Today I’m taking a look at the Node 304 chassis from the design masters at Fractal Design, a sleek Mini-ITX chassis targeted at the HTPC market. With its minimalistic design and modular components it will be interesting to see just how well this chassis performs in our tests.
Technical specifications
- Mini ITX, DTX motherboard compatibility
- 2 expansion slots
- 6 – supports either 3.5″ or 2.5″ HHD / SSD
- ATX PSUs, up to 160mm in length (To fit in combination with a long graphics card, PSUs with modular connectors on the back typically need to be shorter than 160 mm)
- Graphics cards, up to 310mm in length, when 2 HDD brackets are removed (Graphics cards longer than 170 mm will conflict with PSUs longer than 160mm)
- Tower CPU coolers, up to 165 mm tall
- Case dimensions (W x H x D): 250 x 210 x 374 mm
- Case volume: 19,5 Liters
- Net weight: 4,9 kg
“The concept of Fractal Design is to provide products with an extraordinary design level, without compromising the important factors of quality, functionality and pricing. The computer of today has come to play a central role in most people’s home, creating a demand for appealing design of the computer itself and its accessories.” – www.fractal-design.com
Mini-ITX is proving more popular than ever at the moment and there are some really nice options on the market for those wanting a compact system. This much is evident with new boards from Asus, EVGA and more being launched to offer some premium features for those looking to build everything from a HTPC, Gaming system or even a small server. So its good to see even more options in terms of chassis design being made available to accommodate these new boards.
Fractal Design already have a strong fan base and personally I really like the design features and build quality I’ve seen in some of their other products, so lets take a closer look at the Node 304 and see how well it gets along in our tests.
Check out the dvi port, next time when installing a motherboard, take care of the metal tabs…
“As seen in our build section it may not be the most practical solution
in terms of space for our components, but it has an overall style that
really makes this chassis stand out.”
So its not even well enough designed to be particularly practical in fitting your gaming components, nor has it any cable management, but BAM! Editor’s choice for the “style”!
Oh god, save me from reviews written by interior decorators…
Also save me from sloppy case ‘designers’ who have no particular aim in how they chose case dimensions.