Gadgetory

welcome to our review of the fractal design node 202 we first checked out this case quite some time ago at Computex 2016 and have actually had it in the office for a while but the release has been a little Wong KO as in to say actually buying the case has been a bit of an issue seriously there is even a reddit thread with people discussing if it even exists now that it does seem to exist for people looking to buy it let's take a closer look I by powers revolt 2 has been redesigned from the ground up to utilize its small form factor to hold the power you need to game with confidence check out the link in the video description to learn more you can see right off the bat of the form factor is quite small when laying flat it has a width of 377 millimeters a height of 146 millimeters and a depth of 47 millimeters this case is designed for sfx power supplies up to 130 millimeters long ITX motherboards and standard sized graphics cards or 310 by 145 by 47 millimeters graphics cards that was a lot of specific dimensions and there's a reason for that the density of this case is pretty damn high not the highest but high enough that it doesn't really allow for a ton of play in terms of what you can put inside if you're interested in this case you should be checking the dimensions of the components that you're planning to put inside of it this isn't a shot at the case at all it's just a heads up that you need to be aware of its limitations during your planning phase starting at the front of the case you have two USB 3.0 Jack's in a black finish dual audio jacks for your headphone and microphone and an illuminated power button just to the right of said Jack's there's also a fractal logo on the right hand side which looks a little odd when you set the case up vertically but fits right in when it's placed flat looking around the case is pretty standard fair fractal went with an unsurprising matte finish all around and definitely didn't skimp on breathability with mesh area scattered around everywhere that they might be useful moving on to the inside of the case we see an elegant yet simplistic setup comprised of three main zones the power supply ize little area the motherboard split off and the graphics cards whole section all have their own kind of areas like I said if you go for the option that includes a power supply you'll be equipped with a 450 watt Integra which should be able to handle basically everything modern that you would throw inside this case the power supply area also somewhat supports a little bit of cable management room just in front so you can stuff some of your extra cables away and leave some breathing room for the air coolers on your CPU and GPU you will very likely need this cable management area unless you plan on stuffing all of the spare cables under the graphics card because some of the even included cables are hella long I don't know why someone would need a USB 3.0 internal header cable that if you stood to these cases beside each other would be able to be plugged into the other one that being said at least it is a blacked out cable if you do spring for the included power supply and get the included cables that are kind of straight out of 2005 with colors all over the place that may be a little bit disappointing although it also may be fair considering that there is a lack of a side window the motherboard area is fairly unsurprising although it does support the start of the PCI Express riser card you might notice that in the gland footage that the screw holes for ours are a little bit off feel free to ignore this completely this is a pre-production sample and they have revised this part of the case so that this is no longer an issue on the graphics card side of the case you naturally have the installation area for the graphics card an angled support bracket which you can move around to support whatever kind of graphics card you decide to put in there and some shared room for the front IO cables there's also a bunch of extra room under the graphics card for support for 120 millimeter fans two of them straddling the middle support bar of the case is an SSD cage that you can mount two drives in this cage is relatively easy to get to the only drawback is that the cable management of installing an SSD on the graphics card side of the case is a little messy there are fan filters but some of them are rather difficult to get to the filter for the power supply on the GPU are only accessible if you take the case apart completely I mean taking the top off and the bottom off although I must say that they are I am happy that they're included and last but not least is the stand it's fairly standard fare sorry for the pun it's made out of plastic and is actually quite solid it does an adequate job of keeping the case standing upright there's a little rubber feet on the bottom four of them one in each corner and they do an adequate job of keeping it from sliding around the desk it looks fine but you can do something that hardware conducts data in their video which i think is quite awesome I'm just going to call them out if you place it down and then the put the case down horizontal on top of it it makes it kind of look like the case is levitating it looks super cool in conclusion the note 202 is clean quite dense and even slightly cheaper than the rv0 1 from Silverstone in terms of positioning I think fractal did a great job for price and what you get with it it didn't exactly knock my socks off but I also wasn't expecting it to these small ITX cases that still support full sized graphics cards are actually quite attractive right now and there's a fair amount of them the idea that a tiny case with a tiny GPU like an AR 9 nano is awesome but still not catering to what most people's desires are so I think this was the right direction to go thanks for watching guys if this video sucks you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or even consider becoming a contributor on our forum or supporting us directly by using an affiliate code to shop on Amazon buying a cool t-shirt like this one with a direct monthly contribution to the forum again I don't know why you'd get to I just felt like saying it twice it's probably fine if you're wondering what to watch next click this button to see a mystery video I really just definitely forgot to write this part of the script so I'm gonna give teryn a lake oculus versus vive Taryn just said so it's going to be that video there we go cool