Exterior
The front door is made from brushed aluminium that gives the DS380 chassis that extra premium look. At the center, you can place the Silverstone sticker if you’d like to, or you can leave it blank if that’s your preference. On the side is the key lock, a simple mechanism that is more intended to deter people from even thinking about tampering with your drives than actual preventing entry.
Opening the door exposes the 8 hot-swap drive bays and front panel connectors as well as power and reset buttons. USB 3.0 front ports are great to have on a storage oriented case and the audio jacks give an added bonus for those who use it more as a HTPC chassis.
Taking a closer look, we see the locking mechanism that can prevent the power button on the outside of the door to be used. It’s a very simple mechanic mechanism, but it works like a charm and as it should and prevents accidental shutdowns.
The two 120mm fans on the side are covered with a magnetic dust filter. The easy-to-remove filter prevents unnecessary dust to enter and allows for regular cleaning without a hassle. I really like the fact that I don’t have to take anything apart or move things out-of-the-way to keep my system clean.
The rear is very simple with the PSU area at the top and two expansion slots below it. The dual slots allow for dual cards to be used on the same level as expansion cards without a direct connector; both is a nice bonus and one we don’t find all that often in mITX cases. At the bottom, we see the fan exhaust next to the IO shield area.
On the top of the chassis is another magnetic dust filter to protect your PSU from unnecessary dust and dirt. A needed feature with a top-mounted PSU.
What would you say is the shortest sata cable length to keep cable length at a minimum yet allow for air flow routing? I was thinking of using the right 90 degree connector on the backplane, not the 90 down connectors used on the HD, which would route the cable flat along the backplane toward the motherboard without the big loops. Thanks for the article. It has been 3 years but still relevant.
The parts I have so far are; 8 x 8TB WD Data Center drives, one SSD for cache drive, the DS380 case, a sfx 300 watt 80+ power supply, and assorted used other parts and cables if needed.
Do you have a suggestion for a motherboard considering I hope to run unRAID 6.4, NAS and File Server, NGINX, PLEX, and VMs all on this one box. I would like to keep the power consumption as low as possible considering the use of the type hard drive.. Yes I did the demo for FreeNAS and I did like it, but the memory and HD requirements I did not. I kinda like the unRaid idea of putting all of a file on one drive yet recoverable, and especially the ability to remove a disk and use it on another computer if needed. unRaid is now using xfs and I read although zfs is the new guy on the block, xfs is still really good.. Having NO experience with all this I may have other thoughts down the road but I have almost 6TB of data on two very aging HDs that have started to have SMART errors. Time to move my bottom side.
Thanks again,
Anne
The cable length is a difficult thing to answer as it depends on your components. Where they have their ports in relation to the drive’s/backplane’s connectors. My best tip would be: Take an old SATA cable and connect it at one end. Now run it the path you’ll want it to run (in an as empty case as possible). When you get to where you want to go, make a mark with a soft-tip pen on the cable. Add 1-2cm for extra routing as well as plugging and unplugging. Now you have the length you need by measuring that cable.
As for which motherboard, that’s always a difficult choice. Connection and calculation power is what you need to find. For basic file sharing, you don’t need a whole lot. But VMs do require a lot more power. The options are nearly endless, from low-powered APUs to high-powered Xeon SoC. Budget and needs are what will make your end decision. Of course, since you already have a PSU, that’s another factor you need to take into consideration along with peak-power draw from the drives.
I have no personal experience with unRaid, but it sounds like a good idea on a theoretical level.
So overall, a really difficult thing to answer. Oh, and there are more OS options too such as OpenMediaVault and Nas4Free besides FreeNAS. Of course, there’s also always the option to just do it all manually from a scratch OS, if you don’t need a fancy remote interface.