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I then ran Cinebench R23 and Unigine Superposition in parallel. As expected, CPU temps increased (averaged 80 C, peaked at 82 C). This is because the GPU is exhausting slightly warm air to the CPU. As expected, my GPU temps remained the same as the standalone benchmark. Ample room for typical enthusiast parts, but similar concessions extend throughout the case. While its bigger brother can accommodate up to seven 120/140mm fans or four 180s, Compact houses up to six 120s, four 140s or two 180s. Dotted around the enclosure, that includes two 140s or three 120s at the bottom, while the rear is limited to just a 120. Top I/O Ports Rear Cable Management Hidden Storage Bay Torrent Compact Interior When it comes to liquid cooling, said fan mounts can handle a 120/140/240/280/360 radiator in front. There’s technically room for up to a 240/280 on the bottom, though installation will be fiddly in front of an ATX motherboard. You can instead put a couple of 180s down here, albeit with the proviso that you’ll have to use a micro-ATX board. If you buy this case, you should 100% buy 2x 140mm front intake fans if you want to get maximum cooling performance for your GPU. Also, make sure you buy fan splitters and aRGB splitters because you're going to need them. This case would look fantastic with cable extensions or custom cables. However, it will be tough to fit your custom ATX power cables in these cable management channels. What we did not expect was that temperatures inside the Torrent Nano would be quite so high as they were. Simply looking at the Torrent Nano gives the impression that air flow should be very good indeed. As you can see from our testing chart we had plenty of headroom and were a significant distance away from any problems so really this is a reminder that small form factors builds always force you to make compromises.
Air cooling is an excellent option for this system due to the large intake fan on the front of the case, while options for adding a water cooler are quite limited. You can't add a fan or radiator to the top of the case. You could install up to a 240mm radiator on the front, but this would require removing the preinstalled fan. I've been using the Fractal Torrent Nano for the past 3-4 months with hundreds of hours of gaming and tens of hours of benchmarking. Now that I've seen its strengths and weaknesses (versus receiving the case and immediately publishing a YT review), here are my thoughts and recommendations. TLDR: Intel i7 12700 paired with an EVGA RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Gaming ULTRA, 750 W PSU, 32 GB 3600/18 memory.My second issue is that, given space constraints, you can't install a modern GPU and bottom case fans. Technically you might be able to install extremely slim fans, but there will be 1 or 2 mm clearance between your GPU's fans and the case fans. Your GPU might even be sitting directly on top of the fans. Those slim fans don't really do a great job cooling, and the close proximity of the fans to the GPU won't necessarily improve thermals. Fractal Design's Torrent cases change things up a bit from most modern PC cases by putting the power supply and a drive bay above the motherboard mounting tray instead of below it. This makes it impossible to place fans on the top of the case, but also makes the chassis much easier to work in. Adding the power supply literally couldn't be simpler—you just pull off the top panel, put the PSU in place, and screw it in. Another advantage to this design is you can add or remove cables from a modular power supply here without removing the PSU, which is difficult if not impossible to do in chassis that locate the PSU at the bottom of the case in a tunnel or under a shroud.
A sturdy, vibration-damped drive tray supporting a single HDD or dual SSDs with two optional mounting positions My GPU is 285mm long. In this modified configuration, there is about 1.5" (38mm) of space between the end of the GPU and the fans. For reference, the RTX 3080 Ti FE is 285mm long. The EVGA RTX 3090 Ti XC3 Gaming ULTRA is 300mm long, so that will easily fit in the case in this configuration as well.
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Adding storage devices is similarly easy. The Torrent Nano has two 2.5-inch drive mounts that reside behind the motherboard mounting tray. There's also a drive mount next to where the PSU goes on the top of the case, which can accommodate either a 2.5-inch or a 3.5-inch drive. My CPU temps were immediately worse due to less cooling. Idle temps increased to 32 - 35 C, gaming increased to 50 C, and standalone Cinebench R23 runs increased to 74 - 75 C after running the benchmarks for an hour. My GPU is 285mm long. In the default configuration, the GPU will just barely fit underneath the fan, so it can accommodate a longer GPU. For reference, the RTX 3080 Ti FE is 285mm long. The EVGA RTX 3090 Ti XC3 Gaming ULTRA is 300mm long, so that will easily fit in the case in this configuration as well. On the inside the decision to slim down hasn’t diminished the chassis’ suitability for a high-end build. Strictly speaking, there’s still room for up to a 274mm E-ATX motherboard, though regular ATX is going to be a better fit for for most users. I also have one more comment - I don't see how you would (easily) fit a front-mounted 240mm AIO in this case without a lot of planning. Obviously it fits because Fractal says it fits. If you want to go this route (which I wouldn't recommend, this case is designed for airflow), you should install the AIO before you install any other components. Also, you can only fit a bottom-mounted AIO (which you shouldn't do) if you don't install a graphics card.
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