Broadly speaking, the Fractal Node 804 is divided into two main side-by-side chambers, one for the motherboard and PCI-E cards and the other for the power supply and hard drives. Additional space for certain components is found behind the front panel itself.

Fractal Design is a staple name in the PC case market. The Swedish brand has been making sleek-looking cases for many years and we’ve only recently taken a look at the Node 804. This is a Mini Tower case designed with storage in mind, making it an ideal candidate for a DIY NAS. Looking at the old Fractal Arc Mini R2 (which i used to built my NAS, but which is not produced anymore, unfortunately), it is near perfect for a cheap cost-concious home NAS build where hot-plug capabilities and 99.99999…% uptime are not a crucial requirement. While it is a different shape (a mini tower) than the Node 804 (a cube), it is only insignificantly bigger at 41.16 liters total volume compared to the Node 804’s 41.08 liters. But then again, that case is from an era where local PC storage was dominated by spinning rust… Reply The case comes with three excellent 120mm fans but can be upgraded with several additional fans if needed. Taking a look at the Node 804 itself from the front and it features a nice brushed aluminium design, which goes over great with me. Users will also note the Fractal Design logo on the right-hand side and the nice big vented area across the bottom to make sure users are taking advantage of all the great cooling features. Aside from the great cooling options, we can also see the cutout for the rear IO panel on the motherboard, space for a bottom-mounted PSU in the 2nd chamber as well as 5x expansion bays and a bit of a vented area for some more airflow in the main chamber. If you look above the fan on the right-hand side of the image just above it there is a switch for a fan controller which can control up to 3 fans as standard. Also, looking across the left, right and top we can notice 6x thumb screws so we can easily take the case apart if and when needed.While all of these features are helpful to some people, you really need to assess exactly what you’ll be using, as well as what features will be beneficial to you. They’re also going to be the most expensive overall devices you can build since small form factors (case, motherboard, PSU, etc) cost more. I like this case a lot, and I think that if you’re set on an extremely small form factor, this case, or the JONSBO N2 shown below are your best options. In terms of performance, I was surely not let down at all. The Node 804 comes with 3x fans pre-installed as standard which offer a decent amount of airflow to help and keeps thing inside cool. This is also where the dual chamber design comes into play a bit, having the PSU and hard drives in the second chamber not only relieves some of the heat from those components it also helps with the airflow as there is less in the way of the fans. With my test system installed airflow was not a problem at all and if it was, there is plenty enough room to mount a couple more fans to add a helping hand in bringing the temperature down a bit. With nothing against the 3 speed switch included by Fractal, my personal preference is that the motherboard would be in charge of the fan speed instead of a manually set fan controller.

On the bottom of the main chamber are a couple of hard drive mounts. While these are meant to hold either 2x 3.5″ or 2.5″ hard drives I have a feeling it would be more than easy enough to throw some fans down there for some more airflow! There is not a lot of room to work within the area behind the front cover, and fully populating it with drives will be somewhat difficult due to all the cable routing. Rear: 1 - 120/140mm fan (included is a hydraulic bearing 120mm Silent Series R2 fan, 1000 RPM speed) The JONSBO D500 is a great mix between a massive case like the Define 7 XL, and a more traditional, PC case that simply holds 4-5 hard drives.Graphics card compatibility: Graphics cards up to 320mm in length. Graphics cards up to 290 mm in length may be installed if a fan is installed in the lower position in the front. The next thing to take into consideration is the networking you’d like to use. For most NAS devices, you’ll either use 1GbE (standard on most Motherboards), 2.5GbE, or 10GbE. Depending on the NIC the Motherboard comes with, you might need to ensure the case can handle a networking card in the event that you’d like to increase the networking speeds of the device. Having young kids and tech adventurism don’t really go together. I’ll add building a NAS to the list of things that I’ll get round to when the kids start to find me embarrassing and don’t want to hang around with me anymore. VMware server in the garage, mame cabinet, cat 6 the house etc etc. Reply If you’re going to build a NAS, you might as well plan for the future, and that’s where the JONSBO D500 fits in well – don’t build a NAS thinking you need six hard drives and actually need ten – get the room for those hard drives up front! That’s where this case fits in.