Looking to move my nas to rackmount

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Killerherts

New Member
Aug 12, 2020
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I finally have my vertical rack in my closet so I want to move my nas to some kind of rack mount chassis.
But is has to be pretty quiet as my all my gear is in my bedroom closet, it doesn't have to be perfect as I seem to be sleeping fine with my 1u hp proliant in there.
some other requirements

at least 10 prefer 16 3.5" drive bays
matx

I don't mind doing some modification but I'm trying to keep the budget closer to ~200
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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What exactly are you looking for? You said you have existing (I assume DIY) NAS, which you're looking to a quiet rack-mounted case?
What is the type of your NAS's motherboard?
 

Killerherts

New Member
Aug 12, 2020
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What exactly are you looking for? You said you have existing (I assume DIY) NAS, which you're looking to a quiet rack-mounted case?
What is the type of your NAS's motherboard?
Yeah my existing system is just an old AMD a10-6700k some random matx motherboard running unraid

My plan was to build a new system in the chassis and then move over my drives
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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Yeah my existing system is just an old AMD a10-6700k some random matx motherboard running unraid

My plan was to build a new system in the chassis and then move over my drives
Fair enough, I think aside from your budget you should be able to find what you're looking for.
From personal experience, I build a custom FreeNAS in the especially quiet case and fans with 35W cpu to reduce the need for extra cooling and noise. Until I moved into a house with the basement and all noise concerns went out of the window so to say. In addition also from personal experience, I was able to buy a second hand a SAS disk shelf 2U for 12 x 3.5 drive for a bargain price. It does support SATA drives and with PCIe external SAS HBA and cables I got it under $200, BUT this shelf fan sounds like a private jet plane takes off, so no I won't recommend to you.
My real point is at your budget you'd need to compromise A LOT, be very patient, persistent, lucky, and really do your homework.
 

Killerherts

New Member
Aug 12, 2020
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I
Fair enough, I think aside from your budget you should be able to find what you're looking for.
From personal experience, I build a custom FreeNAS in the especially quiet case and fans with 35W cpu to reduce the need for extra cooling and noise. Until I moved into a house with the basement and all noise concerns went out of the window so to say. In addition also from personal experience, I was able to buy a second hand a SAS disk shelf 2U for 12 x 3.5 drive for a bargain price. It does support SATA drives and with PCIe external SAS HBA and cables I got it under $200, BUT this shelf fan sounds like a private jet plane takes off, so no I won't recommend to you.
My real point is at your budget you'd need to compromise A LOT, be very patient, persistent, lucky, and really do your homework.
I don't mind increasing my budget or saving. I simply just don't know where to begin. Is don't mind doing some reading ether I am just not sure where to begin
 

msg7086

Active Member
May 2, 2017
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Is custom cooling an option to you? Like, instead of having full blasting 2U fans running inside the chassis, having active cooling at the HDD intake, and blow directly to the drives? Noisy fans are needed to bring enough static pressure and air flow to properly cool the HDDs.

If that's acceptable, you can get a 846 family for a reasonable price, replace the fans with much quieter ones, and mount a few noctuas or bequiets at the intake. CPUs are pretty easy to cool. I tried to put a quiet chassis fan on top of the E5-2660 with 1U heatsink and let the CPU run 70% load for hours, merely reaching 60C. The real difficulties are on HDDs. The same fan blowing through the HDD cage from inside can barely control the temperature at 55C, sometimes 60C, which is not good. So if you want something quiet, you have to work on the cooling. Mine is a 825TQ with 10 drive bays (8 swappable + 2 fixed) and I'm on the way to replace the fan walls, and I'll share my configs when I'm satisfied.
 

kapone

Well-Known Member
May 23, 2015
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The noise is probably the topmost reason, why I moved my SAN system(s) to Chenbro NR40700 chassis (from 846s) a few months back. They have 3x 120mm fans in front of the drives, and 3x 120mm fans on the exhaust side. I rewired the fans so that instead of running from the backplanes, they run from the motherboard (using a PWM splitter). I also junked the stock power supplies and created a custom PSU system using HP platinum PSUs.

These SANs are now...quiet. Seriously quiet. I can barely hear them and the drives stay at low 30s even at full tilt.
 

Killerherts

New Member
Aug 12, 2020
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Yeah I was assuming I would be doing a good deal of custom cooling fan swapping that kind of thing. I figured a couple hundred for the chassis and then nocta fans are not cheap so at least a hundred or so for that.

I never thought of running the fans off a pwm splitter that opens a few door for sure
 

Jason Antes

Active Member
Feb 28, 2020
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Twin Cities
You can get a Netgear ReadyNAS pretty close to your budget, empty. These aren't what I'd necessarily call quiet though. I had one like the one linked below, it could handle 12 drives either all SATA or up to 8 SAS in bays 5-12. Still running 10 years on at a friends place with 2TB drives.

ReadyNAS (this is not mine, I don't know the seller, and I'm not advocating buying it)