Test System

Assembly

How spacious the chassis really is only becomes apparent once the motherboard has been installed. There is plenty of space along two sides of the board, and you should have enough room to work with above the CPU cooler. As Fractal Design advertises compatibility with coolers of up to 162 mm in height, you should not run into problems with up to a 120 mm tower.


Installing an optical drive only requires thumbscrews. Simply slide the drive into the bay of your choice and secure it with the larger thumbscrews Fractal Design provides. I am always a fan of such a mounting option instead of a weak and dysfunctional plastic lock. However, the drive will nearly touch your motherboard's components. We use an MSI board in our reviews, and it happens to lack any tall components in the area, but others may not. As such, this could be a real issue to some because it may limit the length of the optical drive. Interestingly enough, we ran into the exact same problem when we reviewed the Fractal Design Core 2300 in 2015, which shares a lot of tooling elements with the Focus G.


You may easily install a 3.5" drive without the use of any tools because of the plastic drive tray. For those who want to add a 2.5" drive, Fractal includes screws to hold those in place as well.


Once filled, simply slide the drive trays back into the cage until they snap into place.


As mentioned before, you may add another 2.5" drive behind the motherboard tray, which brings the total number of storage possibilities to three within the Focus G. This may be enough for most entry level users, but others may find this shortcoming hard to overcome.


Installing the power supply is a simple and pretty straightforward affair. There is also plenty of room for a long unit. Such a power supply will cover the bottom air intake for that optional fan on the floor, though.


With everything installed, the Fractal Design Focus G looks a bit cleaner than expected. I wrapped all the cables through the openings around the rear of the motherboard tray so that they are not visible when looking through the window.

Finished Looks

Once the side panels are in place, the Focus G makes a good impression. It won't turn any heads, but the target audience of the chassis should be quite happy with the way it looks and that you can show off your interior. A white power LED lights up underneath the corresponding button to let you know that the system is up and running.


Looking at the front, you can see the white LED lights of the fans glowing through, which is another nice touch. An added bonus of the lighting is the fact that it helps you light up the interior as well. Peeking inside the window, you will see all the hardware components clearly, so you will have to make sure that things are wired nicely. While some may not like the gray ODD drive, the interior does not look half bad when filled—better than expected, actually. Thanks to the dust filters in the top, any glow from internal components bleeding through is minimized, while the rear looks completely run-of-the-mill.