Fractal Design Node 605 HTPC Case Review

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Here we take a look at Fractal design's HTPC case. Able to take ATX motherboards and full size GPUs, the Node 605 certainly appears to have what it takes.

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[Feronix]

^Better

This might be a nice case for my dads pc that I'll be building in a few months... he wants something really compact. I'll have to read through this once I get home!

 

[FTLN]

Nice review, im loving fractals gear from the past year or so.

Any idea if a h100 could fit along the left hand side ?

(edit)

I guess it should looking at the specs - 164mm height and the h100 rad is 120mm, might need a bit of modding though...

 

[yggdrasil]

Who the heck has a VHS now days?

But it does look like a nice clean and functional/preforming case.
Not often you get them all together you either have looks or air flow.
Nice review.

 

[CPMFW]

nice review as always...
the case just looks amazing, it would be ideal for a htpc

 

[elarchidos]

Water cooling possible?

I really would be interested whether space between Mobo and inner-side of the case is wide enough to fit 27mm deep radiator for water AIO cooling. I would place a fan outside with dust filter on top of It. I did write to Fractal Design, unfortunately no response. Would reviewer be so kind to measure It for us? posible

 

[G-Dubs]

I really would be interested whether space between Mobo and inner-side of the case is wide enough to fit 27mm deep radiator for water AIO cooling. I would place a fan outside with dust filter on top of It. I did write to Fractal Design, unfortunately no response. Would reviewer be so kind to measure It for us? posible

Hi. A pleasure to help but the news is not good I'm afraid. The gap is actually 26mm with the motherboard I have used. Just enough room for a fan and a tiny gap to the edge of the mobo. a 27mm deep rad is probably a no go unless you were prepared to shave a bit of the edge of your mobo. Even if the distance were great enough you'd still have to factor in the lugs on the ports of the rad which tend to stock out a bit more than the rest of the body. Youcan see the size of the gap betweeen the 25mm thick fan and the mobo on the first 2 images of page 5 of the review.

If you wanted to you could easiy mod the side of the case to accept both the rad and the fan externally, or even round the back by modding one of the 80mm fan grills.

 

[andrevautour]

I love the look of this!

 

[PsyTech]

Neat case. Something that one of my co-workers was looking for, should recommend. ^_^

 

[Koolzy]

For guys that likes horizontal cases is very beautiful and nice choice... Thumbs up for the review

 

[dragoonk]

That is one... beautiful.. case! I absolutely love cases that have that brushed aluminium finish to it and then painted black. Looks very high quality, not flashy, not vulgar, it doesn't feel cheap, it doesn't have all those plastic attachments and weird shapes. it looks just like a high quality, beautifully crafted out of massive wood, piece of furniture. And look at that power button. Really nice case.

 

[elarchidos]

Hi. A pleasure to help but the news is not good I'm afraid. The gap is actually 26mm with the motherboard I have used. Just enough room for a fan and a tiny gap to the edge of the mobo. a 27mm deep rad is probably a no go unless you were prepared to shave a bit of the edge of your mobo. Even if the distance were great enough you'd still have to factor in the lugs on the ports of the rad which tend to stock out a bit more than the rest of the body. Youcan see the size of the gap betweeen the 25mm thick fan and the mobo on the first 2 images of page 5 of the review.

If you wanted to you could easiy mod the side of the case to accept both the rad and the fan externally, or even round the back by modding one of the 80mm fan grills.

Thanks for reply. I have to buy this case, as It's only one witch fits hand luggage and has space for ATX mobo. I'll go with rad outside and fan inside, modding the case. This way I can even use deeper/more efficient rad and leave noisy fan inside. The question remains, whether to suck cool air into the case or blow a bit warm air out through the rad.

 

[G-Dubs]

Ah the old suck or blow question. Best thing to do is try both. We'd like to see your results. In reality won't make that much of a difference probably.

You could perhaps argue that a lot depends in this case as to whether you're going to be running a toasty GPU in the case. If you are i'd have the fans sucking cool air in as it won't heat up too much coming over the rad and will extracted along with the hot air from the gpu on the other side. If you're not running a hot GPU then i'd be tempted to go for blowing air out from inside as the air going over the rad won't be too hot.


Love the reason for buying the case Hand luggage,not heard that one before

 

[LaRocK]

Suitable air cooler

Great review of the case. I bought one recently for a bit of a monster gaming build, seems nuts I know but space is an issue. The build is Node 605, motherboard is an asus maximus v gene, i7-3770k cpu, corsair dominator platinum 16gb (2x8) ram, EVGA 680 superclocked GFX. I unfortunately already made the mistake of buying a corsair h80i cpu cooler and will be sending it back as I now know it won't fit. Do you have any recommendations for a suitable air cooler. Fractal say maximum height on cooler should be 125mm so I was thinking of a Noctua NH-U9B SE2 CPU Cooler (fns are pretty hideous looking though ^^). I'm hoping it wont obstruct the GFX card slot or the corsair ram I have on the maximus gene. Any help or other suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[rost333]

Asus motherboard used in this project

Hi!

What motherboard was used in this project? I can see it's Asus, but what model?

Thx for your answer!

 

[dalewakelin]

Hi!

What motherboard was used in this project? I can see it's Asus, but what model?

Thx for your answer!

ASUS P6TD Deluxe.