Fractal Design Node 804 - Black - Compact Computer Case - mATX - High Airflow - Modular interior - 3x Fractal Design Silent R2 120mm Fans Included - Water-cooling ready - USB 3.0 -Window Side Panel

Product Information

With nothing against the 3 speed switch included by Fractal, my personal preference is that the motherboard would be in charge of the fan speed instead of a manually set fan controller. On one side of the box, we can see the product specifications as well as some info about all of the cooling system options. On the other side is a nice image of the hard drive cages and their unique place in the case.

While all of these features are helpful to some people, you really need to assess exactly what you’ll be using, as well as what features will be beneficial to you.

TOPICS

If your only goal is to build a small form factor NAS that has, at maximum, six hard drives, the Node 304 is an awesome option. The biggest issue with Mini-ITX cases is your Motherboard options are extremely limited in comparison to even Micro-ATX Motherboards. The case comes with three excellent 120mm fans but can be upgraded with several additional fans if needed. Featuring plenty of options for placing water cooling components, tall heat sinks and hard drives. The flexibility of this case really gives the users the possibility to create their optimal system build. Specifications Certain cases can support hot-swappable bays, meaning you can take a hard drive out and/or put a hard drive in while the device is running.

There are cheaper options, there are smaller options, and there are bigger options, but the JONSBO D500 is the case that sits in the middle of all those to provide a great experience. Unique hard drive mounting system, fitting up to 8 x 3.5?, 4 x 2.5" or up to 10 x 3.5", 2 x 2.5? drives HDD/SSD If you don't fancy installing any hard drives, the two white cages can be removed. Interestingly, when throwing a PC together inside the Node 804, careful planning of cable management needs to occur to avoid creating a hot mess. Having the PSU and main storage array located behind the motherboard and other components helps keep everything simple.

Having the hard drives and power supplies in the secondary chamber is a great plus in my mind, it makes it easier to get everything installed and just gives it a more overall clean look once finished. As this is designed for smaller motherboards there can be a bit of a learning curve if you have not installed an m-ITX or m-ATX board before but these are not so much down to the case as it is learning where things are on the motherboard and remembering that when it comes time to build with it. Fractal Design’s Node 804 is a mid-tower PC case with support for up to 12 drives. That’s plenty of capacity for NAS use, allowing for up to 240TB if using 20TB drives. You’d assume the case would be on the large size, but Fractal Design managed to make good use of the available internal space to keep the dimensions down. CONCLUSION: The JONSBO D500 is a great option if you’re looking for a case capable of supporting 10 hard drives in a reasonable size. It doesn’t support as many hard drives as the Fractal Design 7 XL case above, but 10 hard drives are more than enough for most people. Best Micro-ATX NAS Case For our thermal performance tests we use all of the included fans that come with the case except for 1 x rear exhaust. We remove the pre-installed rear exhaust fans to install a Corsair H80I all-in-one liqud CPU cooler to keep our results consistent.

Graphics card compatibility: Graphics cards up to 320mm in length. Graphics cards up to 290 mm in length may be installed if a fan is installed in the lower position in the front. mm (when 2 HDD slots are removed; graphics cards longer than 170 mm will conflict with PSUs longer than 160 mm) Choosing the best PC case for your DIY NAS can be a little daunting at first. There are so many PC cases out there, yet so few come with more than a handful of drive bays. Enter the Fractal Design Node 804 with its mightily impressive 10 drive bays. Here’s our in-depth review.The side panel for the 2nd chamber is plain and has nothing going on. Towards the front though we can see the front IO which consists of 2x USB 3.0 ports, audio inputs, power button and space for a slimline optical drive. I used this case to build a NAS earlier this year and found that it’s not up to the normal Fractal design standard. Having built my last computer in a Define R5, the Node 804 seems to have some badly thought out features.