Corsair 250D vs Fractal Design Node 304

Dawelio

Active member
Hey guys,

So I recently purchased the Corsair 250D for sort of re-doing my current system, as it's an ATX system and it's more than I need and I also moved to a smaller room in my house, so looking for space efficiency and going mITX now.

Although, yesterday I came across the Fractal Design Node 304 and it has a quite sleek look to it, while being smaller than the 250D.

My "concerns", are that there is quite a small amount of intake in the front, it's something like it on the 250D as well, but just wanted to hear your guys thought on this part?...

Also, the 2nd thing that has sort made me question my decision on the 250D, is that I might/probably will change this system from an "all day/gaming PC" to an media PC/server. And due to it's bigger storage solution on the Node 304, it caught my attention.
I currently have 4 x 4GB Corsair Vengeance RAM in my system and have gotten as stated below. (I don't know how much ram a server would require)... I just would like to have a small, private, home server which I can store movies etc on and control through my "main pc", which I'll be getting later on.

My specs are these:

Intel Core i7 2600K 3.4GHz
ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe
Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2GB
16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro 1600MHz
Silverstone 650W short PSU with short cable kit
Samsung EVO 250GB & Corsair Force Series 3 180GB SSDs
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB

I apologize if this got quite alot, but wanted to give you guys sort of an overview, so you can give the best possible help and advice. In terms of "now" use and "future" use.

Thanks!
 
If you already have the 250D then there's not much point swapping to a different case right now. Especially since it supports 2x 3.5" hard drives, which you can purchase in up to 4TB capacity each these days.

Also; all mITX motherboard only have 2 RAM slots, so you'll only be able to fit half your 4x4GB kit in there.
 
If you already have the 250D then there's not much point swapping to a different case right now. Especially since it supports 2x 3.5" hard drives, which you can purchase in up to 4TB capacity each these days.

Also; all mITX motherboard only have 2 RAM slots, so you'll only be able to fit half your 4x4GB kit in there.

All this pretty much sums it up. You already have the 250D. No sense in wasting money unless you intend on using the 304 as a server. As Feronix pointed out, since you only have 2 DIMM slots on ITX you can save a little bit of money taking 2 sticks for each system instead of having to buy more ram.

Though for a private home server it doesn't take much at all regards to hardware. You'd be fine with 4GB of ram and an i3.. I would recommend AMD low end CPUs(like the 860k) but they are limited in motherboard options.
 
Back
Top