LESS IS MORE

FRACTAL DESIGN HAS knocked it out of the park again with the Node 202. The Swedish manufacturer has long been the top dog in case design, and this is no exception. The 202 serves as the basis for this build; simple but elegant, carefully designed to inhabit any space without being obtrusive. In appearance, it blurs the lines between PC and console, making it perfect for a media center build. It’s tiny, though; a thin little unit that demands care and minimalism when it comes to internal components. There’s no need to include a GPU in this build, but the 202 comes with a little box of accessories that accommodate such power; most importantly, this box contains an L-shaped adapter that allows for vertical mounting of the GPU – a necessity, given the case’s small overhead. The case as a whole can be oriented horizontally or vertically, with either a plastic base to mount it upright, or stick-on rubber feet.

And minimalism is what we’ve got. Asus’s ROG Strix X470-I motherboard is a simplistic affair, but it packs everything we need: an HDMI output, four USB 3.1 ports, AM4 compatibility, and full support for all the RAM. It’s an adorable unit, too – measuring a dainty 6.22 x 6.22 inches, with a stripped-back appearance that doesn’t sacrifice performance for aesthetics. It’s the perfect board to support the AMD Athlon 220GE, which comes with integrated Radeon Vega 3 graphics, and its own cooler inside the box – a low-profile fan and heatsink that will easily fit inside the Node 202.

There’s not much else that needs including here – the 202 comes with an integrated 450W power supply, and we’re forgoing a GPU in favor of the Athlon 220GE’s own processor graphics. For the SSD, we’ve got a SATA Adata Ultimate SU800 with 512GB of storage – there’s no space for a hard drive inside this case, and an M.2 drive would drive the price up too much.