Thumbs up for the Fractal NODE 804

[R.G.]

I just got a build inside a Fractal Node 804 running. The 804 is a remarkably nice case for a modest server or NAS. Salient points I noticed in putting it together:

- It's inexpensive. I paid US$70 for mine, on sale.
- It mounts a lot of disks neatly and cools them well.
The stock configuration is 8 disks in two 4x clusters, all on vinyl/absorptive isolation washers. Each x4 rack slides out for cabling, then slides in and is held with thumbscrews. There is space for two more 3.5" drives in the bottom of the motherboard compartment if you like.
- The motherboard compartment is roomy and easy to work in.
- The cable routing is pretty good.
A modular power supply would have made this a breeze. As it was, the normal cables were normally crowded.
- It has the potential for GREAT cooling.
There are spaces for pushme-pullyou fans over the cluster of disk drives, two fans for the motherboard compartment, and this is in addition to the power supply's fan being able to exhaust to the back AND down. It has removable, cleanable dust filters on all the intakes. There are spots for an additional four fans exhausting UP through the perforated top of the case. So for the 8 nominal disks, there is space provided for four fans, three exhaust and one pressurizing, right on the disk drives. That's in addition to whatever the power supply fans add, as they suck out of the disk side too.
- It's small. The case is about 12"high, and 14+" wide and deep; about 1.5 cubic feet, and largely cubic.
- In spite of the size, access to the internals is GREAT as both sides and the top remove with thumbscrews and slides. You can not only see what you're doing in there, you can reach it.
- It's quiet. The three provided fans are quiet and just barely audible from 3 feet. If it were maxed out on internal heat, you could go to noisier and better-cooling fans, but it's pretty good as is.

The plan for this build was a seven disk RAIDZ3 array of 3TB files, giving 12TB of three-disk-tolerant storage. Obviously, you'd use 4TB for a similar design without the special background of this one for 16TB. If you were willing to live with RAIDZ2, you could do a 10-disk array for 8x4TB in Z2 using the two spots in the motherboard side.

The cons to this enclosure are that:
- The motherboard must be micro-ATX or mini-ITX. Regular ATX will not fit.
- There is a clear window on the side panel. I hate clear side panels. I'll probably spray paint it crinkle finish black.

There are obvious limits to the expansion in this thing, but if you can live within the limits it shows, it's a remarkably good enclosure. I can get a few more disks (11 or 12, maybe 13) and about the same number of fans into an Antec P18x series, but it's much bigger and a lot heavier. The disks would not be as well cooled.

I'm very happy with it. It's the new house-net data furnace.

 

[R.G.]

Follow up note. I got through disk tests and moved enough data into the thing to run a meaningful-length scrub. None of the disks got over 37C in a 25C ambient room. That's with one fan pushing into the front of the disk cluster, one pulling out the back. The CPU temps got up to 44C.

The enclosure cooling appears to be fine for the stated purpose. I like it.

 

[u6f6o]

Hi,

I am considering same chassis, would you still recommend it?

Cheers

 

[R.G.]

Yes. With a year and a half of history now, it's proven itself to be nearly perfect for my uses. There have been no hidden gotchas.

My temp monitoring scripts even told me that the dust filters were getting clogged when temps started to rise noticeably - it has cleanable dust filters on every fan port

As long as you can live within the limitations of the number of disks to go in it, it is near perfect IMHO for the use. I did a back up NAS to run backups of the primary Node 804 unit, and was forced to use an Antek P180. Good case, cheap on the used market, but compared to the Node 804, a big, clumsy PITA. I hide it in the garage and keep the 804 in my office.

Full thumbs-up.

 

[u6f6o]

Wow, thx! I will go for it :)

 

[u6f6o]

I hide it in the garage and keep the 804 in my office.

I suppose noise level is no problem either as you keep it in the office (same as I intend to do).

 

[R.G.]

I sit perhaps six feet away from it. I can just barely hear the fans running if nothing else is on in the office. It's not noticeable at all if there is another computer on in the office.

This is with the included fans. It's quiet. I use four fans on it. There is space for seven. If you use high-airflow screaming fans, it would get loud, but the stock fans keep disk temps down to 3C to 5C above room temp, so screaming fans are not needed. I suspect that buying super quiet fans would make it even quieter, but it's good enough for me, just like it's shipped.

 

[Ceetan]

I heard someone else had good luck using 4 pwm-fans. Would you mind posting your entire build? I am at the buying stage, and my tentative build uses this case :) Your post disabled some of my doubt about it. Do you have an data on temperature or power consumption?

 

[R.G.]

I don't mind posting, but I'll have to go do some digging to get all the details. It's the Node 804, a Supermicro ??8 mother board with a Xeon E3? and 16G of Kingston ECC Ram in two sticks. I got one of the Zalman radial aluminum fin "flower" heat sinks for the cpu for $9 and it keeps the CPU under about 43C. the disks are seven 3TB drives of various vintages and brands. So far two of them have had issues, one failing solid and one having increasing "unreadable sectors". Disks run at under 36C all the time unless the dust filters get dirty. Vacuum the filters and the temps drop right back down.

The fans are run on the included speed selectable controller in the 804, and daisy chained out. I haven't tried PWM fans.

I tested the power consumption on a Kill-a-Watt when I first set it up, and haven't looked in so long that I'd have to go try it again.

What impresses me is the degree to which, now that I have it stable, it simply runs with no continuous care and feeding.

 

[u6f6o]

I can confirm, this chassis is great! I run it with the 3 default coolers and a modular PSU and the temperatures are mostly nice. During memtest and diverse CPU tests (Prime95, Intel Linpack) no tresholds were exceeded, CPUs peak was at 68°. Currently I am executing bad blocks tests and disks slightly go over 40°, thus I might consider a separate cooler for the disks.

There is not so much room for cable management, especially the fan<->sata power connector cable is rather short. Regarding the 4 disks on top of the PSU, I'd suggest SATA cables like this, as they do not require too much space. I chose 50 cm cables.

After all, I am very happy with this case. You can put in up to 10 x 3.5 and 2 x 2.5 disks, which is sufficient for me.

 

[nojohnny101]

I also have this case and love everything about it. Do a quick google search and you'll find it wins a lot of praise.

I do not have air conditioning where the Node 804 is and my temps get right around 40-41 during a scrub which makes me a little nervous. It has been quite hot here though, around 31C ambient with very high humidity. they usually hover around 35-37 all other times. I am running 6 x 3TB Seagate NAS (raidz2)

I just bought noctua fans and they have helped a little. What have others done for cooling? What are your fan settings? I only have 3 pin fans because I didn't want to spend extra to get the 4 pin ones. Suggestions?

 

[u6f6o]

Actually I have the same issue. Drives normally don't go above 37° but during scrubs etc. they temporary reach 41°. I've sent a ticket to the Fractal support and they responded that I could try to add 2 coolers at the top, above the disk cages that suck the air out of the chassis and one cooler at the front that pushes air into the chassis.

Have not tried it out yet though.

 

[nojohnny101]

Well here is what I have done. I originally bought of these two fans:
Noctua NF-S12B redux-1200
One for pulling in air from the front and another for exhausting at the back and they didn't make much of a difference (in temps or noise).

So after reading a bunch more about cooling (have to say, haven't had to dive this deep into CPU and case fan forums ever:p) I purchased this fan for pulling air in the front:
Noctua NF-F12 PWM
and this one for exhausting out the back:
Noctua NF-A14 PWM

I put them on a y splitter and plugged them into CPU_fan2 on my ASRock C226m ws board. After much experimenting, I created a custom fan profile in BIOS that set the fan speed of the two fans based on CPU temperature. I found out what the CPU temp normally is with little to no load and kept experimenting until the fan speed (forget what percentage I set it at) that I set for that CPU idle temperature kept the drives at around 34-35C. This was while the ambient was about 88F with high humidity (>90%).

Did the same for medium workload and increased the percentage of the fan speed so that temperatures would only increase by 1-2C during medium loads (based medium load of CPU temperature). Lastly did the same thing for worst case scenario which is a scrub in the middle of the day. Changed BIOS fans speed settings and drives topped out at 38C during the 4 hour scrub.

All in all I'm happy with this. My scheduled scrubs always happen during the night so it will always be cooler and with it being summer, it is really a worst case scenario.

Oh and the CPU/mobo temps have never been a problem in the case. CPU range is about 40C during idle and no hotter than 50-52C during scrub. I just have one of the stock fans installed on the mobo side of the case pulling air in from the front hooked up to the "L,M,H" switch with it set to L.

I'm happy with temps and the case is very very quiet.
Thought I would share!

 

[i5xSwipe]

I can confirm, this chassis is great! I run it with the 3 default coolers and a modular PSU and the temperatures are mostly nice. During memtest and diverse CPU tests (Prime95, Intel Linpack) no tresholds were exceeded, CPUs peak was at 68°. Currently I am executing bad blocks tests and disks slightly go over 40°, thus I might consider a separate cooler for the disks.

There is not so much room for cable management, especially the fan<->sata power connector cable is rather short. Regarding the 4 disks on top of the PSU, I'd suggest SATA cables like this, as they do not require too much space. I chose 50 cm cables.

After all, I am very happy with this case. You can put in up to 10 x 3.5 and 2 x 2.5 disks, which is sufficient for me.

Thank you for the SATA cable info, I've been trying to track this info down, for my pending build. Would you suggest 90 degree SATA cables for all drives, or just those over the PSU? What PSU are you using? I'm planning on a EVGA 550 G2, being modular and a smaller ATX form factor, I'm not sure if it will require the 90 degree turns.

Additionally, what would be a recommended SATA cable length? Was 50cm sufficiently long enough, for cable management, was it to short, to long?

 

[Ceetan]

@i5xSwipe I use 50 cm sas-berakout cables for the drives in my NAS, and i hade plenty of cable -leeway.