SilverStone SST-DS380 - Case Storage Mini-ITX Computer Case, support 8x 3.5" or 2.5" Hot-Swap HDD Bays, lockable front door, black

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So I’m building a NAS (running Fedora Server) and thought that the Silverstone DS380 case looked great. It has 8 hot-swappable SATA bays, claims decent cooling with filters, neat form factor. I was having the usual cooling issues with just 3 disks, trying to space them out optimally in the case. Disks would typically exceed 50 degrees Celsius (122F) on a summer's day. I wanted to add a 2 disk SATA controller and max the system out to 8 disks, but I needed to solve this heat issue first.

I also added the "cardboard duct" modification that directs all injected air onto the drives and doesn't splash it into the rear, per https://blog.briancmoses.com/2017/04/creating-a-cooling-duct-for-the-silverstone-ds380.html Car Parts and Accessories, Bike Parts and Accessories, Helmets and other Protective Gear, Vehicle Electronics 30 Days Returnable The last 4 drive bays are internal and only for 2.5-inch drives, which is perfect for a raid 10 setup as your system drive, or just another raid array at your disposal with smaller drives; there are almost endless possibilities with the Silverstone DS380. There are three important aspects to consider when selecting an NAS enclosure for your DIY build. You’ll want as small a size with as small a footprint as possible, you’ll want an efficient design with space for all your drives and other parts, and finally you’ll want it all to be well cooled since it will be running 24/7. With this in mind, it sure looks like Silverstone hit a triple home run with their DS380 NAS Chassis.While we're spoiled with cable management on cases now, I'm from the era of no cable management (early 2000s) and you did what you had (cut holes if you have to). This case to me was really cramped, tough to pass cables through (had to get extension cables for my short PSU cables). This considering there's many cables for the hard drives as well. With my components It is very silent even in a quiet room. You can only can hear it when it performs scrubs on the drives.

The Be Quiet! fans are not too noisy, even at full speed. Eventually this NAS will reside in the basement where we won’t hear it at all, but for now it is very tolerable being on the first floor. Your mileage might vary, but I won’t buy the DS380 for a NAS again, unless it’s going to run full of SSDs or something (or I heavily mod the case). It’s OK for a small machine though without a bunch of disks (shame!) and that’s what I’ve re-purposed it for now. Construction feels cheap with thin aluminium sides and plastic frontpieces. I was disheartened at this but it is surprisingly well constructed and solidly stable nevertheless.

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Edit: I made some changes which have dropped the temps to around 40 degrees at idle (haven’t tested at load yet). The case has potential, but I still think it’s slightly too cramped and the airflow is not good enough. Just having room for a lot of drives isn’t everything to a chassis, all those drives have to be cooled effectively as well. Silverstone took care of this with two 120mm fans on the side of the chassis blowing cold air in on the front mounted 3.5-inch drives and one 120mm rear exhaust fan to help get the hot air expelled. Silverstone's latest chassis is unlike anything we have seen. Although it's still a computer case, it isn't designed for gaming or even workstations. The DS380 is aimed directly at users who are building their own NAS. When it comes right down to it, the towering cases of old are no longer a necessity. Powerful components are available in smaller and smaller form factors. Bigger is no longer always better. A smaller case might be an efficient and elegant solution to your PC needs, with some Mini-ITX cases rivalling the best PC cases available today. Plugged the rear and side fans directly into the PSU molex connector, rather than through mainboard and rear of hard drive chassis

The Silverstone DS380 has a tiny footprint of just 211 x 360 mm and is 285 mm high. This isn’t much, but it still has room for a total of 12 drives, mITX motherboard, SFF PSU and three 120mm cooling fans. The rear fan area is even placed so it can accommodate AIO liquid cooling solutions such as the Silverstone TD03 and the three included fans have a maximum noise generation of 22dBA.Thankfully the drive cages themselves are easy to remove using the squeeze and pull method, still not nearly as elaborate as what you will find from Synology, QNAP or even Thecus, but they do the job. Cooling: 3x Internal 120mm 1200rpm 22dBA system fans are included (2x intake fans; 1x exhaust fan); Can accomodate an entry-level liquid CPU cooling system (can handle systems with CPU of 95W TDP or above); Externally removable (magnetic) filters on the top and side panels. smartctl -t long /dev/ada?) [? = 0 thru 5 for my six drives, test run simultaneously on all drives]. The front-panel shield helps prevent dust and other unwanted objects from entering the unit, but it also suffocates the drives slightly with less airflow. Cooling is a little hit and miss, especially considering there are three 120mm fan mount points. It's also pretty expensive. Bottom line

Inverted the PSU as per suggestion from Dan, so that it helps to draw air through the case. The default for the PSU is to draw air from outside and bypass the case. Some people invert the psu. I believe this would only help if the barrier is installed. I am never planned to use because my psu’s fan seldom runs (eco mode). Cut a hole for a Noctua 40mm NF-A4x10 FLX 4500RPM Fan (for extraction) in the upper rear of the case (there is a spot for it as-is but I want to remove the metal grill and add a proper fan grill for this). This is to keep hot air from dwelling up the top (hot air rises). I'm planning to put it in parallel with the 3000 RPM Noctua 120mm NF-F12 (same voltage (12v)) but will see what happens. By "metal grill" I mean this: http://www.frozencpu.com/images/products/main/fgc-02_2.jpg which I found in another similar thread) You will note that ada0 and 1 both run significantly cooler with the new fans and NO air conditioning, than they did when the room was air conditioned with the old fans!Assembling your own NAS would net more performance as well because you'd be using a Celeron or Pentium over the Atom or other SoCs, while power shouldn't be a concern with Haswell using less than 30 watts at idle. As the cherry on top, open source software such as FreeNAS and enclosures like Silverstone's DS380 should make it less daunting to get started with your homebrewed eight-bay NAS server. So I got one to run low-power i3, C226 chipset mainboard and five HGST 3TB NAS drives. Unfortunately the cooling through the drives is pretty much non-existent. The two fans on the side draw air in but blow onto the hotswap chassis and nothing really draws air through it. Where the Silverstone DS380 does excel is cooling. Whereas we are used to finding one or two exhaust fans, the DS380 has a more advanced setup. In the left side of the case there are a pair of 120mm in-take fans covered by a magnetic dust filter. Then at the rear we have a third 120mm fan serving as the case exhaust. It's a nice dust free setup that should keep the drives inside clean and cool. Desktops, Monitors, Pen drives, Hard drives, Memory cards, Computer accessories, Graphic cards, CPU, Power supplies, Motherboards, Cooling devices, TV cards & Computing Components 15 Days Returnable