Fractal Design Node 304 - Black - Mini Cube Compact Computer Case - Small form factor - Mini ITX – mITX - High Airflow - Modular interior - 3x Fractal Design Silent R2 120mm Fans Included - USB 3.0

This is yet another beautiful case by Fractal Design and it's an absolute joy to build with.It has a very simple design. Thumbscrews hold on the metal one-piece sides and top. Once that is off you find Fractal have maximised the interior space allowing you to fit standard size PSU, large GPUs and after market CPU coolers. 2x 120mm fans suck in air from the front and blow it over your precious components while a large fan at the back exhausts hot air out of the case. All three can be easily connected up to the built in fan controller switch located at the back of the case. They are silent on the lowest setting and highly effective at keeping things cool inside the small enclosure.3 brackets hang down above the PSU space, a very clever way of supporting many, many hard-drives. 6x 3.5" HDD and even more 2.5" drives can be contained in the enclosure. They are secured on rubber grommets to ensure vibrations are dampened in order to reduce both noise and potential mechanical drive failure. Of course with a large GPU installed you may have to forgo one of the hanging brackets.Ventilation is present on the bottom and sides of the case for your GPU and PSU along with dust filters. Mesh vents on the top and bottom of the front-bezel of the case provide inlets for cool air to be sucked through into the case. USB and audio ports are located on the right side of the bezel above the Power button. The front of the bezel is brushed metal coloured black with a little white Fractal Design logo printed on it next to the power-light strip and it looks immediately striking and stylish. The rest of the case is matte black and this colour scheme continues on to the inside of the case as well.5 stars.

There aren't many attractive cases for a home server build designed around a mini ITX motherboard, but I'm glad I found this one. There are 3 mounting brackets for drives, each one holding 2 drives so that's a total of 6 3.5" you can mount (although most mini ITX boards only have 4 SATA ports so...) plus whatever NVME sockets your motherboard has.There's a large fan at the back and two smaller ones in the front which have a 3 position speed switch on the back of the case. I replaced the rear fan with a Noctua fan and connected that to the system fan header on the motherboard so that it changes speed depending on the temperature rather than being a fixed speed, but even if you don't do that, even at high speed it's still fairly quiet.There's room inside for large CPU air coolers (I have a Noctua NH-U12S which is 158mm high), but it might be a bit of a tight fit if you wanted to put a full size graphics card in it (I only have an Nvidia 1030 in there as my CPU has no onboard graphics).Appearance wise, it's very clean with a totally blank brushed black front panel with the LED in the bottom right corner.There's airflow venting on both sides and on the top at the front (for the two smaller fans which draw air in by the hard drives).Cable management isn't as good as a dual chamber case, but it's possible to do quite a clean build if you use a modular PSU.

I bought this for a home media and data server. I wanted a miniATX case that fits at least 4+1 drives, as small and quiet as possible.I think this case fits the bill. By design it is very easy to open and access all the parts/add drives/..., main cover and drive bays are secured by thumb screws (plus one additional phillips screw per drive bay - a shame). The fans are near-inaudible (I have the included fan controller on medium setting). The layout seems logical in terms of airflow. It comes with all the cables to connect fans and front panel in just the right length and with a solid feel, and with all necessary installation hardware (spacers, screws, cable binders).And it is pretty! Not just outside, but the black-and-white design inside as well - a joy for tinkerers!I'm using it headless, but there is ample space and a specific air grille on the side so quite high-powered graphics cards could be fitted as well.There is not much that could make this case any better. If the drive bays were hot-swapable ones accessible behind the front panel, maybe, but that'd require a redesign in terms of cooling... The HDD LED (pointing DOWN under the front panel) is very bright, but it doesn't bother me much.

Just finished my Unraid sever build in this case and very inpressed. For the price, pretty darn good. Lots of space for HDs/SSDs, compact, neat looks and pretty easy to work with. Well done Fractal Design. Then we have the few niggles, and note, they are just niggles, by no means showstoppers.Firstly, set the onboard fan speed controller to its lowest setting, and the front fans don't get enough voltage to start, so it's not much use. But, even set on mid speed, it's really not very loud, and with a splitter, you could easily run them from the MB if you want to.Second, as stated in other reviews, threading/hole alignment is a bit iffy in some holes, so you need to take a bit of care in assembly.Finally, cable management can be a bit awkward, but, it's a sealed case so why worry, you can't see inside anyway.Overall, a great case for the money, and easiliy a recomendation.