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63 About this deal
Broadly speaking, the Fractal Node 804 is divided into two main side-by-side chambers, one for the motherboard and PCI-E cards and the other for the power supply and hard drives. Additional space for certain components is found behind the front panel itself. 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.
Ultimately, it’s important to highlight that you can use any case you’d like and the cases below are not the only cases you can use. However, the options below are known to be some of the best options for DIY NAS builds. What Should You Look For in a Case? Overall, it’s one of my favorite NAS cases that you can use because of the hard drive storage options (with 8 drives being more than enough for most) and the relatively small form factor. Unfortunately, Fractal doesn’t make cases like they used to anymore. Which, admittedly, is understandable since a bunch of HDDs in an “ordinary” PCs is a thing of yesteryear, with the overall DIY market strongly moving towards nvme. 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. 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.
This showcases how the inside of the Fractal Design Node 804 is sectioned as we’ll get into shortly. The left-side panel has an acrylic window and underneath the chassis, you’ll locate two additional dust filters. With all fans installed, the case will have negative pressure. Highly effective dual chamber case layout for best possible cooling with excellent water cooling compatibility, supporting up to four radiators simultaneously Compared to other PC cases, there’s little difference in the performance of this processor. The available fan mounts ensure ample airflow is achieved, even if the front panel is a little restricting. Fractal Design Node 804: Competition NZXT H7 Elite. (Source: NAS Master) The most common types of Motherboards are ATX, though Micro-ATX (mATX) and Mini-ITX (mITX) motherboards are extremely common as well. In rare cases, E-ATX Motherboards are used as well, but they’re generally less common than ATX, mATX, or mITX.
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.
There is an access hole in the inner case frame which makes bringing in the 8 pin 12v EPS cable to the top of the motherboard much easier. Nice touch, Fractal. Having a look inside from the main chamber and there is plenty of room and options to make sure users are getting the most out of the Node 804 and have an enjoyable experience. If you look closely you can see room for up to 5x fans in the main chamber alone! There is also a nice cutout to help make switching CPU coolers/installation a bit easier and plenty of room to pass cables from the front chamber to the rear and vice versa. Top: 1 x 240mm (over motherboard compartment) and 1 x 240mm / 280mm radiators (over drive compartment) It might also be what pre-built NAS devices have done to people’s perception, but when you use the Node 804 to build a NAS, it feels like you’re building a NAS. Nothing against more traditional cases, but the Node 804 is large enough to provide the hard drives needed for a NAS, and small enough to throw in the corner and not think about. I love this case.
What I did personally was take off both side panels, the front and top as well as removed the hard drive cages. Getting the Node 804 down to the bare frame was the easiest way I could imagine to do things and it worked out great. Even things like installing the Corsair H80i, which can be a pain in some bigger cases were easy enough to do like this, overall a very enjoyable experience. On the front of the main chamber is space for 2x fans, 1 of which comes pre-installed. Also removing the front panel will give access to the dust filter when it comes time to clean it. Cases for NAS devices are generally smaller form factor, meaning they’re either designed to be extremely small (in the case of ITX-only cases) or look more like a cube so they can maximize hard drive space. When you’re looking to build a NAS, you really have to try and understand what your goals are first. Network-attached storage cases can have special features like hot-swappable bays, small form factors (mATX or ITX), or even tons of hard drive bays. We’ll focus on the best NAS cases to use in this article.Fractal Design is a staple name in the PC case market. The Swedish brand has been making sleek-looking cases for many years and we’ve only recently taken a look at the Node 804. This is a Mini Tower case designed with storage in mind, making it an ideal candidate for a DIY NAS. 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. When you get all of that out of the way, the Define 7 XL can be viewed as potentially the best case on this list, mainly because more hard drives for a NAS means more redundancy, storage pools, etc.
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. Fractal Design is a company that manufactures PC cases, fans, power supplies and water-cooled CPU coolers. With their headquarters in Sweden, they pride themselves on listening to their customer base and are always striving to reach their goal of providing functional, efficient and sleek Scandinavian-designed products. They refer to themselves as similar to the IKEA of the PC world and even go on to say “ In the world of computer components, there is only one name you should know, Fractal Design.”I thought about top mounting the fans to pull the air upwards, but you can’t use top fan mounts with the drive bays installed. Stripping the case down to it’s skeleton form and we can see most of the options the case has to offer. Plenty of space for fans, radiators and hard drives galore if that is your thing! If not, Fractal Design have made it easy to use the Node 804 for more of a simplistic build if you desire.
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