Yet another NAS case design thread

[Spotswood]

@chinesestunna and myself have been iterating on a design for a NAS box that leverages the relatively inexpensive Supermicro 16 port SAS-836TQ backplane.

Not having any drive sleds immediately led to orientating the drives vertically ala Backblaze's storage pod. And to keep the case as small as possible the motherboard is microATX and the PSU is mounted in the front. The exhaust fan is 140mm.

Click for an animation of this model:


Any and all feedback would be very much appreciated!

 

[chinesestunna]

Excellent animation @Spotswood! Just my 2 cents but I think those WD IDE drives will be impossible to wire with this density and 40 pin cables j/k

Just to add, the main motivation for this is to try an achieve high density 3.5 drive enclosure with ease of drive swapping along with low cost

 

[PigLover]

Not sure

@chinesestunna and myself have been iterating on a design for a NAS box that leverages the relatively inexpensive Supermicro 16 port SAS-836TQ backplane.

Why not just buy a relatively inexpensive SuperMicro CSE-836TQ chassis, turn it on its side and make a pretty top/bottom panel to make it sit nicely on the floor and hide the ugly top part that otherwise would have had rack-rails attached to it?

It ends up being a bit taller, an a bit deeper than your approach - but also simpler, has well known trays, and probably less costly too.

 

[chinesestunna]

Not sure

Why not just buy a relatively inexpensive SuperMicro CSE-836TQ chassis, turn it on its side and make a pretty top/bottom panel to make it sit nicely on the floor and hide the ugly top part that otherwise would have had rack-rails attached to it?

It ends up being a bit taller, an a bit deeper than your approach - but also simpler, has well known trays, and probably less costly too.

Very good points, I think there's definitely a bit of "because we can" here and the main objective is to minimize both foot print, volume, and noise levels for a storage box. I contacted spotswood from my last thread asking about high-density NAS style boxes which seems to stop at 8 bay units for desktop boxes. This unit isn't much bigger than can hold a lot more and more customizable.

 

[pgh5278]

"Because we can" is an excellent and creative reason to do something, this also drives much of the discussion and makes the forum so interesting..

 

[chinesestunna]

"Because we can" is an excellent and creative reason to do something, this also drives much of the discussion and makes the forum so interesting..

Thanks! I'm just quoting @PigLover from another thread: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...ellanox-connectx-2-10gbe-sfp.4484/#post-39650
Honestly it seems from a few threads there's an interest in something along these lines without going full rackmount. I've seen many boxes folks built from CM Stackers and the like that just takes a bunch of 5.25" bays and convert them to 3.5" for a high density pedestal server, usually around 16-20 drives. Many times those builds turn out more expensive or onpar with Norco 24 bay chassis, think $100 per 5in3 x4 + case cost and you're looking at around $500 for enclosures alone.
Granted there are a lot of deals to be had for decommissioned rackmount gear but I feel like a 8+ bay drive-box low power server enclosure is a niche need that a few of us share.

 

[PigLover]

Fair play to that.

 

[Spotswood]

I've been working on the design of the drive cage. The current plan is to laser cut two plastic "organisers" to keep the drives properly located over the backplane.
With the backplane in-hand, it quickly became apparent that the back/bottom of the backplane requires a lot of room for cabling, so much so that I think this vertically oriented MB is a better design:

If the design of the drive cage turns out well then maybe the orientation of the case could change.

There's only 3mm between drives, so where is the best location for a couple of fans? Push/pull on opposite ends (left and right, above), or follow SM's design and blow up/into the backplane?

 

[Deci]

You need a way to isolate the drives from anywhere air can easily pull/push through that gives it a chance to bypass going between the drives as its going to take the easiest path it can and the drives in the middle two rows are going to run a lot warmer with a simple open draw left>right or right>left.

Can you can put some vertical plastic around your "organisers" that makes a seal around part of the drives so the air HAS to exit from there? (even better if thats where the fans (2x120/140mm positioned over the drives 1-8 and 9-16) are pulling the air out of the case as it has no choice but to go past the drives leaving the intake as passive with a mesh bottom?

Or as an alternate, can you put the drives horizontal or are the "organisers" too fiddly/not strong enough for them to support the drives that way? as the backplane adds extra depth and you have reasonable width anyway dictated by cards/drives/matx form factor, go back to the original drives above/below the motherboard and psu design and draw air through the drive section as a mostly sealed chamber with rear extraction fan/s and a smaller 80mm fan in the motherboard/psu section? (would give a ~19" wide x ~5u tall x ~11-12" depth)