Also, I'm considering putting a couple slim 120mm fans in the case, but they mount on the graphics card side. There's not much airflow between the GPU side and the motherboard side. I imagine I'd want these fans to pull cool air into the chassis, which is from the bottom of the chassis. We would like to thank Fractal Design for providing us with a review sample of their Ridge chassis. Without their generosity, this case review would not be possible. The Node 202 suffers on the cooling front, however the same is true of most small form factor PCs. In this case the dual core Pentium G3258 starts at a relatively warm 44 degrees but the temperature only rises to 61 degrees under extreme load. No doubt a Core i5 or i7 would have got significantly hotter but that wouldn't have proved very much. The Fractal Design Node 202, in many ways, is a superb Mini-ITX chassis. It offers a unique layout for SFF builders and will look the part in the living room or at the gaming desk. The vertical or horizontal versatility means there is space in almost any setup for this PC case. Here is a nice closeup of the mesh featured at the front. It reminded me of the subtle color patterns on Nike’s ever-so comfortable Flyknit lineup but it’s more rugged feeling like a canvas. If you have a cat that likes to sharpen it’s claws on things, you have been warned!

All that said, those are very impressive results. With a 95w TDP processor, you would likely experience similar or better results. Buying 2 of these fills the whole top THOUGH, I did need to cut the end of one of them to make it fit. Example: https://imgur.com/a/CdABB0W So when building a rig there's a few things to consider, especially with thermal performance. The Node 202 can trap heat and it's crucial to find ways to get around this. Thankfully I got the answers.While this macro shot is heavily focused on the protruding lip of the 25mm fan, it helps to illustrate the sizeable gap between the GPU and the fans. Showing off more of the chassis’ rear, you can see a C13 female for the internal power cord. Beware that it’s position might conflict with any motherboards that use an oversized heatsink over the rear IO (i.e. MSI Z390 itx) but for most boards that stay within the limits of the keep out zone, it shouldn’t be an issue. Instead of using a snap in design that can be a real bear to remove, they opted for a more premium design that is screwed into place with 2x screws that can be removed if getting to the 8-pin connector on the motherboard proves too difficult. While a Noctua NH-L12S HSF would have been my personal choice of heatsink for this chassis, the Scythe Big Shuriken 3 ( reviewed here) put up an equal fight in our testing. That said, depending on your processor, fan, voltage, and chiplet orientation, thermal paste, and the temperature of your room, your thermal results may vary. Things like the number of cores, the temperature of your room, etc etc, will all provide different results.

Due to the small footprint of the Node 202, we see an impressive interior layout with separate chambers. The motherboard and graphics card are separated in what Fractal Design call, thermal interior design. A gaming console’s greatest strength is its design and small form factor. While a console will never be as versatile as a gaming PC, they can still elegantly sit in the living room and blend in with home theatre setups. This is where the Fractal Design Node 202 enters the fray, the brand’s smallest PC case on the market, with a slim, HTPC-like, Mini-ITX design.The Ridge chassis is shipped inside a brown box where its simplicity practically screams “Product of Sweden”. For custom 3D Print options, you could always print some custom parts for your Node 202: https://www.yeggi.com/q/node+202/ The build itself went off without a hitch once you figure out how to properly bend the bulky USB 3.0 cable and repair any bent pins on the motherboard (oops!). Like the legendary NCASE chassis, the side panels on the Ridge use the same lovely ball joint clips (quiet and effortless unlike Sliger) to snap the side panels into place. If you wanted to simplify access to the internal components, I would recommend removing the captive screws on the side panels as these will perform just fine.