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welcome to my unboxing and first look at fractal designs update to one of my

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favorite like awesomely cool cases that I really liked ever the array R2 so the

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array R2 was unique because it was a mini ITX enclosure that was capable of

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housing an expansion card such as a raid card I did an ultimate Windows Home

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Server build in the array AR a while back it was an all aluminum chassis

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which had the advantage of being lightweight but the disadvantage of

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being relatively fragile and very expensive and it could also house six

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hard drives in spite of its incredibly small size this is the node 304 so the

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node 304 Builds on that impressive

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lineage and updates it to make it more cost effective as well as to add the

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capability to install high-end graphics cards something the array R2 was not

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capable of doing so it comes with a hard foam

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however it's a very small very light case so in this situation I wouldn't

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worry about it too much it does seem to be a little bit bigger than the array R2

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but that or yeah the array R2 that is to be expected given that it's well

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supports more stuff okay so there's a thing in the event of something

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something call us and something okay users manual good stuff cool beans all

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right got some plastic

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here okay very excited about this though guys very excited indeed the ray2 also

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had a fairly outdated IO set so this one

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updates all of that so we've got uh

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indicator power LED fractal design logo very tasteful very small uh brushed

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metal front which looks fantastic it's is it metal yeah it's metal um power

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button is on the side two USB 3.0 ports headphone and microphone ports intake

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vent on this side which uh ah yes so

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this one's on this side for a good reason or this like this one's small on

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this side for a good reason you want most of the intake coming in over where

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your graphics card is going to be if you do opt to put in a large graphics card

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the bottom of the case has a nice big fan filter which you can see is is that

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magnetic hold on no it just comes in uh

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just pops into these little Clips right there if feels good feels nice and snug so once you put it in it's not much

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effort to remove it but then once it's there it's not going to go anywhere

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accidentally or anything nice big rubber feet 1 2 3 four of those so once you put

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it down it's going to be quite stationary at the back you're going to

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find yes a 140 mm fan very good stuff

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and fractal has also ensured that this fan is going to be compatible with

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liquid cooling solution so you can use something like an h60 for example in

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this this case without any difficulty

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thumb screws are uh hand tight which is nice it's nice to be able to remove

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these without running and fetching a screwdriver so let's go ahead and pull

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this off so it uses kind of a modular design inside to here hold on first this

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is very well built this feels very sturdy compared to uh sort of some of

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the lower-end ITX enclosures that I've looked at over the last little while

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this is a removable filter right here so you'll be able to pop that off clean it

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and put it back uh this one does not have the removable filter however most

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of your intake like I said before you're going to want to come through this side

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anyway so you're cooling off that graphics card so let's talk about the

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modular interface inside so this one can still house up to six hard drives two in

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each of these cages which hopefully I

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will be able to remove you know what I'm going to need my

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screwdriver all right there we go loosen them with the screwdriver so like I said

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each of these can hold two 3 and 1/2 in

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or 2 and 1/2 in drives it's compatible with either and once you remove ah here

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we go one more once you remove this one you can install up to a

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310 mm graphics card so that's over

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that's yeah over 12 in actually so you could even take something like a GTX uh

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580 would be a great example of a longer is graphics card and it'll go in there

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very very comfortably see that no hassle whatsoever and you're going to have an

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intake directly coming over the card so you can see the way they position the

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fan here it's going to be blowing over the front somewhat also this intake fan

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here is going to be able to suck air directly from that vent that's right

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next to it so you're not going to have to worry about your graphics card temperatures like you do with many ITX

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enclosures so the way the hard drive mounting works is actually quite clever

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so you screw the hard drives in from either side and then they'll sit facing

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opposite directions inside these cages and you take the whole thing and lower

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it into the case I'm going to leave this one out for now though just so oh yeah and they're using rubber isolating

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mounts so that's really nice and there's a plane flying overhead so hopefully you

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guys can hear me okay uh let's finish up with the uh with a look at the rest of

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the inside you might have noticed already the absence

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of a sorry I've drawn a blank here right

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the absence of a 5 and a/4 in drive so I

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don't know if you're anything like me you're probably not using a 5 and a/4 in

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Drive anymore or you can just get I mean they're like 15 20 bucks just get an

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external one for those few situations where you do need one

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and I think especially for an ITX space saving design like this it's probably

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the right choice ventilation for the front comes from here as well as the

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bottom so I'm just going to peel this off so you can see those 2 92 mm fans

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which have a removable if I can figure out how to remove it whatever I'm sure

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there's a way so they have a removable fan filter on top of them that you'll be

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able to take off and clean this is quite easy to remove and all the cables are

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let's see I think oh some of these look oh yeah no not permanently attached so

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if you ever wanted to I don't know change them or you broke them accidentally or something you'd be able

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to deal with that let's go ahead and throw this back on

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here there we go uh rest of the Interior so let's figure out where the power

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supply goes aha full ATX power supply

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bam take that other small form factor enclosures because the ITX board goes

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here and then they've routed internally a power cable right here

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that's going to go into the back of your power supply which sits here that is why

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you have that vent on the other side because that is the exhaust for the back

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of your power supply so intake for the power supply comes up through that

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filtered intake on the bottom you're going to want to use a power supply with

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a bottom mounted 120 or 140 mm fan for

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this particular case you can actually have up to quite a long power supply

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without running into any difficulty see they've got foam isol uh noise isolating

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mounts here here and well here and here

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to keep it from putting any undue pressure on the mounting mechanism and

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that is that is actually outstanding I love that very very very Innovative

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design so they put the power supply right under the drives and then you've

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got your ITX board then you got your long graphics card so as long as your

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power supply isn't super super long I mean You' be still be able to have you

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know something about this long like not bad at all then you won't have any

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trouble fitting all the hardware you could want in this tiny little enclosure

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including liquid cooling should you so desire it and all the fans are

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controlled from this uh high medium low

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built-in fan speed adapter here at the back and I think that pretty much covers

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it thank you for checking out my unboxing of the extremely exciting and

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very cool fractal design node 304 which as I mentioned before is also extremely

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well built I mean these are thick steel right here your hard drives aren't going

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anywhere don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews

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