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FRACTAL DESIGN was good enough to send us its Node 304 case
for this build, which may be an aging model, but we were glamored
by it s teeny- weeny ne s s. It’s sur pr isingly dif ficult to find an I T X for m
factor case that can fit lots of hard drives in it; the Node 304 has
room for six 3.5-inch drives, but is no bigger than two shoeboxes,
so is ideal for hiding under the stairs. It’s a little tricky to work with
if you have a large heatsink, but it has excellent airflow, with two
fans at the front and a large fan at the back. It’s always tempting
to opt for cheaper components, or even second-hand ones—
and that’s what we did, using an MSI-88X AC motherboard and
an Athlon A10-7800K APU, circa 2014. Integrated graphics are
certainly de rigueur here, because this device will probably run
headless for most of its life. We used three 1TB Hitachi drives and
a spare 240GB SSD for OMV. This is entirely overkill, because the
initial installation is only around half a gigabyte, but we can use
that space for something later. To get OMV installed, we used the
cross-platform Etcher utility (https://etcher.io) to write the ISO to
a USB stick. You can download said ISO from the OMV website.
We got OMV to set our drives up as a RAID 5 array, having a total
capacity of 2TB, and the ability to rebuild itself if any one of the
drives fails. Power-wise, we used a Be Quiet! Pure Power 11,
capable of delivering a totally unnecessary 650W. Again, we just
used what was to hand, and so can you.
THE FRACTAL DESIGN NODE 304 CASE is small, but
perfectly formed. It takes a little bit of deft fingerwork
in places, but if you don’t use a crazy tall heatsink like
us, there’s actually plenty of room to work with. First,
remove the thumbscrews and gently slide back the
case’s hood, before lifting it over the chassis and putting
it somewhere out of harm’s reach. Next, remove the
white hard drive caddies, which are each secured with
two thumbscrews and a top-facing regular screw.
Before you proceed, look at how the SATA, fan, and ATX
connectors are arranged on the motherboard, and think
about how best to route cables. If you’re going to use all
three drive bays, think very hard about this, because
it’s difficult to envisage how little space will be left to
accommodate anything once they’re in place. Remove
the 140mm fan from the rear of the case, otherwise
getting the motherboard in will be tricky at best.WE OPTED TO FIT the CPU and heatsink before interring
the motherboard in the case. This is usually the best
way to do things, because it can be tricky accessing the
heatsink mounting screws from outside. Unfortunately,
the combination of large heatsink and small case
made life a little sweary later on; the Node 304 can
accommodate coolers up to 165mm high, and the Hyper
212 stands at about 160mm. You’ll want to unclip the
fan from the heatsink before fitting it, so that it doesn’t
obstruct access to the mounting screws. Depending
on your CPU choice, a long screwdriver may be handy,
because the mounting screws may end up pretty close
to the (thoughtfully grooved) corners of the heatsink.
Fitting it to the old FM2+ socket, in particular, required a
little more force than we were comfortable with, but it’s
probably easier on newer CPU sockets. Reattach the fan,
and don’t forget to connect it to the motherboard.CASE IN POINT A TALL ORDER
INGREDIENTSPART STREET PRICECase Fractal Design Node 304 $82Motherboard MSI A88XI AC $40 (pre-owned)CPU Athlon A10-7800K $50 (pre-owned)CPU Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition $35GPU Integrated $0Memory 2x 2GB Corsair XMS3 $30 (pre-owned)PSU Be Quiet! 650W $100Storage (OS) Intel DC S3510 240GB $50 (pre-owned)Storage (RAID) 3x Hitachi 1TB drives $105OS OpenMediaVault $0Tot al $492REUSE AND RECYCLE