Gadgetory

welcome to my unboxing and first look at fractal designs update to one of my favorite like awesomely cool cases that I really liked ever the array r2 so the array r2 was unique because it was a mini ITX enclosure that was capable of housing an expansion card such as a rape part I did an ultimate Windows Home Server built in the array are two a while back it was an all aluminum chassis which has the advantage of being lightweight but the disadvantage of being relatively fragile and very expensive and it could also house six hard drives in spite of its incredibly small size this is the node three or four so the node three or four builds on that impressive lineage and updates it to make it more cost-effective as well as to add the capability to install high-end graphics cards something the array r2 was not capable of doing so it comes with a hard foam however it's a very small very light case so in this solution I wouldn't worry about it too much it does seem to be a little bit bigger than the array are to but that yeah of the array or to that is to be expected given that it's well the supports more stuff okay so there's a thing in the event of something something call us in something ok users manual good stuff cool beans all right got some plastic here ok very excited about this though guys very excited indeed the array r2 also had a fairly outdated IO set so this one updates all of that so we've got indicator power LED fractal design logo very tasteful very small brushed metal front which looks fantastic it's in is it metal yeah it's metal power button is on the side two USB 3.0 ports headphone and microphone ports intake vent on this side which ah yes so this one's on this side for a good reason like this one's small on this side for a good reason you want most of the intake coming in over where your graphics card is going to be if you do opt to put in a large graphics card at the bottom of the case has a nice big fan filter which you can see is that magnetic hold on no it just comes in and just pops into these little Clips right there it feels good feels nice and snug so once you put it in it's not much effort to remove it but then once it's there it's not going to go anywhere accidentally or anything nice big rubber feet one two three four of those so once you put it down it's going to be quite stationary at the back you're going to find yes a 140 millimeter fan very good stuff and fractal has also ensured that this fan is going to be compatible with liquid cooling solutions so you can use something like an h-60 for example in this case without any difficulty thumb screws are hand tight which is nice nice to be able to remove these out running and fetching screwdrivers let's go ahead and pull this off so use this kind of a modular design inside to here hold on first this is very well built this feels very sturdy compared to sort of some of the lower end ITX enclosures that i've looked at over the last little while this is a removable filter right here so you'll be able to pop that off clean it and put it back this one does not have the removable filter however most of your intake like I said before you're going to want to come through this side anyway so your cooling off that graphics card so let's talk about the modular interface inside so this one can still house up to six hard drives - in each of these cages which hopefully I will be able to remove you know what I'm going to be my screwdriver all right there we go loosen them with the screwdriver so like I said each of these can hold two three and a half inch or two and a half inch drives it's compatible with either and once you remove properly goes one more once you remove this one you can install up to a three hundred and ten millimeter graphics card so that's over let's yeah over 12 inches actually so you could even take something like a GTX 580 to be a great example of a longer edge graphics card and it'll go in there very very comfortable you see that hassle whatsoever and you're going to have an intake directly coming over the cart so you can see the way they position the fan here it's going to be blowing over the front somewhat also this intake fan here is going to be able to suck air directly from that vent that's right next to it so you're not going to have to worry about your graphics card temperatures like you do with many ITX enclosures so the way the harddrive mounting works is actually quite clever so you screw the hard drives in from either side and then they'll sit facing opposite directions inside these cages and you take the whole thing and lower it into the case I'm going to leave this one out for now though just so oh yeah they're using rubber isolating mounts so that's really nice and there's a plane flying overhead so hopefully you guys can hear me ok let's finish up with the look at the rest of the inside you might have noticed already the absence of a sorry I've drawn a blank here right the absence of a five and a quarter inch drive so I don't know if you're anything like me you're probably not using a five and a quarter inch drive anymore or you can just get I mean they're like 15 20 bucks just get an external one for those few situations where you do need one and I think especially for an ITX space-saving design like this it's probably the right choice ventilation for the front comes from here as well as the bottom so I'm just going to peel this off so you can see those two 92 millimeter fans which have a removable if I can figure out how to remove it but if I'm sure there's a way so they have a removable fan filter on top of them that you'll be able to take off and clean this is quite easy to remove and all the cables are let's see I think some of these look oh yeah no not permanently attached so if you ever wanted to not enou change them or you broke them accidentally or something you'd be able to deal with that let's go ahead and throw this back on here there we go rest of the interior so let's figure out what the power supply goes AHA full ATX power supply BAM take that other small form-factor enclosures because the ITX board goes here and then they've routed internally a power cable right here that's going to go into the back of your power supply which sits here that is why you have that vent on the other side because that is the exhaust for the back of your power supply so intake for the our supply comes up through that filtered intake on the bottom you're going to want to use a power supply with a bottom mounted 120 or 140 millimeter fan for this particular case you can actually have up to quite a long power supply without running into any difficulty see they've got foam ISIL nose isolating mounts here here and well here and here to keep it from putting any undue pressure on the mounting mechanism and that is that is actually outstanding I love that very very very innovative design so they put the power supply right under the drives and then you've got your ITX board and you got your long graphics card so as long as your power supplies and super super long I mean you could still be able to have you know something about this long like not bad at all then you won't have any trouble fitting all the hardware you could want in this tiny little enclosure including liquid cooling should you so desire it and all the fans are controlled from this high medium low built-in fan speed adapter here at the back and I think that pretty much covers it thank you for checking out my unboxing of the extremely exciting and very cool fractal design note 304 which as I mentioned before is also extremely well built I mean these are thick steel right here your hard drives aren't going anywhere don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips for unboxings reviews and other computer videos