Fractal Design Node 304 Black Aluminum/Steel Mini-ITX Small Form Factor Computer Case

Pros: Out of the box and on my desk this case is great...it is so much smaller than my ATX case was. Inside the design is great with many options for keeping things organized. The one thing to note is to make sure to get the appropriate size PSU to go inside of this as most will be to big if you want to include your graphics card. I looked at the measurements and everything was just fine with the PSU I purchased.

Cons: With the thought of the PSU size in the Pros, you also have some issues with Cable Management if you do not get a modular PSU as there is not a lot of space to bundle extra cable together. The screw holes in the case also could have used another drill through as some were hard as heck to screw into. It does allow for a full sized graphics card (some limits, see measurements), but the space next to the case is very close.

Overall Review: Overall, I recommend this to anyone wanting to build a mini ITX case. Just keep in mind: -Don't buy a huge Heatsink/Watercooler -Make sure the PSU will fit. -Make sure Graphics Card will fit. (Check measurements of your components overall).

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.

Overall Review: 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: *Small Footprint *Lots of Interior Space *Understated and Stylish Design *Good Airflow *Dust Filters *High Quality, Quiet Fans

Cons: *Screws *Placement of PSU bracket

Overall Review: I've had this case for 2 years and 4 months now. Though I've occasionally looked into other cases to house my m-itx gaming build nothing else I've seen measures up to what I need. I took a long hard look at the Silverstone Raven but I could not get my CPU cooler in there. Also, I got this case on sale at it's current price when I originally bought it, so it was and is an exceptional buy in my opinion. The things I really love about thing I really love about this case is that you can fit all high end components into it and it doesn't look cramped after you are done. It houses a full length GPU (mine is nearly the length of the case), a full sized ATX PSU, a tall air cooler, or water cooling with a 140mm radiator. My initial build took some planning mainly due to the limitations on the size of the PSU due to the placement of the mounting bracket. I tried 5 different modular PSU's before I got what worked best. 2 of the others fit with my graphics card installed but were a noisier than I liked. I settled on the Seasonic S12G 750W. This fits with plenty of clearance for a big GPU. That was the only real problem I had to solve with this case. The screws included with the drive brackets are not good, but really are just a minor annoyance. There was one reviewer who trashed the case because he said he couldn't get the drive brackets off. I guess he never heard of WD-40. Better still is a few drops of Silicone lubricant applied with a Q-Tip. I can not stress enough how well thought out the airflow is in the case. The two 92mm fans do a good job of bringin cool air into the case while the 140mm exhaust gets the hot air out. What is more is the thoughtful placement of an intake vent positioned next to the GPU slot, and it being full length in order to allow all of the GPU cooler fans access to cool air. Another nice touch is the bottom intake vent for your PSU and an exhaust vent for the exit of its heat as well. The dust filters are another nice touch and they work great. The are positioned at all of your intake points and stop 99% of the dust in your environment from getting inside your rig. I've got 3 cats and a dog so that is a lot of dander, not including the stuff that the 3 other humans in the house generate. To this day when I open the case, as I occasionally do, for cleaning and component health inspection I find very little dust at all. A few blasts of canned air and a rinse of the filters and your done. These days the box resides on a shelf in my media cabinet hooked up to an AV receiver via HDMI. It's a livig room Steambox now and all of this case's winning attributes suit it well there. It's quite, stays cool even behind a glass door and passes the wife acceptance factor because it's out of sight and unheard except for a whoosh of air when it is under load. I just love it! Here's the current build: i7-4790K 8GB G-Skill Trident DDR3 2400 Corsair H90 AIO Cooler Asrock Z87-E Mini-ITX Gigabyte GTX 970 4GB SEASONIC S12G

Pros: Dual-chamber design accommodates a wide variety of potential system configurations. Fantastic and thorough documentation. 3 quiet 120mm fans and integrated fan controller included. Unique mounting mechanisms for installing copious amounts of storage. Flexible options for drive installation and additional cooling provisions. Easy to remove dust filters present for intake areas.

Cons: Internal optical drive options can quickly become expensive (if one is required). Two or three small areas of the frame present the potential to knick a hand. Window can become marred fairly easily.

Overall Review: My prior system was spacious, consumed considerable floor space, and was audible from far distances. The urge to return to normalcy with respect to system configuration and associate living volumes led me on a search to "upgrade" to something that was smaller and quiet, yet allowed retention of a disk array that houses media. Extensive research on other products within Fractal Design's portfolio led me down the road to consider the Node 804. The fantastic price Newegg was offering on this case provided the inspiration to pull the trigger on a system upgrade that would meet my compute and storage requirements in a much smaller form factor. The packaging that houses the Node 804 was well constructed and diminutive. Opening the box and removing the case was uneventful. The unit arrived in perfect condition with no blemishes nor crunched corners during the shipping process. The instruction manual for this case was unlike anything I've received in prior (and more expensive) offerings. All necessary hardware that was included with the case was high-quality and exceeded my expectations. Reading the manual provided a demonstration to the level of engineering Fractal Design allocates to their solutions. The process, when adhered to, will result in a very clean build with the appropriate use of included cable management. Two velcro straps on the floor of the chamber that holds the power supply, up to 8 3.5" HDD's, and the fan controller provides excellent control over the visibility and use of power feeds from the PSU. The included fans and fan controller were very serviceable. With all three fans running at the max setting, this case is very quiet. Scaling it down to the middle setting, the only fans that remain audible are the CPU cooler's fan and the GPU's fan (when it's under load). I took my time installing all of the components into the case, and did reference the manual to evaluate the options for installing the 2.5" SSD that is partitioned for use as a boot drive and a caching mechanism for the Intel RST RAID array. Use of the default locations behind the front panel made the most sense, and reduced the potential for clutter within. Dust filters cover the majority of ventilation entry points, and can be quickly removed, cleaned, and reinserted. Keeping this case clean will not be a chore. Components installed into this tiny footprint include: ASRock Z170 Extreme 4 motherboard 16GB (2x8 GB) G.Skill DDR4-2400 memory Intel Core i7-6700K CPU Arctic Cooling 11i CPU cooler XFX Radeon R9 Nano GPU OCZ Trion 100 960GB SSD (4) Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200 RPM drives in a RAID-10 configuration FSP Hydro-G 750W Modular PSU With everything in place, this system is gorgeous. The diminutive size and silence that has graced my office area once again have been appreciated by the family. With a minor investment in a small cart, I can effectively hide the computer from plain sight entirely while having a system with fantastic performance and plenty of room for future expansion. This case would also blend well when used in a HTPC type of role. The dimensions give it the appearance of a small subwoofer from a distance, and the lack of bling/lights/noise would make it a welcome edition to the family room. The largest weakness of this case is subjective and depends on your needs or desires for an internal optical drive. Believe it or not, Fractal Design did find a way to make room for such a storage device, but it comes with a considerable caveat. On the right hand side of the front bezel is a location to insert a CD/DVD/Blu Ray disk into a slot-load optical drive. Finding one of these in the appropriate form factor can be an expensive proposition. The LG DVD unit available from Newegg is reasonably priced, but will limit the capabilities of a system using this case for HTPC applications. Comparable Blu Ray units are not cost effective at all, and the lowest priced drives I've come across will ship from an overseas location. This may be a problem if you receive a faulty unit. As this system resides in a more traditional computing environment, I've opted to go the external route due to the number of available USB 3.0 ports that exist on the motherboard I selected.

Pros: It's fairly durable. I move my rig around very frequently, and it's definitely withstood the test of time with respect to mobility and strength. The dust filters are a huge plus. I'm going to dust out the inside for the first time in two years, and it's not even that bad compared to what I've seen in filterless builds. Cooling is really darn good. The structure keeps all the hot air flowing really well. It fits almost any supersized heatsink. It fits a lot of long GPUs. Great for gaming rigs.

Cons: A couple minor gripes: One of the two front fans doesn't seem to function properly and will only start spinning once I switch the power from low to high back to low. The fans themselves are amazingly quiet and they have really good power, it's just that one odd fan that requires an extra step to make it work. The power button doesn't have a sturdy feel to it. Sometimes, it goes in at an odd angle and gets stuck, and if I don't notice it then the rig just shuts off, thinking I've held the power button down. A minor nuisance, but one worth mentioning nevertheless. Also, the bottom filter is very loose and will slide off easily, but this isn't really troublesome to me since I don't slide the computer around my desk. Despite being really loose, there's never been a situation where it came off when I didn't intend for it to come off. Taping it is also a very viable solution if this is so problematic for you.

Overall Review: If it weren't for those two minor flaws, I would be completely fine with it. It's just a tad pricey, I bought it when it was on sale.

Pros: Great ventilation. Easy setup. Easy install. Great cable management. Several cooling options and fan / radiator placement.

Cons: Screws are tiny, can easily be mixed up when taking apart and reassembling. Especially when removing the two top rear screws that attach the top to the rear of the case. These screws are slightly longer than all the others. I missed this at first and was going nuts trying to get the small ones to fit.

Overall Review: My first case / computer build. Since I use this for a NAS, I have a lot of open space inside, especially on the windowed side. I currently have 4 WD reds in the thing and will expand soon. Case is rather large for a NAS. The case looks like it's really designed for a beefed up gaming system. Plenty of room for PCI expansions and huge video cards. But still a great case. I really recommend it for gamers. Side window will look awesome with LED's. My system: -Fractal Design FD-CA-NODE-804-BL Black Aluminum / Steel Micro ATX Cube Case Computer Case -ASRock E3C226D2I Mini ITX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C226 DDR3 1600/1333 -Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Server Memory -Intel Xeon E3-1220V3 Haswell 3.1GHz LGA 1150 80W Server Processor -Cooler Master Seidon 120V – Compact All-In-One CPU Liquid Water Cooling System with 120mm Radiator and Fan -Antec EA-750 PLATINUM 750W 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Power Supply -LINKSYS PLEK500 Powerline HomePlug AV2 AV600 1 Port Gigabit Ethernet Kit -SanDisk Cruzer Fit 8GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive Model SDCZ33-008G-B35 (For FreeNAS OS) -FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201506292130

Pros: I researched about this case quite a bit, finally bought 2 of them and thinking about buying more for resell. The case is very well built, fits 6x 3.5 without problems. There is about 1/2 inch between each drive and the massive fan keeps the case cool.

Cons: Power supply mounting bracket prevent install of mini-itx motherboards, otherwise I could had used my old MB for my projects.

Overall Review: So far so good, I am running one case for Freenas and one for OMV, both filled with 6x 3TB plus 1x 2.5 hd for OS. No problem yet.

Pros: I really like the look, there's plenty of room unless you want to use all six drives. Included fans are nice and quiet.

Cons: The drives are reversed in each pair. This can be an enormous challenge if your SATA power cables are restricted. The front drive-bay hold down screws are ridiculous but you can leave them out. The internal power cable is too long. There's no reset switch. One-piece cover is annoying to remove. A bit too pricey for the number of issues.

Overall Review: Although the list of cons is long they may or may not matter depending on your needs. The larger problem may be with Q/C. The 120mm fan sometimes rubs on something. The holddown screws are non-standard threading, prone to cam-out and shed black paint. One of the stand-offs doesn't quite thread all the way in. All of those things would have been easy to fix.