Fractal Design Node 304 itx case

DarkKnightWong said:
Is it pretty quiet ?

Got a build thread ?

Im starting to put together a list for my Node Build
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No build thread but I've found the Silverstone is very quiet. I'm still stuck waiting on my node since Fractal's only shipped them to NCIX for some stupid reason and I pre-ordered elsewhere. For now though I've got everything thrown into an Antec Three-Hundred while I wait on my Node and the Antec 120mm fan running around 1200 rpm is the loudest part at idle (replaced the 140 with a 120mm radiator&fan). With a 3570k and gtx 670 under load the power supply stays quiet under heavy load. I'm sure that even the 550 watt would've been overkill but I keep toying with the idea of throwing in a 690 and wanted headroom. :cool:
 
Talz said:
Picked up the Silverstone ST65F-G and it's perfect for these pint sized powerhouse builds IMO.
140mm, 650W, Modular, 80+ Gold, etc
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That's an interesting choice for the build, and I think it would be perfect. Since SFX isn't made for this case, I knew it probably be easier to just go ATX without modding. Now that you pointed this PSU out, it's a bit smaller so it'll be easier to fit a nice GPU in.

Anandtech stated in their review that they couldn't fit their GTX560 Ti in this case with the Silverstone PSU, do you think the smaller sized PSU you have will alleviate this issue?

Because of the way the cables stuck out of the power supply and the length of the power supply itself, I was unable to fit our GeForce GTX 560 Ti inside the Node 304 for testing.
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This seems to be a huge problem for many of us looking into this case. Again the 140mm PSU will solve this? What bothers me is Fractal doesn't state anywhere to use smaller sized PSU so that we can actually fit a larger GPU in it, it just states in the spec that the case fits longer GPUs. If anyone can clarify this, would be great. I read a review of this case on Amazon, and the guy that built it out used a standard ATX psu and fit a AMD7850 in it, so maybe it just depends where the cables stick out of the ATX PSU that you use?

Last concern is cable management, I hope someone has a solution for this.
 
imhenrytran said:
What bothers me is Fractal doesn't state anywhere to use smaller sized PSU so that we can actually fit a larger GPU in it, it just states in the spec that the case fits longer GPUs. If anyone can clarify this, would be great. I read a review of this case on Amazon, and the guy that built it out used a standard ATX psu and fit a AMD7850 in it, so maybe it just depends where the cables stick out of the ATX PSU that you use?

Last concern is cable management, I hope someone has a solution for this.
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Actually Fractal says it 2 different ways on their website, that's been there since summer at least;

http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&category=2&prod=94

Just got done building a 304 based system;

ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe mobo (has the best layout CPU to case fan I think for a tower cooler)
i7-3770K
Zalman 9900 cooler
16GB GSkills Ripjaws memory
Samsun 840 256GB SSD
Seasonic 450W G-Series(started with Enermax Modu82+ 620W more on that later)
MSI Twin Frozr 7850 based


Regarding cable management, you will have to really study the PSU cable layouts for the modulars, I picked a shorter GPU card to make things easier but in the end may not have mattered as the final 160mm can be used with long cards.

Couldn't boot with original Enermax(chosen because 140mm and part modular), shorted pins15/16 together everythinbg but 3.3 looked good RMA'd next one looked the same (~2.85V coming out unloaded), threw it in and it would boot but system would reset as soon as Windows install started(BIOS indicated power surge). Popped video card in and got past that, apparently build was at the lower edge of PSU regulation. Also cords on the Enermax were very long and rigid, looked like a bag of snakes and most of the power cords had 3-4 terminations which made for a lot of wasted cord. Looked at a bunch of replacements of lower wattage, came down to Corsair and Seasonic, got the Seasonic 450W and although 160mm it has better placement of mod receptacles down low in the mounting position(all the G-Series are like this), native and mod cords are shorter, mods are flat and have less wasted terminations, and mods are pliable(can run these under a longer GPU card). Ran prime95 for about1/2 hour in the balanced test CPU got to 30C(no OC), Zalman cooler position is like a turbo wind tunnel, all fans are on low speed, very quiet. Tucked fan wires into frame rails held in with packing foam, helped with overall managment

Still could use a little more cable work maybe for the 24pin, but as you can see at least this 160mm PSU will allow you to route under and over a long graphics card.

Pics;

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Raining out so I took another look at the cables, moved drive bay to the middle which gives a cleaner air flow to the cpu cooler and allowed some more flexibility to the SATA/pwr cables. Then put in another drive bay hanger to cover the EATX wires. Added some more shots

Clearance of modular receptacles under graphics card

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cleaner air flow

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New routing

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Looks good, here is my messy-as-hell build using an old Antec Earthwatts 500 I had lying around. Core i3 3225 with HD 4000 and a 120GB SSD.

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This case is dead-quiet with the fans on low! Also, almost every panel/strut is removable, which makes the install as easy as you want to make it :D

The specs are correct about PSU size: if you want longer cards, be prepared to play games if your PSU is 160mm modular. That's one reason I went with the Earthwatts I had lying around - 140mm length :D

Whenever I get around to installing a dedicated GPU, I'll either redo the cables or buy one of those low-profile modular PSUs like this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817256085

I was a bit hesitant about the size of the case, but being a silent nut I could not stand the idea of having an SFX PSU (not much choice if I need a replacement), so I decided that the extra size was worth it. It's still much smaller than the Prodigy, which was way too big for me. I also like the simple black front - even with the case as large as it is, it will fade away on the bottom shelf of my entertainment center.
 
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Looks like mine with the Enermax PSU, even though it's partially modular there were so many connector terminations on each cable and all the cables were so long that it was a complete mess for managing.

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I continued to to cleanup the routing by moving the 24 pin and fan power along the top rail, pretty much done except to get a shorter 8" SATA III drive cable, got a round more pliable one that helped routing but 18" is ridiculous long for this box and mobo.

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Here's mine

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corsair cx430m powersupply...cables aren't too unwieldy; 50x better than the non-modular antec earthwatts PSU i had in there earlier.
 
Nice. If I ever do a real upgrade it might be a liquid cooler, wanted to do a 140 fan NZXT or new Corsair but I think the radiator would hit the video card. It's very close by measurement.

Picked up this Xigmatek 2x2.5 to 3.5 drive adapter, should allow me to move both SSDs to the area in red and yield nearly unrestricted air flow to CPU, just need 2 180 sata cables.

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Just ordered a Node 304 this morning..

Mine is going to be a much different build from most of the others here as it will be a home server..

Going to include some PSU modding if all goes well. & will have 11tb of raw storage.
 
Since putting my build together I had been bothered by how much space the air cooler took up. Getting at cables, connectors on the mobo was very difficult. Was wandering around local Frys yesterday and they had a fresh shipment of NZXT Kraken X40(140mm fan) coolers...

Went from this

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To this, got my case back(had an MSI Twin Frozr in there but it appears to have taken a dump. A warning though for folks using the P8Z77-I deluxe mobo, the backplate takes some modifying luckily it's some type of plastic. The rest of the install was easy, and barely more audible than the Zalman it replaced( which was hard to bolt down). Eyeballing the clearance for vid card looked OK, but there's 1-2mm of more clearance needed and ideally more than that. So without modding the case a bit the X40 likely not useable with a video card.

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EDIT: I had the time tonight to loosen up the X40 Kraken radiator/fan and make sure they were as far away from the vid card as they would go. The card actually just fit, maybe 1mm to go at most(even though it looks like they are touching in photo) so maybe light modding to get a more comfortable distance but some insulating tape may be enough, as always YMMV

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its not that hard to manage cables...

I use 4 HDDs and a SSD and made a fairly decent job....
of course the HX flat cables helped a lot...

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Well I finally have my new rig built up in one of these. Its a decent little case. Not really happy with most of the screws being glued in by the paint. Here's what I can tell you from my research and experience. It seems that most reviews out there state that all three fans are intake fans and its posistive pressure cooling design. This seems to me to be wrong. If this were the case(no pun intended) the rear fan would not have been installed to exhaust hot air and it would have came with a fan filter on the rear of the fan. Now as I sat in my truck today on my break having a cigarette, I envisioned a modified cooling setup. I decided why cant the front be the exhaust and the rear fan be the intake. With the location of the power supply blocking the motherboard and heatsink, or at least a portion of it doesnt really make sense to have to small intake fans far and above where you want to air to flow to. So I swapped out the front fans for something that moves a little bit more air, removed the air filter, flipped both of the fans on my Hyper 212+ and flipped the exhaust fan into and intake fan. My results, about a 10 degree drop under full load. Unfortunately I dont have a screenshot of prime95 before the change, but I have one for after the change.
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Now my next change is going to be to install this fan and fan filter buy silverstone as the intake fan.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835220056
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999257

I wish I could install these fans on my heatsink, but it appears they would not fit especially give the Asus board I have.
 
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Very nice build and cable management you got there Miptzi. Were any of your modular plugs in the HX650 blocked by your 660ti?

I'm thinking of doing a very very similar build :p
 
What PSUs are people using in this case with a longer video card? Mine should be here this week and, ideally, I'd like to migrate into a modular PSU to keep this thing clean. I'm planning on putting either a 7870 Tahiti or a 660ti into it and don't want to run into clearance issues.
 
Got mine today. A lot bigger than I thought it would be, even though I compared the measurements to my Shuttle box... but not too big. The rails inside having places to zip tie cables is a nice touch. This is going to be a very easy build to make clean on the inside.

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Still waiting on the guts. Should be getting those tomorrow...
 
Got the parts. Had to take out the PSU to fit the motherboard even though the guide says to install the PSU first. Hrmph, ah well.

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It was for the better as I ended up having to change the PSU's orientation to have the intake fan facing up and not down.

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Hid most of the cables inside the trails and tie strapped them in place. Hard to demonstrate in pictures, but the flow of air from the rear 140mm (intake) to CPU heatsink (fan flipped to be a pull) to the PSU (intake to exhaust) is completely free of obstructions. Everything goes above or under or around the heatsink.

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The reason I had to flip the PSU:

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The plug wouldn't seat without significant pinching if it was on the other end.

With this build I was trying to do more of a sidegrade, equivalent performance with current parts that needed to be swapped out... plus a more quiet configuration.

Despite the overall CPU performance being about the same (Athlon II Quad 2.8ghz to A8-5500 Quad), the system is MUCH snappier compared to before. I wonder if that's largely due to most of the IO/Northbridge parts now being on die with the CPU instead of being a separate chip on the motherboard. (Didn't even bother to reinstall Win7 fresh. Just a plugged the drives in and rebooted a few times.)

Family photo.

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i'v had a hard on for this case for a while now, as soon as i get the money scraped together I am ditching my full size build and going with this.
 
Just finished building an HTPC/home server with this case, using Asus P8Z77-I deluxe/i5-3570K/Scythe Big Shuriken 2/Silver Power 460W Fanless PSU.

There are many useful design features on the case, am very impressed.

The fans are very quiet when on the 5-volt (low setting) Can barely hear it. I have this sitting in same shelf as my current HTPC (Mac Mini + external firewire 2x2.5 drive) and at idle this rig is actually quieter than than the old setup, which is an impressive feat, as the Mac Mini is fairly quiet in its own right.

The hard drive layout is decent. Would be even better if Fractal had allowed for intermediate positions to screw down the drive holders, for those who are only using 1 or 2 instead of all 3.

My only real problem with this case is not really down to Fractal: its the PSU situation. PSU folks need to standardize on cabling and cable sizes. That is what turns this case into a jungle, otherwise all else is fairly well laid out.

I wouldnt mind an external grill on the back fan as well, just to keep out dust when the unit is turned off.
 
Osamede said:
My only real problem with this case is not really down to Fractal: its the PSU situation. PSU folks need to standardize on cabling and cable sizes. That is what turns this case into a jungle, otherwise all else is fairly well laid out.
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Pics? :D Sounds like a sweet setup!

If you're not running a video card in there, something you may want to try to cut down on cabling is running a pico PSU? Just an option :)
 
Osamede said:
The fans are very quiet when on the 5-volt (low setting) Can barely hear it.
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Check your fans after you switch them to 5v. One of my front fans can't spin up on its own when i turn it on and the fans are set to low. Set them to medium and they spin up fine.
 
techrat said:
Check your fans after you switch them to 5v. One of my front fans can't spin up on its own when i turn it on and the fans are set to low. Set them to medium and they spin up fine.
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Yes, that's been my experience as well. Also I can't get the power LED top function properly.

Case has done the job otherwise. In fact I think the cPU cooler fan is noisier/more vibration than the case fans.
 
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