Fractal Design Torrent Nano RGB TG Light Tint

[Camm]

Mate, this case is 3 times the size of the M1, and twice the size of NR200, of course it won't have any issues. They've basically made a matx case with no matx support.

Welcome to the size of an atx layout that supports triple wide GPU's. Three slots = 1 less than four, so well done on observing the obvious.

so ... yeah. If that's your use case, I wouldn't recommend a tiny ITX box either

Which I've done - CammKelly's Completed Build - Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8 GHz 8-Core, GeForce RTX 3090 24 GB FTW3 ULTRA GAMING, SUGO 15 Mini ITX Desktop - PCPartPicker

The issue you keep glossing over is pretty well much everything in the sub <20l market has incompatibilities of some kind. This doesn't. Yeah its big, but for a standard layout ATX case for ITX with support for triple slot GPU's its about par on course, which is the point. Also, that FSP power supply is still awol, and the the Titan's are trash. Wouldn't trust a 3090 with either of them.

 

[trsttte]

I guess they wanted a Torrent "family" -- having the same "trademarks" (e.g. the PSU compartment at the top, using their 180mm fan, etc.) and covering multiple sizes, but for the smallest case they took the largest case, simply scaled it down, and called it a day. Unfortunately, that is not how you make an SFF case, you need to actually put effort and thought into re-arranging and optimizing the internal design.

As it stands, the Torrent Nano is a decent computer case, but a (dare I say it) bad SFF computer case. Being compact is the single most important goal of SFF cases, and that is where the Torrent Nano fails.

Perfectly valid points but this entire discussion has me wondering, has Fractal ever called this an SFF case? It's weird having such a big case for an ITX board but some people won't care that much about the space and prefer more flexibility like atx psu and hdd support and easier to work with (why those people went with ITX is beyond me though)

 

[ShurikN]

Perfectly valid points but this entire discussion has me wondering, has Fractal ever called this an SFF case? It's weird having such a big case for an ITX board but some people won't care that much about the space and prefer more flexibility like atx psu and hdd support and easier to work with (why those people went with ITX is beyond me though)

That's the issue right there. What's the point of going ITX if you are gonna put it in a 34L case.

I've been thinking about this case a bit and it would have probably been better if they just scraped the 180mm fan and go for 140mm max. Shrink the width of the case by at least 40mm and still have room for large tower coolers ( for example Fuma 2 is around 155.), not to mention 240/280 AIO support. By going from 220mm width to ~185 you are lowering the volume by around 6L
As it stands its just unreasonably too chunky.

Hell, Thermaltake has an matx case that's 30L, supports 350mm GPUs, 3+slots, ATX psus, 155mm air coolers and has 280 rad support in the front.

 

[NRANM]

Perfectly valid points but this entire discussion has me wondering, has Fractal ever called this an SFF case? It's weird having such a big case for an ITX board but some people won't care that much about the space and prefer more flexibility like atx psu and hdd support and easier to work with (why those people went with ITX is beyond me though)

Fair point, Fractal Design has not called this case an SFF case, however, at least to me, the instant a case limits my motherboard options to ITX only, I assume it is intended as an SFF case, regardless what the manufacturer calls it or markets it as.

Having such a large case with only ITX motherboard support is like having a 60% keyboard layout on a full-size frame.

 

[ShurikN]

Having such a large case with only ITX motherboard support is like having a 60% keyboard layout on a full-size frame.

This is actually a pretty good analogy

 

[Turmania]

Yeah I do agree with most comments here but what is mini itx ? do you consider slapping a huge 280mm cooler bigger than an itx board, an itx case?
what is your max level liter volume? some consider <10 liters as itx form. This case is not for everyone, there is a lot of wasted space and oppurtunity, but that is the case with most atx cases as well.
That is why you have, thousands of different atx cases to suit your taste. You have to see this case in that eye. for me I would not even consider ssupd meshlicious an itx case though I love it.

 

[trsttte]

That's the issue right there. What's the point of going ITX if you are gonna put it in a 34L case.

I've been thinking about this case a bit and it would have probably been better if they just scraped the 180mm fan and go for 140mm max. Shrink the width of the case by at least 40mm and still have room for large tower coolers ( for example Fuma 2 is around 155.), not to mention 240/280 AIO support. By going from 220mm width to ~185 you are lowering the volume by around 6L
As it stands its just unreasonably too chunky.

Hell, Thermaltake has an matx case that's 30L, supports 350mm GPUs, 3+slots, ATX psus, 155mm air coolers and has 280 rad support in the front.

Fair point, Fractal Design has not called this case an SFF case, however, at least to me, the instant a case limits my motherboard options to ITX only, I assume it is intended as an SFF case, regardless what the manufacturer calls it or markets it as.

Having such a large case with only ITX motherboard support is like having a 60% keyboard layout on a full-size frame.

I agree, just playing a bit of devils advocate. There's a lot of small itx cases, now there's a big one, moar options moar better?

Yeah I do agree with most comments here but what is mini itx ? do you consider slapping a huge 280mm cooler bigger than an itx board, an itx case?
what is your max level liter volume? some consider <10 liters as itx form. This case is not for everyone, there is a lot of wasted space and oppurtunity, but that is the case with most atx cases as well.
That is why you have, thousands of different atx cases to suit your taste. You have to see this case in that eye. for me I would not even consider ssupd meshlicious an itx case though I love it.

240mm/280mm are very common among small itx cases because you will need the case to be that big to accomodate most graphics cards anyway (and it's not like the cpu can be cooled by magic ). But yeah, this seems like an odd option but plenty on the market for all tastes

 

[claes]

Not that I disagree, but I don’t know what you all were expecting. Fractal has been doing this with their lines for years, like the define series, or Corsair and Phanteks and bequiet do (let’s not talk about bitfenix and next — that’s how you waste space in the name of easing the initial build for end users).

It’s expensive to mass produce a case, so they attempt to use the same tooling across a product line. Plus, to meet the selling point of the torrent series, they’d need to brand a 38mm or similarly thick fan (or design their own) for itx, which means a whole other product line (and maintaining their reputation). We’d all be pissed if they offered a tiny but easy-to-build itx case that wasn’t excellent to build in, or bemoan the fan quality/cooling.

I’m glad they took the risk with 180’s — most manufacturers would jump to low pressure 200mm fans (and probably block half the intake with poor tooling). Even Silverstone’s 180’s are only 32mm thick, so they must have invested into making this line plausible (38mm).

You can see their itx efforts with the era and node series. There’s a reason boutique itx cases cost $200+, with no where near the tooling we see here. You either stamp out a bunch of garbage like thermaltake, bet on risks like Silverstone and Lian-li, play with the margins like CM and others (still oversized, but 99% of buyers just want things to work), or pay an arm and a leg for custom CNC work to the tune of <1000 cases for hobbyists.

 

[Valantar]

Which I've done - CammKelly's Completed Build - Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8 GHz 8-Core, GeForce RTX 3090 24 GB FTW3 ULTRA GAMING, SUGO 15 Mini ITX Desktop - PCPartPicker

The issue you keep glossing over is pretty well much everything in the sub <20l market has incompatibilities of some kind. This doesn't. Yeah its big, but for a standard layout ATX case for ITX with support for triple slot GPU's its about par on course, which is the point. Also, that FSP power supply is still awol, and the the Titan's are trash. Wouldn't trust a 3090 with either of them.

That's not all that different from my own build, at least in power draw and volume. But it seems you missed the point of what I said: it's not about the specs, it's about your use case. Different uses load different components (vastly) differently. A 250W+ peak Intel i9 will mostly consume less than 100W while gaming. Gaming is relatively light on CPUs, no matter the game. Which makes a difference both for cooling and PSU sizing, especially for recent Intel chips. So my point stands: unless you're running some sort of continuous 100% combined load, 750W (which isn't even a limit for SFX PSUs any more) is plenty for any single-GPU build.

Also, how am I glossing over compatibility? I literally addressed it directly in the post you responded to. It's a consideration, and if that's a deal-breaker for you, than that's your prerogative. I've never said otherwise. What I'm saying is that even if you object to having to consider clearances and compatibility, there is no need for this case to be this large. Not at all. It is excessively sized due to lazily (and barely) shrinking down a huge ATX design with no consideration for space efficiency. Which, again, is fine if that's your preference, but that doesn't make it immune from criticism, nor does it absolve it from being lazy design. Introducing the limitations of ITX while maintaining none of its advantages is bad design. Period.

The funnny thing is, thanks to the insistence on a top-mounted PSU they're even severely restricting radiator mounting in the case, as it'll interfere with any large GPU in either of the two available positions. Even if this is purely focused on air cooled builds (which is a challenge with large coolers on current-gen, densely packed boards), it's still a lacklustre design.

There's also a real question to be raised about why this exists. Given that it's barely different from the mATX version, and ITX boards fit in mATX (and ATX) cases, I can't imagine there are many people who actively choose an ITX motherboard, don't want a compact case, yet also object to buying a non-ITX-only case. That is a very small market niche.

This also really isn't par for the course for a shrunken-down ATX design - they could easily have made this case significantly narrower by scrapping the 200mm fans and going dual 140mm instead (which would both provide more airflow at better noise levels and be better suited for radiator mounting) without meaningfully impacting cooler clearance. They could also have shrunk down the plastic shrouding quite a bit too without sacrificing anything meaningful. Instead, they've chosen to adhere very strictly to the original design, rather than adapting it to suit this implementation. Of course I could argue that being gung-ho about sticking to very traditional ATX layouts including PSU placement is kind of dumb for an ITX case, but that's another question entirely. This could still have been done better.

Yeah I do agree with most comments here but what is mini itx ? do you consider slapping a huge 280mm cooler bigger than an itx board, an itx case?
what is your max level liter volume? some consider <10 liters as itx form. This case is not for everyone, there is a lot of wasted space and oppurtunity, but that is the case with most atx cases as well.
That is why you have, thousands of different atx cases to suit your taste. You have to see this case in that eye. for me I would not even consider ssupd meshlicious an itx case though I love it.

<10l is pretty extreme though - the commonly accepted norm in most SFF PC circles is anything below 25l is considered SFF, even if norms for good SFF are creeping closer to the 10l range. There are of course plenty of good case options below 10l too, but those inevitably put a pretty hard limit on cooling and/or performance in some way. Not that this would matter for the vast majority of PCs, but the limitations are real (unless you're absolutely insane and have tons of money, time, skills and access to equipment, that is). This still manages to miss the baseline by a whopping 10l, with no benefits to speak of.