Hardware Fractal Design Node 304 review

Thanks Anthony for the review. This was one of the first reviews I read on the Node 304 and it helped a lot in my decision making before buying it.

Just finished a build with the node 304 and here are my findings.

First impression: #$%^, this is a huge case! I did go from a Lian-Li PC-Q07 to this but still it's a largish case to house an ITX board. That said, it's very easy to work with and running the wires, for the most part, went very well. The front USB3.0 wires would have been better off coming down the opposite side but that's just in my case with the location of the USB3 header on the Asus P8H77-I being where it is.

The hanging HDD brackets are a great idea, easy to work with and allows up to 6 HDD's to be installed. (One of the reasons I picked this case over many others and if you're a bit creative you can install six 3.5 HDD's and Velcro an SSD to outside of one of the HDD cages.) The three included fans are very quiet even on the highest setting and provides more than adequate air flow for my system. There's a lot of space for an aftermarket CPU cooler but I used the stock i5-3550 cooler.

Overall, the 304 is a well-thought-out and user-friendly case design and I'm enjoying all of my HDD's inside the case and not stacked in a bunch of external eSATA's leaning beside the, now shelved, Q07.

There's always room for improvement and if there's ever a revision my wish list would include; a slightly smaller overall size (I think it's easily achievable), front facing USB3's & I/O ports, and lastly, an opening for an ODD (this is a HTPC case - some people still watch their DVD's and BluRay's)!
Did I just describe the SG08?



***Hardware used***

CASE - Node 304
MB - Asus P8H77-I
CPU - Intel i5-3550
RAM - 8GB Kingston HyperX 1866
VC - AMD HD7750
SSD - Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB
HDD - WD Caviar Black 2TB x3
PSU - Seasonic SS-300ES