Fractal Design Node 304 FD-CA-NODE-304-BL Black Aluminum / Steel Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case

Pros: * Small (about size of a shoebox)
* Quiet (fans are whisper quiet on low and medium levels)
* Fits full sized ATX PSU
* Fits 6x3.5in Drives
* Lightweight and easy to pickup

Cons: * My only complaint is that the front panel, fan filters, and various other removable parts are a little on the delicate side. I feel as though if handled even somewhat roughly they could easily break.

Other Thoughts: Bought this to run a FreeNAS setup. Works beautifully, quieter than I expected, fits everything perfectly, and have not had one problem at all in setting it up. One of the most intelligently designed cases I've ever used.

Pros: Sturdy, nice use of space!

Cons: Both lights are way to bright! Hard drive light is white! Ugly!
Front cover comes off fairly easy but wiring is not secured to the cover which will bend the connection to the switch over time. Like bending a wire over and over until it breaks. Huge design flaw. Mine broke in just two removals. Poor soldering job to the switch. Plastic studs for the front cover are cheap and will over time loose their hold. Holes for the screws in the back for the hard drive cages are threaded in at a slight angle. Quality control and a few design changes are vastly needed. Over time many of these cases will have power switch problems. What good is a case if you can't even turn your computer on. You would think they would put more thought and quality into this area. The plastic used in the wiring connectons are about has cheap and thin as you can make them. Save $50.00 and buy the Corsair 120.

Pros: - Small form factor.

- Sturdy Design. The front panel is a brushed aluminum and looks fantastic.

- Good amout of HD bays. You can install 6 HDs with 2 SSDs, but with ITX you would need a RAID card to support that many.

- Quiet fans with good air flow. I keep mine on the middle setting and I can't even hear them.

- Great rubber feet. It's hard to slide this thing around.

Cons: - You have to mount the hard drives in a way that when you run your power and Sata cables to them, they are facing different directions.

- The little screw that screw into the HD cages suck. I ended up just removing them completely. The thumbscrews will still keep them in place.

- The only way to turn off your power supply is to unplug it. The on/off switch is located inside the case.

- The shell is hard to take off. I don't even have to use thumbscrews.

- The cable management for this case isn't all that great. I bought this for an ESXi server build so I could care less but this wouldn't be a case to mod with a window.

Other Thoughts: - Kind of a con but not for me, there isn't a CD/DVD drive bay. This keeps the form factor really small so I like it. I use an external drive anyway.

I am considering buying another one of these for another server/NAS build. It is by far the smallest ITX case that supports 6 hard drives.

System Specs:
Case: Fractal Designs Nod 304
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1245 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H77N-WIFI ITX
Memory: Patriot Viper 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1600
Heatsink: Stock
Boot Drive: Samsung 840 250GB SSD
Additional Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB
PSU: PC Power and Cooling Silencer MK III 400W Modular 80PLUS Bronze

Pros: Solid build. Intuitive design. Versatile.

Cons: None So Far

Pros: Smaller than those Apevia boxes and better layout as well. Everything is quality and I especially like the power supply placement. Fans are fairly quiet even on high. Has a cool Hi/Med/Lo switch that controls the three case fans. Has USB3.0 ports on the front. Hard drive hangars are very thoughtful.

Cons: None. Compared to other cases, this install was a breeze.

Other Thoughts: For the price, I don't think you can do much better for MiniITX. If you want a nicer case, you'll have to pay quite a bit more I think.

Pros: Small footprint, quality, cost, quiet

Cons: Depending on motherboard layout several Molex connectors are required for case fans, lacks optical drive bay, recommend standard power supply configuration

Other Thoughts: Purchased after reading several reviews and requires planning before assembly including motherboard layout and power supply. I used modular PS that had unusual configuration that caused some issues during assembly. Motherboard is Zotac 880G-ITX which was a so-so choice. Layout is unorthodox as CPU power supply is under case fan. Everything works. Purchased 2nd case later.

Pros: Very well built case. Very quiet; with included fans I can barely hear it running. Hard drives are kept right next to the fans, so they're kept nice and cool; the drives usually operate at around 33C. There are also dust filters on all of the fans.

There was a lot of room for me to work with when I was installing the components, which is surprising considering this is a miniITX case. The hard drive brackets remove so you can easily install the PSU, motherboard, etc. easily. The case is also constructed such that cables can be tied to the frame for cable management.

Cons: Literally nothing at all.

Other Thoughts: I'll probably be buying more Fractal cases in the future

Pros: -Outside of one issue (see cons), the build quality is absolutely superb and the case looks gorgeous.

-Can fit a LOT of hardware into the case including decent CPU coolers and graphics cards

-Dust filtering on front intake fans and over the PSU intake

-Screw positions to install PSU either way (up/down)

-Removable (theoretically - see below) hard drive cages with rubber mounts to dampen noise

-Quality fans included, with fan controller!

Cons: One show-stopping con for this case: the tiny screws used to mount the hard drive cages in place are HORRIBLE. Not the thumb screws - those are fine - the tiny screws (one per HDD bay) near the front of the case.

They are small and made of some cheap-o super soft metal. Two of mine happened to arrive fastened in tight, and because the metal is so soft, it bent/warped to the point where they CANNOT be removed at all. I tried about 10 different screwdriver heads and the metal is just too soft to unscrew them.

So, 2 of my 3 hard drive cages are permanent fixtures and cannot be removed unless I go get my dremmel and cut them out for good.

I am docking two eggs for this, because this is a potentially show-stopping issue for anyone who may want to remove the cages. I only have one HDD in my build so it's not a total deal-breaker for me.

Other Thoughts: I'm REALLY disappointed in the lapse in quality on those hard drive cage screws. It's surprising, because the rest of the build quality is SO good that to have one thing that bad is a mystery. It wouldn't have been hard for them to use decent screws there, but they didn't.

I'm not going to bother with paying shipping on an RMA since I'm only using 1 HDD... hope I don't regret that in a couple years.

Built this to be a quiet office/work PC:
AMD A8-5600k CPU
8GB DDR3-1333 RAM
ASRock FM2A85X-ITX mobo
Noctua NH-L12 CPU cooler
WD RE4 500 GB HDD
Seasonic X-400 Platinum Fanless PSU

Pros: Sleek design, flexible interior.

Cons: Couple things. The case was advertised as able to fit a larger video card, but if you are using even the recommended size PSU, it leaves no space between the PSU and the video card to run cables. The card i used was 10.5 inch long, but it was suggested a 310mm card would fit even. I had to unmount the PSU and push it as far as I could against the other side of the case and leave it unmounted just to get power hooked up to the video card. Seems to stay mostly in place, but I'm definitely not happy about this. The mounts could have been moved over slightly to accommodate as there was still a bit of room left and no reason not to.

The front I/O panel was exactly where I wanted it, but it was not solidly mounted against the part it extended out of, so the connectors were not flush with the case, but were recessed a bit. If you have a really thin stereo connector, it shouldn't be a problem, but if you have studio headphones, you're going to have to use an adapter to get a complete connection.

Other Thoughts: Overall I still really like the design. The HDD LED is cool and it looks like it's shooting lightning.

Pros: Small case, but large enough to fit almost any tower cooler i've ever seen (a noctua nh-d14 fit fine, though not ideal for airflow on an amd board due to orientation)... though you may have to remove the rear 140 fan depending on the cooler you choose

Built in fan controller is a plus since there is nowhere to mount a 5.25 one. Though i usually prefer an analogue knob, the 3 place switch works fine with the fans provided.

Plenty of drive mounts available if you are going for a NAS type setup. Although again which ones you can use and fit your psu connectors into may depend on your choice of heat sink. If you pick a big sink, you may have to get creative to the cables to fit without snapping or bending connectors.

Cons: Wish the psu was mounted differently so that the front panel could provide for different fan choices. The stock setup is adequate if you have a good cpu cooler, but it almost makes more sense to reverse the airflow from back to front so the 140 can pull in colder air.

Some extra screws/standoffs would be nice. The ones that come with this case are a bit taller than any other ones (100s of them) i have laying around, so if you strip one or whatever finding a match is not easy.

I would agree that the 3 side cover while not nearly as annoying as some i have seen would be significantly improved if they just split it to 3 separate panels like the haf xb does.

Other Thoughts: A8-5600k
Asrock a85 fm2 board
NH-L12 cpu cooler
corsair 430 modular psu

All parts fit more than adequately while keeping the stock fans in place. Didn't use a discrete GPU but there is easily more than enough room for a 2 slotter. Although cable management would get more interesting with a video card in there, and not sure how that would effect temps either... but shouldn't be too bad since there is a large mesh vent there.

With the L12, i hooked up all fans to the fan controller with the help of 2 y cables, for 5 fans total, set it on the lowest setting and it maxes at 47.5C under full load, while being completely silent a foot away.