A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the interior of the Fractal Design Node 605, simply remove the thumb screws holding the top panel in place. This part of the chassis comes lined with a thin layer of sound-dampening material. The inside of the chassis is all black, but it does include a couple white signature elements the manufacturer is well known for. In general, the insides are arranged much like in a desktop case. There are a couple key differences I will outline below.

The hard-drive cages look much like the ones we have seen in the Node 304, but they are a bit longer. The pair can hold up to four 3.5 or 2.5" drives. You may remove both to reveal the fan and the location of the slimeline optical drive bay. The latter may not look like much out of the box, but Fractal Design includes everything to make it one during the assembly process. On the other side, toward the front, you will find the second 120 mm exhaust fan. This one is located next to the memory / CPU area of an installed motherboard. You can also see the various PCBs for case connectivity, power, and the card reader.


The rear of the case holds the opening for the motherboard backplate. The aforementioned 80 mm fan openings are above that. The PSU bay is quite standard and should work just fine. There are additional openings of 120 mm size on the side panels. One is intended for the PSU and the other one by the motherboard backplate can be used for an additional cooling unit.


All the cables within the Node 605 are sleeved black to go with the rest of the interior. All the headers within the chassis are of the usual kind, but Fractal Design has also attached a USB 2.0 connector to the larger USB 3.0 variant, which allows you to pick how to connect the external I/O of the chassis. The built-in fan controller is powered straight from the motherboard with a Molex plug, and it can control up to three cooling units. While the chassis can hold up to 5 fans, most users will be able to use a combination of motherboard headers and the fan controller to keep the system sufficiently quiet after filling the Node 605 up completely.