Fractal Design Node 304 mITX Case Review: Paving the Way to the Future
by Dustin Sklavos on November 23, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Mini ITX
- Fractal Design
- mITX
Noise and Thermal Testing, IGP
Admittedly, clearing out two of the drive brackets probably helped testing a great deal, but interestingly I'm not sure our stock testbed is actually very ideal for the Fractal Design Node 304. The reason is the way the motherboard is essentially stuck in a bit of a valley between the intake fans and the exhaust, hiding behind the power supply. A tower cooler would probably work gangbusters in this enclosure, but you'll see that even with the suboptimal downdraft cooler we still had reasonable performance.
The Node 304 was tested at all three fan control settings, and with winter setting in, ambient temperatures hovered between 23C and 24C.
You can see thermals are essentially competitive without being mindblowing. I think a tower cooler would make a big difference in this case, but as it stands the Node 304 isn't bad. Note that the higher fan speeds don't really add anything to the performance.
And, same as before, the different fan speeds don't produce any appreciable difference in performance. There's just no reason to run it at higher than the lowest fan setting.
I think it's particularly important to point out that the Node 304 at its lowest fan setting is basically inaudible at idle. Our sound meter doesn't dip low enough to tease out the differences, but you can see now that there's really no reason to turn up the fans. Even under sustained load, the Node 304 is incredibly quiet, and that makes the middle-of-the-road thermals much more tolerable.
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cyberguyz - Monday, November 26, 2012 - link
... is a SATA backplane and drive trays.To be a real NAS box, these are a must so you can hot-replace drives in a raid 5-6 array.
If you don't have front-accessible drives for hot swap you need to power the system down, crack into it, swap drives (with a screwdriver, power up and rebuild the array. A real NAS can change a dead drive without even powering down, much less opening the chassis.
Nice case for an HTPC, but for a NAS it is lacking. I'll keep looking.
sna2 - Monday, November 26, 2012 - link
NAS cases are everywhere .what are you looking for exactly?
Randum - Monday, November 26, 2012 - link
I just purchased a Fractal case this year and was pleasantly surprised by the build quality and options for additional cooling/etc. I will not hesitate to buy their brand again - nice to see this compact design!Mithan - Sunday, December 2, 2012 - link
This is exactly what I was looking for:Small mITX case that would fit a bunch of 3.5" hard drives that I could Raid5 as a home file server.
Sold.
batguiide - Sunday, December 9, 2012 - link
Sharea website with you ,
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Believe you will love it.
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I bought two. Cheap, good quality, you can
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corax - Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - link
I purchased this case 5 months ago and I am still very happy with it.it runs cool and quiet even after i overclocked the cpu. i would recommend it to anyone looking for a dicrete powerhouse pc that can be hooked onto the tv or simply at your desk .
I was able to fit in my choice of hardware without problems although assembling the pc was more of a challenge than my previous builds because of the used hardware and the limited space at hand.
i have a scythe yasya cooling the cpu , this beast of a tower cooler is 160mm high and fits inside with just 5mm to spare., enabling the overclock potential of my ivy bridge i5.
the motherboard is the asus p8z77-i deluxe. this board has the cpu socket placed more centered enabling a wide range of tower coolers and as a bonus my old cooler could be recycled, saving me some cash to double the ram to 16gb.
a 160mm modular PSU from seasonic is powering the rig. no problems here and this psu does not hinder a full size gtx660.
i used 2 of the 3 drive bay brackets to house an ssd and 2 3.5" hdd's. i left the middle one out for a better airflow and bent the bracket that would normally hinder the graphics card just a llitle bit outwards.(just a few mm so there is no tension on the gpu in the slot).
the biggest challenge was fitting in the cables. a handfull of zipties do miracles and I was able to use the space around the psu and gpu to bundle the cables and prevent them from blocking the airflow.
the result is a whisperquiet shoebox sized gaming rig without having to compromise on anything.
the grate next to the gpu sucks in fresh air and my gpu never ever exceeds 60 degees celcius under load preventing the fans from producing a lot of noise
Hrel - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
You should stop saying they should switch to an SFX power supply. Every SFX power supply I've seen comes with a bracket to adapt it to the ATX standard. It's always better to have choices, the way it is now I can choose between ATX and SFX PSU's. If they designed the case to only support SFX then I wouldn't be able to buy the case at all; since I don't want to use that type of PSU.If YOU want to use a SFX PSU you can in this case; you just chose not to despite your constant complaining about it.
bobbozzo - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Hi, I just got one of these; all the air intakes have filters, but they are not very accessible; the one on the front fans requires opening the case and then popping off the entire front panel.Otherwise, it seems pretty well made. I haven't put a computer in it yet though.
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