Fractal Design Node 605 Media Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,722 words · ~8 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the fractal design node 605 computer
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case it comes in an ugly box but it's
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not an ugly case if it's anything like
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the node 304 which we checked out recently which was absolutely
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outstanding that was an ITX case this is a full-sized ATX case however some of
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the features will work better with an matx board because this is sort of a
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media PC optimized case I can see a lot of people installing microatx boards in
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it so the node 605 highlights a minimalistic Sleek Scandinavian appeal
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something something something design front panel made from 8 mm thick solid
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hair brushed and black anodized aluminum that sounds gorgeous front eye own and
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Optical driver hidden etc etc let's go ahead and see what else they have to say
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for themselves we'll cover all this when we open it up so don't worry too much about it and that's pretty much it let's
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open this baby up so inside we find double corrugated cardboard Linus's
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packaging tips and a hard foam not a big
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fan of the hard foam but if it keeps the case safe oh it's not as hard as some
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though see you guys you can see there's some Flex to it here see that so it's
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not as stiff as some of the hard Foams that we've encountered in the past and I
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just pulled Slick's earbuds out of his ears that he was using to monitor sound
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so why don't you bear with us and we'll be back in just a moment and it's
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unveiling time one thing I noticed right away opening it up is that the front is
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the case is very front heavy so if you were going to put this on a media Rack
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or something you'd want to make sure it's got the right depth because it would very easily whoop go like that
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because most of the metal has been punched out of the back to make room for
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the Dual 80mm cooling fans the io the seven PCI slots because you can put a
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fulls sizee ATX board in here as well as the power supply cutout and the front of
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the case has that gorgeous 8 mm thick
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aluminum holy crap this thing is awesome
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look at this okay let's pull this baby off check that out black anodized
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aluminum look how thick this is here come around the side here you can see
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how thick it is so that is what they've decided to make the bezel out of
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honestly I love this approach for things like media PCS where you're never going
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to see the top you're never going to see the side and the back what you're going
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to see is the front and if it doesn't look good with the rest of your AV
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equipment then it's going to look stupid now okay I think that this
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is very very nice so here is something
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these are the kinds of things that fractal does right when fractal burst onto the scene with the Define R2 or I
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guess the Define non R2 the first one they did a few things right that other
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guys weren't doing here's my big problem with aluminum front bezel cases
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fingerprints they always have a little thing where you have to press it in
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order to get at the io that's ridiculous because it just ruins it instead fractal
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has implemented a little uh little Notch
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right here so that you can pull it down without putting any pressure on it
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without putting any fingerprints on the front and you can get access to the
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front IO so there's a Slimline optical drive which you can only use if you have
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an MX board installed something to bear in mind front fire wire headphones
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microphone USB 3 as well as an included
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front card reader very good stuff activity LED for the hard drive is
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hidden but you can see it if you're trying to diagn know something however
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your power activity LED is going to be around that illuminated power button the
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original mockup for this case had a huge fractal logo in the middle and a lot of
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reviewers and a lot of press guys said hey go with the nice Sleek little
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fractal logo in the side in the corner looks really really slick this thing
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looks outstanding so on this side we've got uh dual 120 mm fan mounts uh looks
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like this one is populated this comes with two of their R2 series fans so
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those are their silent series fans there's another 120 mm fan mounted and
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here is the included fan controller so that is a three Channel fan controller
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with uh three different settings so we're going to open it up and we'll be
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back in just a moment now one of the best things you can do for noise
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dampening on a case is increase the overall the overall mass of it and the
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thickness of the material So fractal's Gone with a pretty thick steel panel
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here and then they've added a layer of noise dampening material to the top now
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it was two screws to open this up you could replace them with thumb screws but
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it doesn't come with them by default another thing that's going to help with
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noise is the fact that you've got that huge thick solid piece of aluminum on
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the front of the case that's going to mean that no noise is really going to
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pass through here no noise is really going to pass through here and if it comes out the sides and the back then
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it's not really the end of the world once we get into the inside of the case
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you can see I've thrown a motherboard in here just so you guys can get some idea
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of how the internal layout is going to work I'm actually going to turn this
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around for you just to to show you how how it how it goes so you can put an ATX
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board in here and then your first two expansion slots are going to be the 280
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mm that this case is capable of supporting once you start to fill up
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more slots you'll have to start removing hard drive cages if you want to get
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those long expansion cards and so you can have a long graphics cards and then
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you can have smaller expansion cards like sound cards capture cards whatever
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else as you go down the motherboard you can see there's just enough space to
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plug in all your front IO and all that kind of stuff down here in the bottom of
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the board and you can install using their modular hard drive cage design
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that they've got on the Node 304 um you can install up to four 3 and 1/2 in or 2
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and 1/2 in hard drives if I turn this around you'll see there are mounting
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holes here for SSD or rubberized
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mounting holes for 3 and 1/2 inch drives uh the way that they've got the
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the fan layout done here is actually
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kind of clever so they've got both of these fans as intakes this one doesn't
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have a cover on it because it's not so close to where your SATA cables and
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everything else will be this one has a honeycomb cover on it so these are both
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intakes you're going to be int taking air from outside of you know in front of
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your TV then it's going to have positive air pressure inside the case which will
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force it out the back or the back here
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so what that'll do is it'll make it so that dust is far less likely to
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accumulate because both of these fan intakes are filtered and you can remove
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the filters just by undoing the screws here and uh here you can you can
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actually see they're just like a fine mesh filter like that so no no problems
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there and then the power supply obviously will intake from this one
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right here and then exhaust out the back of the power supply so it's compatible
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with ITX matx or ATX boards all of the Interior cables are black and sleeved
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and look fantastic so we're just going to go ahead and pop those out so there's
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your USB 3 your front fire wire your front audio as well as your front panel
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connectors there's the power for that fan controller so the fan controller is
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right over here and then you've also got there you go two of them are hooked up
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already uh three pin connectors for the fan controller right there overall very
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solid case very very rigid and of Great
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Value I mean what we've come to expect from fractal uh let's figure finish off
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with the accessories and then I think we're pretty much done here so if you guys wanted to tune out now then you
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could probably go ahead and do that don't forget to subscribe and all that good stuff couple of brackets for
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something I don't know power supply probably I have no idea it's probably
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the manual just SEC it's for the slim 5
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and 1/4 in base so they're not in there because if you have a full-sized ATX X
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board then you can't fit it because there's sort of stuff in the way so
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these go down here and allow you to mount that comes with some cable ties as
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well as all the mounting screws you'll need for your system thank you for
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checking out my unboxing of the node 605 from fractal design don't forget to
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