Fractal Define Nano S ITX Case Review

The Build

With the M-ITX board in, there’s only about 30mm of space between it and the roof.  Thankfully the rad and fan mounts are offset giving 35mm of clearance, but if we’re honest we’re more than a bit worried about things up here.

       

 

We’ve opted for a 140mm long PSU as to our mind it represents the only sensible option if you don’t want to be forever refitting the rubber grommet trying to push cables through a hole that’s partially blocked off.  Thankfully, once done, the supplied cable management options allowed us to do a decent job at the rear.

       

 

We’re especially great fans of the hook and loop style fastenings and the large trough that can be used to hide all the unwanted lengths of cable, and of course the management holes at the top of the case which make it easy to get the 24pin cable through to the motherboard.

       

 

With everything in place let’s take a look at what we have.  As usual we’ve used our trust old Asus EN8800GT but if you’re in the mood for something a little bit more modern then you’ll be relieved to know the Nano S will take cards up to 315mm long.  As our motherboard is configured with the 24 pin socket at the top of the board we’ve run the cable through from behind using the upper cable management holes.  Already we’re starting to have more worries about fan and rad installation up there.

       

 

The other thing we’re a bit twitched about is the amount of clearance between the GPU and the top of the (usually toasty) PSU.  The 8800 GT is by no means a thick card, and it only has just enough room to breath, taking a measurement from the back of the card we can see that there’s a totoal of 40mm of room, but remember you won’t we able to use all of this if your card will need an air gap