Fractal Design Node 605 HTPC Chassis Review

The build process for the Node 605 only took a snappy 10 mins, this is thanks to it’s clean layout and surprisingly spacious interior. Even with a large graphics card in the system there is plenty of space and cables are well out of the way, leaving a good amount of airflow within the chassis.

To make way for the large GTX 560 Ti graphics card I did have to remove one of the hard drive bays. This limits us to two hard drives but for today’s build we only installed one and this wasn’t an issue. It’s also uncommon to require such a powerful graphics card in a HTPC unless you also want it to play games using things like Steams big screen mode.

Our low profile CPU cooler has left us with plenty of room above the motherboard, you could install a pair of 80mm extraction fans at the back but with so much room for the air to flow from the front intake fans toward the rear of the chassis you likely won’t need it, unless of course you expect to place the chassis in a warm area or something with more restricted airflow.

Around the back of the chassis, everything is looking neat and tidy, with plenty of room for airflow between our GTX 560 Ti and the PSU, helped a little by the ventilation holes in the expansion slot covers.