The king of small form factor cases? - Fractal Design Node 202 Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,278 words · ~6 min read
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Welcome to our review of the fractal design node 202 we first checked out
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this case uh quite some time ago at computex 2016 and have actually had it
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in the office for a while but the release has been a little wonko as in to
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say actually buying the case has been a bit of an issue seriously there is even
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a Reddit thread with people discussing if it even exists now that it does seem
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to exist for people looking to buy it let's take a closer
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look
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ibw Revolt 2 has been redesigned from
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the ground up to utilize its small form factor to hold the power you need to
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game with confidence check out the link in the video description to learn more
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you can see right off the bat that the form factor is quite small when laying
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flat it has a width of 377 mm a height of 146 mm and a depth of 47 mm this case
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is designed for sfx power supplies up to 130 mm long ITX motherboards and
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standard siiz graphics cards or 310x 145 by 47 mm graphics cards that
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was a lot of specific dimensions and there's a reason for that the density of
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this case is pretty damn High not the highest but high enough that it doesn't
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really allow for a ton of play in terms of what you can put inside if you're
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interested in this case you should be checking the dimensions of the
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components that you're planning to put inside of it this isn't a shot at the
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case that all it's just a heads up that you need to be aware of its limitations
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during your planning phase starting at the front of the case you have two USB
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3.0 Jacks in a black finish dual audio
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jacks for your headphone and microphone and an illuminated power button just to
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the right of said Jacks there's also a fractal logo on the right hand side
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which looks a little odd when you set the case up vertically but fits right in
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when it's placed flat looking around the case is pretty standard Fair fractal
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went with an unsurprising matte finish all around and definitely didn't skimp
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on breathability with mesh areas scattered around everywhere that they
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might be useful moving on to the inside of the case we see an elegant yet
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simplistic setup comprised of three main zones the power supplies little area the
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motherboard split off and the graphics cards whole section all have their own
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kind of areas like I said if you go for the option that includes a power supply
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you'll be equipped with a 450 W Integra
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which should be able to handle basically everything modern that you would throw
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inside this case the power supply area also somewhat supports a little bit of
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cable management room just in front so you can stuff some of your extra cables
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away and leave some breathing room for the air coolers on your CPU and GPU you
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will very likely need this Cable Management Area unless you plan on
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stuffing all of the spare cables under the graphics card because some of the
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even included cables are hella long I
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don't know why someone would need a USB 3.0 internal header cable that if you
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stood two of these cases beside each other would be able to be plugged into
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the other one that being said at least it is a blackedout cable if you do
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spring for the included power supply and get the included cables that are kind of
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straight out of 2005 with colors all over the place that may be a little bit
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disappointing although it also may be fair considering that there is a lack of
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a side window the motherboard area is fairly unsurprising although it does
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support the start of the PCI Express Riser card you might notice that in the
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Glam footage that the screw holes for ours are a little bit off feel free to
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ignore this completely this is a pre-production sample and they have
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revised this part of the case so that this is no longer an issue on the
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graphics card side of the place you naturally have the installation area for
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the graphics card an angled support bracket which you can move around to
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support whatever kind of graphics card you decide to put in there and some
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shared room for the front IO cables
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there's also a bunch of extra room under the graphics card for support for 120 mm
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fans two of them straddling the middle support bar of the case is an SSD cage
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that you can mount two drives in this cage is relatively easy to get to the
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only drawback is that the cable management of installing an SSD on the
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graphics card side of the case is a little messy there are fan filters but
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some of them are rather difficult to get to the filter for the power supply and
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the GPU are only accessible if you take the case apart completely I mean taking
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the top off and the bottom off although I must say that they are I am happy that
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they're included and last but not least is the stand it's fairly stand Fair
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sorry for the pun it's made out of plastic and is actually quite solid it
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does an adequate job of keeping the case standing upright there's little rubber
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feet on the bottom four of them one in each corner and they do an adequate job
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of keeping it from sliding around the desk it looks fine but you can do
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something that Hardware conu did in their video which I think is quite awesome we're just going to call them
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out if you place it down and then put the case down horizontal on top of it it
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makes it kind of look like the case is levitating it looks super cool in
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conclusion the node 202 is clean quite
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dense and even even slightly cheaper than the RV z01 from Silverstone in
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terms of positioning I think fractal did a great job for price and what you get
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with it it didn't exactly knock my socks off but I also wasn't expecting it to
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these small ITX cases that still support full size graphics cards are actually
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quite attractive right now and there's a fair amount of them the idea that a tiny
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case with a tiny GPU like an R9 Nano is awesome but still not catering to what
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most people's desires are so I think this was the right direction to go
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like this one or with a direct monthly contribution to the Forum again I don't
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know why you'd get two I just felt like saying it twice it's probably fine if
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you're wondering what to watch next click this button to see a mystery video
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I really just definitely forgot to write this part of the script so I'm going to
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give Taran a link Oculus versus Vive Taran just said so it's going to be that
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video there we go
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cool