 Welcome to my unboxing and first look at Fractal Design's update to one of my favorite, like, awesomely cool cases that I've really liked ever, the Array R2. So the Array R2 was unique because it was a mini ITX enclosure that was capable of housing an expansion card such as a RAID card. I did an Ultimate Windows Home Server build in the Array R2 a while back. It was an all-aluminum chassis which had the advantage of being lightweight, but the disadvantage of being relatively fragile and very expensive. And it could also house six hard drives in spite of its incredibly small size. This is the Node 304. So the Node 304 builds on that impressive lineage and updates it to make it more cost-effective as well as to add the capability to install high-end graphics cards, something the Array R2 was not capable of doing. So it comes with hard foam, however it's a very small, very light case. So in this situation I wouldn't worry about it too much. It does seem to be a little bit bigger than the Array R2, but that, yeah, the Array R2, that is to be expected given that it's, well, it supports more stuff. Okay, so there's a thing in the event of something something, call us and something, okay, user's manual, good stuff, cool beans. Alright, got some plastic here. Okay, very excited about this though, guys. Very excited indeed. The Array R2 also had a fairly outdated I.O. set, so this one updates all of that. So we've got indicator and power LED, fractal design logo, very tasteful, very small, brushed metal front, which looks fantastic. Is it metal? Yeah, it's metal. Power button is on the side, two USB 3.0 ports, headphone and microphone ports, intake vent on this side, which, ah, yes. So this one's on this side for a good reason, or this one, like this one's small on this side for a good reason. You want most of the intake coming in over where your graphics card is going to be if you do opt to put in a large graphics card. The bottom of the case has a nice big fan filter, which you can see is, is that magnetic? Hold on. No, it just comes in, just pops into these little clips right there. It feels good, feels nice and snug, so once you put it in, it's not much effort to remove it, but then once it's there, it's not going to go anywhere accidentally or anything. Nice big rubber feet, one, two, three, four of those. So once you put it down, it's going to be quite stationary. At the back, you're going to find, yes, a 140 millimeter fan, very good stuff, and Fractal has also ensured that this fan is going to be compatible with liquid cooling solutions, so you can use something like an H60, for example, in this case, without any difficulty. Thumb screws are, ah, hand tight, which is nice. It's nice to be able to remove these without running and fetching a screwdriver. So let's go ahead and pull this off. So it uses kind of a modular design inside to, here, hold on, first, this is very well built. This feels very sturdy compared to sort of some of the lower end ITX enclosures that I've looked at over the last little while. This is a removable filter right here, so you'll be able to pop that off, clean it, and put it back. This one does not have the removable filter, however, most of your intake, like I said before, you're going to want to come through this side anyway, so you're cooling off that graphics card. So let's talk about the modular interface inside. So this one can still house up to six hard drives, two in each of these cages, which, hopefully, I will be able to remove. You know what? I'm going to need my screwdriver. All right, there we go. Loosen them with the screwdriver. So like I said, each of these can hold two, three and a half inch, or two and a half inch drives. It's compatible with either. And once you remove, ah, there we go, one more. Once you remove this one, you can install up to a 310 millimeter graphics card. So that's over, yeah, over 12 inches, actually. So you could even take something like a GTX 580, would be a great example of a longer-ish graphics card, and it'll go in there very, very comfortably. See that? No hassle whatsoever. And you're going to have an intake directly coming over the card. So you can see the way they've positioned the fan here. It's going to be blowing over the front somewhat. So this intake fan here is going to be able to suck air directly from that vent that's right next to it. So you're not going to have to worry about your graphics card temperatures like you do with many ITX enclosures. So the way the hard drive mounting works is actually quite clever. So you screw the hard drives in from either side, and then they'll sit facing opposite directions inside these cages. And you take the whole thing and lower it into the case. I'm going to leave this one out for now though. Just, oh yeah, and they're using rubber-isolating mounts. So that's really nice. And there's a plane flying overhead. So hopefully you guys can hear me okay. Let's finish up with a look at the rest of the inside. You might have noticed already the absence of a, sorry I've drawn a blank here, right, the absence of a 5.25 inch drive. So I don't know, if you're anything like me, you're probably not using a 5.25 inch drive anymore or you can just get, I mean they're like 15, 20 bucks. Just get an external one for those few situations where you do need one. And I think especially for an ITX space-saving design like this, it's probably the right choice. Ventilation for the front comes from here as well as the bottom. So I'm just going to peel this off. So you can see those two 92 millimeter fans which have a removable, if I can figure out how to remove it, whatever, I'm sure there's a way. So they have a removable fan filter on top of them that you'll be able to take off and clean. This is quite easy to remove. And all the cables are, let's see, I think, oh some of these look, oh yeah, no, not permanently attached. If you ever wanted to, I don't know, change them or you broke them accidentally or something, you'd be able to deal with that. Let's go ahead and throw this back on here. There we go. Rest of the interior. So let's figure out where the power supply goes. Ah-ha, full ATX power supply. Bam. Take that other small form factor enclosures because the ITX board goes here and then they've routed internally a power cable right here that's going to go into the back of your power supply which sits here. That is why you have that vent on the other side because that is the exhaust for the back of your power supply. So intake for the power supply comes up through that filtered intake on the bottom. You're going to want to use a power supply with a bottom mounted 120 or 140 millimeter fan for this particular case. You can actually have up to quite a long power supply without running into any difficulty. See they've got foam, noise isolating mounts here, here, and well here and here to keep it from putting any undue pressure on the mounting mechanism. And that is actually outstanding. I love that. Very, very, very innovative design. So they put the power supply right under the drives and then you've got your ITX board and you've got your long graphics card so as long as your power supply isn't super, super long, I mean you'd still be able to have something about this long, like not bad at all, then you won't have any trouble fitting all the hardware you could want in this tiny little enclosure including liquid cooling. Should you so desire it. And all the fans are controlled from this high, medium, low built in fan speed adapter here at the back. And I think that pretty much covers it. Thank you for checking out my unboxing of the extremely exciting and very cool Fractal Design Node 304 which as I mentioned before is also extremely well built. I mean these are thick steel right here. Your hard drives aren't going anywhere. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.