Fractal Node 804 Case Review: Companion Cube

Unlike the cake, this Fractal Design cube-like case is not a lie. Fractal started selling their Node 804 case a good number of years ago, and won the praise of reviewers over time. The Node 804 is still a high quality product, still with a variety of excellent use cases in 2020 – if you can pardon the “case” pun. After tearing the case down, working with its various configurations and building a system in it; with future plans for a bigger build-out, I can see why Fractal is still making it.

Competition

The Fractal Node 804 is a mini-ITX or micro-ATX cube enclosure that competes with the likes of the Thermaltake V21, Coolermaster HAF XB or the slightly taller (but yet to be released at the time of writing) small tower SilverStone CS330. The Node 804 is bulkier in comparison to its smaller sibling, the Node 304, and other mini-ITX only cases like the SilverStone DS380B. There are a few other notable cube-like cases, but the Fractal Node 804 hits a real sweet spot with both flexibility and internal capacity and one other hold-over feature that might appeal to the HTPC crowd: the capacity to host an optical media drive.

Exterior

Fractal created a handsome case design with the Node 804 which has physical characteristics that evoke the best memories of your Scandinavian-style dorm room mini-fridge. (Good times…) The Node 804 has tight panel fit and finish my fridge could only dream about. If you tucked this case in with your living room media gear, the aesthetic would be akin to a “subwoofer” or high end monster amplifier. The exterior alone could make for an attractive and imposing HTPC rig setup. The gently curved front is a mix of dark brushed aluminum, and the air intake has a smooth finish perforated screen. It looks and feels both premium and substantial. The removable top is almost entirely composed of a similar perforated screen, and looks … grate? Overall the cubist case is about 12” tall, 13.5” wide, and just over 15” deep.

The external front ports and controls are tucked neatly out of sight off to the right front side, and all physically stay with the front panel. The lack of a distinct reset switch is unfortunate, but not terrible. Finding the power button from the front is made easier by following around the front seam line found between the aluminum panel and lower air intake. Perhaps that was designed in…

Two standard type A USB 3 ports and separate headphone and microphone jacks round out the “front” panel I/O area.

The left side panel is windowed, but the case does show its age here: the clear panel is plexiglass or polycarbonate. More modern Fractal cases offer a choice of dark or light tempered glass. This window will be subject to scratching and damage over time, but at least it was fully protected with peel off film when it shipped.

The top and side panels are held in place with thumbscrews and easily slide off towards the rear. The front panel is retained by plastic pegs and pops off with a firm pull. After removing all 4 panels (top, sides and front), the chassis is left with metal framing and easy access to the interior chambers. The side panels are not swappable.

Interior

The Node 804 is bundled with an extensive hardware kit, extra HDD vibration dampers, mounting screws, and a few small cable ties. There is also a comprehensive User Guide which nicely illustrates the build steps, fitment and equipment options and even includes detailed panel dimensions with mounting hole offsets. It is one of the better case manuals I have seen, neatly showing off radiator and fan position options using detailed colored diagrams.

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.

Starting with the front panel, there’s room for two 2.5” SSDs behind a plastic cage, and a mounting area for an old skool laptop-style BluRay or DVD slot loading drive. If you happen to be so inclined, Fractal includes the mounting bracket and very small screws for such a thing in the hardware kit. This could be a real positive for those wanting to occasionally watch that kind of media not-yet-migrated-to-a-media-server or found online. Maybe even for accessing older backups? Anyway, it’s not a common feature and was a nice to see, as there are still legit uses for it. You would likely need a small cable like the one from StarTech, pictured below, to convert from laptop optical drive to desktop SATA wiring.

While working with the front panel, I ran into one minor quality issue when the power / activity LED separated from its home on the edge of the panel. It was easily fixed; the adhesive was still tacky enough to just press it back where it belonged.

In addition to the support for up to a micro-ATX sized motherboard, the Node 804 easily provides for up to 8 3.5” HDD’s in the right hand chamber, in addition to the aforementioned two 2.5” drives. The floor of the motherboard side of the case has mounting holes for 2 additional 3.5” or 2.5” drives for a total capacity of 12 internal drive locations; not bad at all. YMMV depending on cooling configuration and PCI-E cards; check the case build guide to research your ambitions. In short, adding radiators to any internal location where they can fit – 120’s, 240’s even a 280mm rad – will necessitate removal or moving of certain components like drive cages, sacrificing serviceability or limiting options like the length of a GPU.

Maximum GPU length is 320mm minus the width of whatever is installed in the front lower fan opening. A triple-slot style GPU would be possible, but the space becomes tight at that point.

On the power supply and drive side of the Node 804, the drive cages are easily removed after removing the ever-present thumbscrews. The cages are well finished, metal and substantial. The disks hang vertically after mounting, and with air flow designed to move front to back between the drives, there is a reasonable chance that cooling will work. The included fan is configured as exhaust only, so an additional front fan seems helpful if you plan to stack up the disks in this chamber. IMO, spring for the extra fan and go push / pull in that chamber if you run fat stacks of drives.

Both chambers are configurable to run with up to two 120mm front intake fans (four total). The motherboard side will accommodate a 120mm exhaust, while the drive cage side can have up to a 140mm exhaust. You’ll want to note that the easiest intake path is from the lower 1/3 along the front, while the fans ship in the “high” position where the hottest components will likely reside in the case. We might find that as an issue when we heat it up during testing.

That’s not to say that the case is not well vented, because it certainly is.

Speaking of fans, the Node 804 includes three Fractal Design Silent Series R2 120mm fans, which can be plugged into the included fan controller, which was another interesting addition. Note there is a maximum of three fans on the included controller. The fan controller is powered via a SATA connector, and has 3 external manually adjustable settings labeled as High, Medium, and Low. With the three fans running off this controller, I found Low to be practically inaudible, Medium to be barely detectable within a few feet, and High to be I’m-probably-overclocking-here whooshy but not loud. Removable and cleanable dust filters are at the front intake and below the power supply. To be removed, the power supply air filter must go forward; removal is blocked rearwards by one of the chassis feet. The entire top is essentially a metal grate and filter but it does not come apart; the filter material is between the metal and plastic slats.

Test Build

The components for the test build are based on what I had on hand combined with my future plans for the Fractal Node 804 and the desire to test out various options to build something that could be challenging for both thermals and noise.

Build Comments & Observations

• There is not a lot of room to work within the area behind the front cover, and fully populating it with drives will be somewhat difficult due to all the cable routing.
• With drives hung above, using an SFX power supply in that compartment was a calculated decision to provide necessary room for cabling. That part worked well, however I discovered that the SFX supply is bundled with shorter cabling, and due to having to route power to the other side of the case, there is no slack in the 24 motherboard power bundle. Addition of a short extension would make sense there.
• 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.
• The orientation of the slot loading optical player necessitates loading media seemingly upside-down, with the printed, non-readable, side facing towards the back of the case.
• Cable management can be a bit tricky, as the only place to pass a lot of cabling sight unseen is across the top of the case.
• 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.
• The Node 804 is easy to pick up and move around, is a great size for what you can pack within, and internally is quite adaptable.

Thermals and Noise

This is a single stimulus testing scenario, purely relative to the environment. Note that the build components were selected partially to create a challenging situation. Compute loads were also purely synthetic in nature and again, subject to the environment in how the system dealt with it.

The CPU and GPU in this build are capable of producing quite a bit more performance and a corresponding amount heat to go with it. This test was with stock clocks, so the temps and noise would be repeatable and comparable. The only tweak was turning on XMP for the memory.

Low Fan = manual fan control switch in the “Low Speed” position, High Fan = manual fan control in the “High Speed” position.

Important note, on the noise measurement is that they were taken at what I considered closest possible seating position (36″) so they are not really comparable in any sense to other noise measurements. The case fan noise in the chart should illustrate a few things:

1. Blower style GPU coolers are very loud, still.  They will not be denied.
2. The Node 804 case fans at high speed can easily drown out the Scythe Mugen 5 at full chat
3. The fixed slow speed of the included case fans do a remarkably fine job of controlling temps with little noise above ambient. See previous chart also.
4. The fixed slow speed is nicely quiet.
5. The Fractal Node 804 may not look like it will breathe well due to that 2/3 solid front face, but it actually does a very reasonable job.

Conclusion

The Fractal Node 804 is a high quality, flexible case with a minimalistic appearance which is not out of place — even 5+ years after it was originally introduced. There are few elements that could be made more modern, but I found it fun to build within, as it was both easy and required some thoughtfulness at the same time. If you have a complex build, plan carefully. The seemingly wide-open motherboard and drive chambers fill up surprisingly quickly, and cable routing and neat management can be tough. The flexible and quiet Fractal Node 804 would make for a top notch NAS home or living room build.

Future Plans

This particular post is focused on the review of the Fractal Node 804 case itself, but we are on the way towards something bigger. The plan is to fully build a NAS in the Node 804, with 10Gbe networking, an additional inexpensive LSI SATA controller, a more modest GPU, cache drives, and plenty of TBs of storage and then allow Unraid to run roughshod all over it. We will have Docker containers, VM’s with hardware passthrough, performance tweaks, network backups, and recommended configurations. Oh, and all the trials and mistakes made along the way, that’s probably the best part. So please look for that upcoming series in the our new Articles section in the coming weeks, thanks!