So it seems fractal designs have done it again, just as they did with the Node 304 and the Define R4 I am completely won over by the Node 605. It delivers on all fronts and I found it hard to find any fault with it throughout.
I’m not trying to sound like it’s the best chassis in the world, but it is a very good one and one of the top HTPC chassis I’ve had the pleasure of working with. It’s install process was an absolute breeze, with not issues getting the test components to fit, even though we had to remove one hard drive bay to install the long graphics card, this is how the chassis was designed. It didn’t stop us fitting an i5 + GTX 560 Ti combo within its shell, yet still left room for 2 hard drives, which in most scenarios is more than enough storage space.
Style wise it’s what we’ve come to expect from Fractal Design, managing to be both discrete and almost featureless from the front, but upon closer inspection it’s full of fine details, textures and features which is only added to by the well designed aluminium front panel and it’s hidden I/O ports.
It’s a shame the system can’t handle a slim line optical drive unless you have an m-itx board installed, but given the performance and features of some of the m-itx motherboards on the market at the moment, I hardly see that as a set back.
While it’s not the cheapest HTPC chassis on the market, it was never intended to be. It does however offer faultless build quality that makes it worth every penny and unless you didn’t like its visual appearance there is no reason why you wouldn’t want this as part of you media centre which I why I am happy to award it with our eTeknix Editors Choice Award.
So if you can only have a slimline ODD with an ITX build and there’s no 5 1/4 bay, this means the only way to install a BluRay drive is with an ITX board. Don’t get me wrong, I like Fractal Design but I think there’s a serious flaw here. The point of a media centre is that it’s a centre for all media. With no option for an optical drive with larger motherboards you become somwhat limited on it’s use.
How about using it a a media server? Well, no, not really. A limit of 4 drives reduces it’s usefulness, plus you don’t need a full ATX motherboard for a media server, M-ATX or ITX would do just as well.
It’s a good looking case and no doubt it’s quiet and easy to build but I have to question it’s usefulness for it’s target audience.
ATX boards are VERY GOOD for media centers that will be used to receive satellite and terrestrial TV signals and will also be used for gaming and bluray (after all, the goal is to have everything in a single box, that’s the job of the word “center” in “media center”). You’ll see your PCIe and PCI slots rapidly taken once you add a few tuners and a serious audio card. So this case is an awful design IMO. If you plan on using an m-ITX motherboard, you have plenty of options out there that are much better than this case. If you want ordinary ATX, you’re better off with solutions from Antec, for instance.
Really bad design IMO. Good looks, terrible functionality.
I Also wonder how Fractal Design became well known for their slick styling, when the styling of every one I’ve seen seems to be that of a featureless black box.
It’s called minimalism. They’re known for it because it’s a rare quality given the obnoxious aesthetics that typify PC cases.
Hey look! It’s a Lian Li PC-C60 without all the annoying 3.5″ and 5.25″ drive capacity and ATX/GPU/ODD configuration options! Thumbs up!
I believe you can have a micro-ATX motherboard and still be able to fit an optimal drive.
optical drive, thank you for correctly me iPhone…
This is great, except for trying to find a slim blu ray drive, and using said slim blu ray drive. Someone will break that flimsy thing in a home environment. Would have been nice to allow a normal drive that has its door and button integrated with the case, or a slot load as on some other nice cases.
No IR window makes this a no-go. It makes no sense to have this beautiful clean case and then have to plop an external IR receiver on top of it or leave the flip-down door open to install a IR dongle. I also don’t understand the decsion to leave off a 5.25″ drive bay. The Lian-Li PC-C50B comes closer to what I am looking for but it too has no IR window. The search continues…