Fractal Design NODE 304 white (FD-CA-NODE-304-WH)

Scandinavian minimalism

The Swedish brand Fractal Design has made a name for itself on high-quality cases that combine a strict but not boring appearance, thoughtful interior organization and excellent soundproofing. Fractal Design engineers managed to embody these principles in the NODE 304 case, which is unusual for this company.

3 pre-installed coolers

Its advantage over competitors lies in the ability to install a powerful processor cooler (up to 165 mm high), a serious two-slot graphics card up to 310 mm long, a standard power supply and a small platoon of drives (6 slots of 3.5 format are provided). Of course, not all at once, the place inside is not rubber. However, it offers rare versatility, from a NAS server with a bunch of hard drives to a powerful gaming PC with a long graphics card, based on a single chassis. The second success factor for the NODE 304 is its serious approach to cooling. The user receives a finished product with a trinity of already installed coolers with hydraulic bearings. Changing them to something cooler is only if the user is a fan of the complete noiselessness of PC components. Although without unnecessary manipulations, NODE 304 turned out to be extremely quiet. In this Fractal Design, great fellows.

Slightly larger and heavier than competitors

How did they manage to do all this? The casket is easy to open, the case is slightly higher and wider than usual among barebone models. For example, it is 3 cm taller, 2 cm wider and 2.5 kg heavier than the popular SilverStone SG13. We don’t know how anyone, but it seems to us that these extra centimeters were worth it. Finding out that the purchased power supply does not fit into the case due to the fact that the power cables rest against the motherboard heatsink is a real pain. Therefore, only small things like tight screws for HDD cages can be considered as shortcomings of NODE 304, and the price tag is almost twice as high as that of other popular cases of this format. However, the price here is justified by the quality of materials, build quality, nice design and a set of stock coolers.