When it comes to liquid cooling, said fan mounts can handle a 120/140/240/280/360 radiator in front.

Torrent Compact Black - Dark Tint Tempered Fractal Design Torrent Compact Black - Dark Tint Tempered

Our test PC was drawing 450W at the wall socket with 76W going to the Ryzen 5 and 255W going to the RX 6800 XT graphics card. It is worth noting the bottom and front fans were all set to intake and there may be scope for improvement with the addition of a rear exhaust fan. Just a few slits in the top panel, to allow for an upward-facing PSU fan, would give us that extra peace of mind. The open layout with expansive base intakes and extra large fan support offers exceptional GPU cooling.

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Torrent Compact RGB Black Light - Scan Fractal Design Torrent Compact RGB Black Light - Scan

Given the success of last year's Torrent, Fractal Design was always likely to follow-up on its popular 'all-airflow' enclosure with smaller mainstream variants. Built to maximize cooling potential straight out of the box, the Torrent comes with a brand-new component layout and two custom-made 180 x 38 mm Dynamic PWM or Prisma RGB PWM fans.You will have gathered from our video that we have mixed feelings about the Fractal Design Torrent Compact. Our Sapphire Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card tends to take no notice of an uptick in chassis fan speed. Cable management in the Torrent Compact made me realize something: The 24-pin motherboard power cable needs to go on a diet.

Fractal Design Torrent Compact Black - Solid side panel

Our test platform, featuring an Intel Core i9-12900K processor and Sapphire Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card atop an ASRock Z690 Extreme motherboard went in with relative ease, though there are a couple of niggles to be aware of. The big question was whether or not Fractal would succeed in retaining the unmistakeably handsome aesthetic of its 2021 original. Since you don’t have the option to mount a radiator to the top of the case (remember, that’s where the PSU lives), you’re limited to impractical mounting options for liquid cooling, either in the front of the case or at the bottom. While I have experience with the Fractal Meshify C, that case looked small right when I first laid my eyes on it. Not only does the front panel look good, but it also performs really well, without even adding an exhaust fan.

With the chassis fans spinning at 400rpm, the GPU fans hit almost 1,600rpm in an effort to balance temperature and frequency. But since the original Torrent was tested on our previous testbed (with an Intel Core i9-9900K and an RTX 2070 Super), not our new i7/ RTX 3070 Ti setup, this isn’t meant as a direct comparison.