Conclusion

Fractal has covered most of the basics and throws in a couple of helpful extras such as a built-in fan controller and support for large liquid-cooling radiators.

Fractal Design's Core 2500 is one of the better budget chassis available on the market today. Savvy shoppers will be able to pick up the enclosure for as little as £40, and for the fee, this a solid foundation with plenty of scope for upgrades further down the line.

Build quality is reasonable at this price point, and though there's obvious room for improvement - a few more fan filters wouldn't go amiss - Fractal has covered most of the basics and throws in a couple of helpful extras such as a built-in fan controller and support for large liquid-cooling radiators.

Bottom line: the Core 2500 won't turn heads, but if you're taking your first steps into self-build territory, this is a safe mid-tower chassis and a solid starting point.

The Good		The Bad
Available for under £40 Simple, unfussy exterior Integrated fan controller Good liquid-cooling potential Seven drive bays		Unfiltered fan mounts 2.5in SSD bay hard to access Short front-panel audio cable

HEXUS.awards

Fractal Design Core 2500

HEXUS.where2buy*

The Fractal Design Core 2500 chassis is available to purchase from Scan Computers.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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I'm looking for an ATX case like this. Availability of room for high end GPU, CPU coolers in a compact case is important. But the front panel is too simple, and I would like a side window large enough.

This looks like a pretty solid case, doesnt exclude the 5.25 which is still useful for me which makes it infinitely more useful than I believe it was the NZXT Source that excluded 5.25. Performance wise it seems to have higher temps and more noise than benchmarks I saw for my Carbide 300R but its a close competitor and cheaper. This looks like a solid budget case.