The first update! I will just be outlining and showcasing the water cooling components I have chosen as well as showing the case parts I will be painting.
Parts have arrived! Mostly all XSPC, you can find a full part list in the original post. Still need to order some.
Both radiators, I am a fan of XSPC packaging
The AX360 Radiator going in the front of the case.
Both rads together, the 240 is going in the roof.
Nice little XSPC logo.
Very nice finish and very sturdy/well built radiators.
The Photon 170/Pump Combo kit, with glass.
My attempt to focus on the inside acrylic tube.
Primochill Ghost Rigid Compression fittings, very nice just a shame they aren't the same shade of white as the rads.
All eight of them, still need two more.
The GPU full cover water block.
RayStorm water block with white faceplate.
That could be a new profile image!
The case stripped down.
These are all the parts that are going to be painted, the SSD's in white, IO Shield in white and the rest in orange.
The black trim along these panels will be all painted orange, should look nice!
Stay tuned for more updates, next update will be mainly painting as I wait for another order of tubing, fans and some brackets etc.
From the outside of the case it is very Fractal esque with a black body and white highlightes from the fans, to PCI slot covers and hard drive cages. I fell in love with Fractal Designs' aesthetics with the Define R3 Pearl Black, that case had its short comings, most of which were addressed in the R4 revision, but I loved that case even with the less than stellar thermal performance and I kept it around for the family computer. The Node 304 does not disappoint, I was able to make a pretty high end system and I know I could have even stepped it up more if my budget had allowed for it. Out of the box things were pretty easy, I was able to get all of the external thumb screws out with a slight bit of force, but I didn't have to use a screw driver, most of the interior thumb screws and hard drive cage screws did need a screw driver however. The case is very solidly built and the powder coating is noticeable stronger than the R3. Fractal has done away with the fake aluminum front that they typically use and has opted for a metal front panel cover instead. There is a very small amount of plastic in the entire case, half of the front panel and the front and bottom fan filters consist of 90% of the plastic that is used, the rest is all metal, and very solid feeling metal at that. The hard drive cages are very solidly built, but they are by no means tool-less, you may have to keep a screw driver handy if you swap a lot of hard drives. Fractal REALLY needs to work on tool-less systems, they have been working on this for fans but never on hard drive cages/trays. The case has some cable management punch outs that are located above and below were a PCI card would be, you would have to stuff a lot of things under the graphics card if you were to use these.
The build was pretty easy, the only thing I had to redo was the cable management as that's a premium in a case of this size and typically takes a few tries, but Fractal does provide some cable management, not much but adequate and its all around were the GPU is located. The motherboard stand offs were not pre-installed which was a bit surprising and disappointing but all were easy to get in besides one that was in a rather awkward position, after that my motherboard was able to get in fairly easily. Note that I was using an all-in-one water cooler, a larger heat sink will most likely lead to issues. An all-in-one will have to be mounted sideways but they can be easily installed. I had an Antec Kuhler 620 with one pull fan and a homemade radiator shroud. A push-pull configuration would fit with room to spare. I would personally recommend an NZXT Kraken X40 for CPU cooling in this case. I did a fare amount of motherboard stuffing [stuffing front i/o under the motherboard], rerouted some unused SATA power cables behind the front cover, overall I was able to get things looking a lot cleaner than I had originally anticipated after seeing other ITX builds on the web. With a few small modifications and a Molex extension, I could fit almost everything behind the front cover of the case and have a really clean cable management job. I was able to get my Asus GTX 670 in rather easily and you could easily put a much longer card in than that.
The only caveat I have with Fractal about the 304 is power supply unit length. They could have easily moved it forward another centimeter so most non-modular PSUs would fit in it no problem. The power supply length is the only restriction I found as it's a make it or break it for installing a graphics card, too long and you won't be able to install a GPU at all.
Its hard to say anything about my CPU temps as its all new hardware, but I will say that my temps seem better coming from a Define R3 to the 304. I probably did an overclock wrong on i5-2500k in my R3, but I noticed a sizable decrease in thermal performance coming from a Cooler Master HAF 912 in both my CPU and GPU when compared to the R3. That being said I was able to get my i5-3570k up to 4.6Ghz stably with an Asus P8Z77-i Deluxe/WD motherboard, though my temps were in the 70's after running Prime95 maximum heat tests. For 99% of what I do on a daily basis I will never see temperatures past 60C. These temperatures are based off of an Antec Kuhler 620 with a Cooler Master 120mm fan and the 2 stock 92mm Fractal fans running at 12v using the stock fan controller and fan shroud. Running at 7V for all fans I saw a temperature increase of around 5C under full prime load. I did not use 5V as I think that's a rather pointless voltage to run fans that low as they are already inaudible at 7V from a foot away. My idle temperatures for everything but my CPU were in the 20's, my CPU with that overclock typically idles in the low 30's. My GTX 670 runs noticeably cooler in this case than any mid tower I have owned because the graphic card gets air directly from the side panel and takes care of its self instead of relying on the air flow of the case to keep it cool. If you have a loud graphics card this could be problem because of direct cooling through the side panel means a shorter sound travel to escape the case, though you would not have to have the fans blowing as hard in this configuration. This case is ideal for blower style and dual fan style cards though I would recommend twin fans after owning a card with DirectCU2 cooling and the audible differences between blower and thin fan.
The area behind the front panel has so much potential for mods, you could easily make that into a hot swap bay or cut some slots and install a card reader or use it for cable management, bravo on Fractal for providing this space. What this case needs is just a bit a more ventilation if you plan on really overclocking your CPU, but I found it to be more than adequate for most users. One mod I would like to see is white accent lighting on the grills, another would obviously be some sort of hot swap bay, lastly would be cable management is that front area. Im sure someone will figure out how to put an optical drive in this case, but honestly I think Fractal made the right call about ditching the optical drive all together. One last mode I would like to see is the power supply bracket moved back a good centimeter to house longer power supplies. I would also like to see someone attempt a tool-less hard drive solution for this case, but I wont get worked up over it.
For sound testing I was rather pleased, I seem to be getting cooler temps for all of my components in the Node than I did with a Define R3 with 5 fans and I didn't observe any noise unless I was running my fans at 12V, keep in mind that my Cooler Master fan was most likely to blame for any noise. Running at 7V, I honestly cannot hear the system without putting my ear up to the case. My hearing might be to blame for any inconsistencies though as a don't have sound testing equipment.
My finals thoughts about this case are very positive, I have had it for a week and it's already my favorite case. I reality its only competition at this time is the Bitfenix Prodigy, I have seen Prodigy builds and they can get quite ugly just like any other Mini ITX case. Both cases have trade offs, the Prodigy has more cooling options but as soon at you use those cooling options you lose your optical drive, as soon as you put in a graphics card you lose the larger section of the hard drive tray. The Node 304 has less trade offs and its more optimized for a real world scenario. For a gaming machine this can pack quite a punch in a smaller case than most with better cooling and a truly silent but beastly system can lie within, for a server this can house 6 hard drives and it can keep them all running at under 30C. With the NZXT Kraken X40 the Node 304 puts up a strong fight compared to the Prodigy, the Prodigy is a case of too many fan options with low returns, you simply do NOT need that many fans and fan options in an ITX case. The downsides with this case are the length of the power supply and finding something that is compatible, also something that is a fault with ITX cases in general rather than a fault of the actual case which is cable management, though I must say its a step above most in this regard. If I had to choose between the Node 304 and the Bitfenix Prodigy again there is no doubt in my mind that I would get the cleverly made, elegant, practically, king of small, Fractal Node 304. If i were to rate it I would give it a 9/10, tool-less hard drive cages and support for a longer PSU would give it a solid 10/10
This is my first in-depth review besides Newegg and Amazon quick reviews, tell me what you think. I will post pictures of my build at a later date, my cell phone does not take very good pictures but a family member has a Nikon D60, hopefully I can get those up at a later date.
Here is a complete list of my build for any that are interested.
Fractal Node 304 [obviously]
i5-3570k @ 4.6Ghz
Asus P8Z77-i Deluxe/WD
Asus GTX 670 DirectCU2
GSkill Sniper 8Gb 2133Mhz [overkill clock speed, but I got a good deal]
Antec Kuhler 620 [hopefully upgrading to a Kraken X40 in the near future]
Sandisk Extreme 120Gb SSD
WD Caviar Black 2Tb
Arctic MX-4 Thermal Paste
Raidmax RX-500AF 80+ Bronze power supply [only one I could find for my budget, I have an 80+ gold 850w modular PSU that was too big to fit and had to buy another hence the budget DX]
Hey Everyone!
Recently i decided that i needed a new project due to boredom, the first thing that i looked at was my awfully un-attractive case under my desk. Due to the price of cases going up and up even though they are getting really awesome alot of cases have tons of stuff that i dont need at all. So i decided that I should build by own case just for fun... Im just a broke teen so at this point in time the hardware for the project isnt extreme at all but hopefully in a few months i will be able to upgrade. Im actually going to attemp to get a sponsorship by some companies so that i can provide the coolest build log that i possibly can. So without anymore rambling from me lets get right into this build..
Like i said i dont have much for hardware at this point in time but in the future im hoping to have these components for this build:
HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533
SSD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147192
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116501
GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130782
Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233256
Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131830
OS: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116986
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139016
Fans:
120mm: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835553005
140mm: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835553007
CPU Waterblock: http://www.ekwb.com/shop/blocks/cpu-blocks/ek-supremacy-nickel.html
GPU Waterblock: http://www.ekwb.com/shop/blocks/vga-blocks/fc-geforce/geforce-gtx-6x0-series/ek-fc670-gtx-nickel.html
Reservoir: http://www.ekwb.com/shop/reservoirs-and-acc/reservoirs/ek-res-x3-150.html
Pump: http://www.ekwb.com/shop/pumps-and-accessories/pumps/laing-d5-pump-12v-mcp-655.html
Radiator: http://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-coolstream-rad-xtc-280.html
There is three different sizes of angle iron that i have to cut 16", 12", and 9"
Prep Shot ( I know wicked blurry i'm not a photographer)
Adrian_ got a reaction from Hanoverfist in Hanover's "Brandywine" Complete with Final Photo's
