The Fractal Design Node 202 Case Review: Mini-ITX Gaming For the Living Room

Test Setup

Professional testing requires the emulation of real-world situations but with repeatable results; thus, a perfectly controllable test setup and environment are required, especially for comparable results. Testing the thermal performance of any case with a typical real-world setup technically limits the comparability of the results to this setup alone, as an active system interacts with its environment and the change of a single component would alter myriads of variables. As such, we developed synthetic loads that emulate the thermal output of real systems, which however are passive, steady and quantifiable. As such, the thermal testing now displays the thermal capabilities of the case alone, as if it would have to deal with the entire thermal load by itself, regardless of the system that would be installed inside it. Laboratory data loggers are being used to monitor the PT100 sensors and control the safety relays, which are fully accessible via our custom software. The Mini-ITX version simulates a 150 W CPU, 30 W VRM, 20 W RAM and 1 × 120 W GPU card thermal load. For low-profile card setups, we are using a 50 W dummy GPU card instead. Finally, 2.5" HDD dummy loads have also been created, converting 15 W of electrical power to thermal. As such, the thermal load can be very high and only the best of cases will be able to handle it for more than a few minutes.

For the full power test, we are using the aforementioned configuration with the full-size 120W card, plus two 2.5" loads. The low load test reduces the main system's power output down to about 42% (132 Watts total), but the disk loads remain unchanged.

Noise testing has been performed with a background noise level of 30.4dB(A). Advanced noise testing is also being performed, in order to assess the ability of the case to dampen the noise of the components installed inside it. This includes the installation of two noise-generating sources (strong fans) inside the case, one positioned approximately over the first expansion slot and one over the CPU area, which generate ≈ 44.2 dB(A) when unobstructed. During the advanced noise test, all stock cooling options of the case are entirely disabled.

Results and Discussion

The thermal performance of the Node 202 is a complicated matter. From our testing, at first glace it appears to be very bad, which was to be expected from such a small case that lacks any active stock cooling, a scenario that admittedly doesn't mesh well with our test's dummy thermal loads. However digging deeper, it's clear that the is designed to assist the cooling systems of the installed devices - assuming that they are at least close to the latest reference designs - rather than taking on the work itself. This means a modern video card that will draw air from the bottom of the case and exhaust our the rear, along with a CPU cooler that will draw air in from the top of the case and the pressure will force it to exhaust via the vents to the side of the Node 202. Similarly, the PSU intakes air from the bottom and exhausts it to the right side of the case.

This cooling design should be good enough for a typical mainstream gaming system, but it is likely to cause issues with passively cooled or powerful hardware. The lack of active airflow would essentially trap the generated thermal energy inside the case. This is also true for every bit of hardware installed inside the Node 202 and will cause higher operating temperatures even if the CPU and GPU coolers are as described above, but small amounts of thermal energy generated by, for example, RAM modules and motherboard chipsets, should not pose a problem even when their cooling relies on passive, very low volume air flow. However, the thermal energy dissipated even by low power CPUs and GPUs is many times greater and the lack of proper airflow can easily cause overheating and throttling issues.

As the Node 202 has no stock cooling options, it obviously generates no sound pressure at all. The system’s noise entirely depends on the installed hardware and their programmed cooling scheme. The sound dampening capabilities of the Node 202 are limited, but better than we initially anticipated from a case lacking serious measures, most likely due to the lack of openings at the front side of the case. During our advanced noise testing, the Node 202 reduced the sound pressure of the installed dummy noise generator by 2.5 dB(A), a substantial figure.