The final major piece to my build was a Diamond Radeon HD 7870 2GB Video Card, which fit with room to spare. This is where the concern over power supply length comes into play: Had that PSU extended much farther, or had I used a modular PSU, there might not have been enough room for this card—or a larger card, should I decide to upgrade in the future. But, this turned out fine, and as mentioned earlier the case housing offers a vent grille right next to the fan for this card. You can immediately see from the photo that some things are missing. Fractal Design has ditched the optical drive bay entirely and saved a lot of space in the process. You may not have noticed that there's also no reset button; HDD activity and power are both handled by the same single blue front LED. Ventilation is pretty minimal, too. Fractal Design took their usual aesthetic and a lot of chutzpah and produced something remarkably unique. Fractal Design Node 304 Specifications The long hard drive activity LED is diffused somewhat, making for a pleasant blue glow. The white power LED underneath the bezel shines brightly downward like a spotlight and is blinding when viewed directly. We recommend leaving it disconnected. The Fractal Design 804 is actually a fairly old PC case at this point, but I'm reviewing it more as a NAS or server chassis than a PC, though you can absolutely set up a gaming PC using this thing. In fact, after removing the HDD cages, you could even go all out with some custom water-cooling, should you be feeling particularly adventurous. Befitting the Fractal Design Node 304's simple aesthetic is an equally simple assembly, but there are definitely measures that could've been taken to make it easier still. In its own way this is par for the course with Fractal Design's cases; they're easy to build but they could've optimized things even further.

Fractal Design Node 304 case review « Icrontic Fractal Design Node 304 case review « Icrontic

You could replace the case fans with 4-pin fans so the motherboard could control them. This is what I did on my Define R4. If I fully load all 8 cores and fully load the drives, temperatures stabilise at about 55 C for Mobo and 75 C for CPU. Drive temps don't change The fans have 2-pin connectors - they can only be used with the fan controller because mainboards have 3- or 4-pin connectors. Swedish case designer Fractal Design's Node 304 is aimed solely at the mini-ITX market, but boasts hard drive support that could have it being used as a file server or a large multi-disk NAS unit. The same rules apply if you take out two of the drive cages to squeeze in a 310mm graphics card. To get anywhere near a tidy build in the Node 304 a modular PSU is a must.Which the Node 304 features. two 92mm in the front and one 120 or 140mm in the rear. they're standard. I haven’t built a PC in 10 years. I’ve gotten tired of the dismal gaming performance of my MacBook Pro, however, and decided I needed a change. The PSU is installed on its side and the one thing to note is that the case supports PSUs up to 160mm total depth for non-modular designs; for modular designs, you need to find units of a maximum of 140mm deep. Rear: 1 x 140mm Silent Series R2 hydraulic bearing fan, 1000 RPM speed (compatible with 120mm fans) – included There aren't too many cube PC cases out there. This is more of a niche category, much like a small form factor chassis. Thermaltake's Core V21 is another fine cube case that would also make for a good NAS box or gaming PC case, but it doesn't support as many 3.5-inch drives as the Node 804 from Fractal Design.

Node 304 — Fractal Design Node 304 — Fractal Design

The front panel can be easily removed by pulling it away from the main chassis to reveal the four fan mounts and dual dust filter setup. The two side panels are secured to the Node 804 using screws, and once those are extracted, you have unobstructed access to pretty much everywhere inside the case. Maximum during spinup with 6x6TB Reds is 126W for HDDs only. On top of that I would allocate another 40W* for the board/cpu itself on 12V. Combining that we'd be at circa 14A @ 12V which the PSU has to cough out at a minimum. To be safe I'd grab at least 18-20A on 12V.londiste - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link and yet, neither of you noticed that he is using a psu that is beyond fractal's spec. with a shorter psu, you'll fit a hell of a graphics card in there just fine.