I'm going to start this video with a quote from our new employee, Taran. Is
that a printer? The answer is no. In fact, it is a computer. Cube cases are
back in fashion, and Fractal Design has thrown their hat into the
proverbial box to compete with the existing offerings like the Prodigy M
from Bit Phoenix, the Air540 from Corsair, and the HalfXB from Cooler
Master.
The CMTORM SF17 uses a massive 18 cm fan
to cool your gaming notebook and it adds a four- port USB hub. Click now to learn
more. Starting with the outside, Fractal's traditional clean Scandinavian
design aesthetic is definitely present here. The front of the case is a
combination of brushed aluminum with a subtle curvature to it and mesh for air
flow with a small fractal design logo and power LED as the only ornaments. On
the right hand side, we find two front USB3 ports, headphone and microphone
jacks, and ooh, a slimline optical drive
mount that actually hides inside the
front bezel. This is a really smart compromise between wasting space on a
bunch of 5 and a/4 in bays and omitting them entirely like NZXT did on the H440.
And when we pop the front bezel off, we find not only that slimline mount, but
also a couple of 2 and 1/2 in SSD mounts
with some cable management room, two dual 120 mm removable fan filters, and
the cleverness continues. Very, very nice. The top cover slides off with a
couple of thumb screws at the back just like the Ark Midi does, revealing some
unfortunately difficult basically impossible to remove noise dampening
foam as well as dual fan mounts on each
side. On the right is a dual 120/40 mm
fan mount that will work with a 240 or 240 mm radiator if you remove the hard
drive cages first. And on the left is a dual 120 140 millimeter fan mount that
looks like it would support a 280 millimeter radiator, but due to
clearance constraints with the cooling on your motherboard and memory, it
supports only a 240 mm radiator like we've got in there. On the back of the
case, we find a three fan speed controller with settings for low,
medium, and high. Definitely nice to have, but it would have been even better
if it was pre-cable managed and, you know, already like plugged in and ready
to rock like NZXT does on their cases. And we also find a couple more fan
mounts. Boy, this case has a lot of those. Up to 10 fans total in the front,
the top, and the back. The last thing on the back is motherboard IO and five PCI
slots, which is a great configuration since it allows two dual slot graphics
cards and an additional PCI Express expansion card in between with certain
motherboards such as the Sniper that we have installed right now. On the bottom
of the case are a couple more fan filters. It looks like Fractal expects
this case to be configured for negative air flow since one of them sits right
under the power supply and the other sits kind of in the middle of nowhere
just as a random extra filtered intake.
There are a couple of drive mounts on top of it that can be used for 3 and 1/2
in or 2 and 1/2 in drives. We did one of each just to try it out. And the only
complaint here was that the drives are so close to the bottom of the case that
many SATA power connectors will not fit very well. And there's only one cable
management spot running to one of them. So, the one on the left is a bit of a
tight fit to run power and data to. On
the left, we've got a nice large side panel window that we can remove to
reveal one side of the segregated
internals. So, on this side, we've got the skinny white PCI slot covers. And
then on this side, the powerful black power supply cables are well, wait, hold
on a second. Both sides actually have both black and white stuff on them
because this is the 21st century, Donald. Anyway, with the side panels out
of the way, we can see that the inside is segregated only for the purpose of
creating thermal zones. So, on this side, we've got the NATX motherboard,
which takes up pretty much the entire height of the case. That's what makes
the Node 804 so short. Those two drive slots that I talked about before, and
our AIO liquid cooler that fits, but
required us to swap low profile memory for the Dominators that we had planned
to use. The design is actually similar to other cubes, but the cable management
choices that we can see here seemed a little bit odd. We've got these two
massive holes on the right and at the bottom, which combined with the large
CPU cutout at the back, weaken the motherboard tray significantly. Then
along the bottom, we just get zip tie mounting points instead of additional
holes for front USB, audio, and the like. I'd have rather seen Fractal
include smaller holes for the 24 pin and video card connectors and use that extra
strength to put in some other strategic mounting holes instead. Moving over to
the backside, we've got room for as long a power supply as you could possibly
want and some cool Velcro tie downs in the cable management zone that reveal
another reason I might like to have smaller grommeted holes on the
motherboard tray so I could keep this rat's nest out of sight. We also find
the bulk of the hard drive mounts. In total, there are eight 3 and 1/2 in
drive mounts here, but I suspect most people would have trouble actually cable
managing all of that in here. We used the little spot in the top to simplify
routing the eightpin motherboard connector and fan controller cables, but
there's still just overall not a lot of room to work back here. And it was
easier to mount our rear hard drive in the second from the bottom slot so that
we had room for cables behind it. If you were clever enough and used tricks like
pre-plugging in the drives and then installing them in the case and whatnot,
this would bring your total up to 10 3 and 1/2 in drives and two 2 and 1/2 in
drives, which is extremely impressive, especially when you consider that
additional fans can easily be mounted to keep them all adequately cooled. So, if
you figure it out, wow. All right, so let's just close with some general
thoughts about the case. Embedded thumb screws are awesome. NZXT is using them
on their side panels and I want everyone to start doing it. They don't cost much
more and they really are a hassle saver so you don't lose your screws. Fractal
would have liked to see those included. The overall build quality of the case is
quite good. There is some flex to the chassis without the side panels
installed. So I can kind of flex it a little bit here. But once they're on, it
is completely rock solid. I love the compactness of this case. It feels a lot
more space efficient than something like a Prodigy that with its feet isn't
actually much smaller, but only accepts an ITX board and a bunch of drives or an
NATX board and just a couple of drives for that version. But those usual
challenges with small cases are definitely here. Building in the case in
the first place isn't the easiest thing in the world, and upgrades will feel
like a chore for full tower users when they need to remove entire hard drive
cages just to install one new drive, for example. It's not a hardcore criticism
of the Note 804 or anything, so much as it is a warning for anyone buying it. No
amount of smart internal design adds volume to the inside of a case. So, as
long as you're aware of what you're buying, then Fractal's latest
reimagining of what I felt was a pretty wellestablished case category gets a big
thumbs up from me. It's a great choice for a classy looking compact gaming rig,
and it can also double as a pretty
robust storage box as well. Thank you
for watching, guys. The link for where to buy this product is in the video description below the like, dislike, and
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