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Posted 20 hours ago

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

£37.475£74.95Clearance
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About this deal

Except for a cheap mesh dust filter on the right side of the case, nothing inside feels substandard in quality. We've seen SilverStone, BitFenix, Lian Li, and Cooler Master all try their hands at mITX cases with varying degrees of success, but there's just no set design language when you get down this small. The main chassis and outer cover are made of steel and the front bezel is plastic with a aluminum surface. The front two come with filters and there is a filter for the PSU as well, and they're all removable. And almost all of those times I could have gotten away with using an alternative method (bootable USB, backed up ISOs, etc.

Fractal Design Node 304 - AnandTech Assembling the Fractal Design Node 304 - AnandTech

Cable spaghetti is a foregone conclusion in a case like this and unfortunately that made getting the shroud back on that much more difficult. Why would you spend an extra several hundred dollars for a multi-bay NAS when you could put all of that storage right in the PC? It should be enough, and you really don't have to go for "the best" of everything when the 212 EVO is already amazing at what it does. Almost all the cables are routed to the left side of the case and while there are positions there to tie them down to the floor, if you exercise the option of using a full sized graphics card, things get very tight. There are also some good gaming motherboards in this segment that will make for great PC foundations.

TDP) and an COOLER MASTER Hyper TX 3 with the fan removed the CPU gets 70°C at maximum when running some programs which make full use of the CPU.

Fractal Design Node 304 review | TechRadar

The short, single-slot Zotac GeForce GTS 450 Eco, however, went in just fine and was surprisingly easy to install and remove. If the Prodigy was too large for your liking, then the Node 304 is a true mini-ITX case, barely any bigger than a shoebox at 374mm long. The case also includes a built-in 3-speed fan controller that’s capable of controlling all the included fans.Here, you can see my final tweaks with regard to cable management: I zip-tied a few of the fan cables and the HD audio header from the front panel to one of the structural beams in the case, which seems not to interfere with the case lid and keeps things nicely out of the way. Our technical advice has been featured on publications such as: New York Times, O’Reilly, PCMag, Popular Mechanics, Forbes, etc. I've never had experience with noctua fans, but i've held one in packaging and no doubt it was a solid fan. As a result, the PCIe slot is rendered essentially unusable to cards longer than the motherboard itself.

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