larger GPUs that need all the airflow help they can get.

Blocking the side ventilation and moving the spine to position 3 to allow the GPU best access to internal air shows us that the holes do actually help, as the temperature did climb.

VRM + RAM Thermals

For VRM and RAM temperatures, we see actual scaling between configurations. Everything is kept in check by the fan blasting air directly at the top edge of the motherboard.

The stock position 1 result is the best at just 20C over ambient, and moving the spine to position 3 gives the worst result. This makes sense considering the proportion of intake air is reduced on the CPU side of the case when moving from 1 to 3. Interestingly, blocking the side panel actually lowered VRM temperature by a couple of degrees. We suspect this is because taking away those exit routes forces the intake air in that region to flow only over the motherboard.

Fractal Era 2 Conclusion

The Fractal Era 2 has a great combination of features, ease of use, and performance. The single largest downside is the price. $200+ isn’t uncommon for high-end, boutique ITX, but it’s pretty steep for the mass market. A lot of that money is probably in the material choices of walnut and moderately thick aluminum, but it’s also just the ITX world.

ATX cases at this price can be really impressive too, inherently have more flexibility, and they cost more to ship. As always, ITX is all about wanting the form factor.

In terms of construction, we think the Era 2 displays a mastery of stamped steel as a medium. There are numerous features and fine detail touches all over the stamped parts that indicate use of complex, multi-step tooling, and nothing is left sharp. Fractal is reaching an impressive level of tooling engineering maturity.

The exterior aluminum shell and walnut top panel come off as the weakest parts in this regard, with our sample having both a crack in the wood and a misaligned side panel. This shows possible execution issues despite strong fundamentals.

Speaking of the shell, Fractal could use this as an opportunity to make visually and functionally distinct versions of the case by just making new exteriors. That opens up the avenue to do more colorways or seasonal colors going forward.

We were most impressed by the mechanical features and smart implementation of them:

• The top radiator mount is executed well
• The locking action on the dust filter is clever
• The rail system with a single screw for PSU and SSD brackets also worked well
• And the movable spine to fine-tune part fitment is improving with iterations

Thermals are good all around, despite strange PSU orientation.

The Era 2 sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from how tedious and clunky the NCASE M1EVO is. The only thing going for the M1EVO in this comparison is its extreme versatility and ability to fit even the largest of GPUs, making it still a more versatile and customizable solution, but one which we think is less refined. The versatility has benefits, but they’re for a different kind of build.

For the money, we think the Era 2 makes the $180 Terra (read our review) look less appealing on paper, since the $20 gets you two fans and much expanded capability in cooling and drive mounts. That said, the Terra is smaller and has a unique look and its own mechanical complexities that might just be more to some people’s liking. They are different enough, especially in size, that anyone who wants a Terra specifically may find the Era 2 non-viable. But if you think either could work and you’re on the fence, we’d favor the Era 2, at this point.

Those who want similar capability for less money should look at the A4-H2O, but should be aware that it’s more difficult to build in due to its reduced size.

The A3-mATX is also an excellent case (read our review) for relatively cheap (by modern standards). It’s a totally different style and not directly comparable, but you should be aware of it if you’re OK with a larger size and simpler case.

Overall, we think the Era 2 is well-executed.