Trying to source this Chinese ITX NAS Case (NSC-800)

PICS PICS and MORE PICS!

So - I re-did the NSC-800 NAS. Swapped from the rather tight 775 setup with the Scythe 40mm heatsink to a 1155/H61 combo with the Dynatron 30mm heatsink. It was much easier to get everything to fit correctly IMO.

Here are some pics

Pics wth the rear removed - Made SATA Cable management so much easier than I was anticipating!






2.5" Drive #1. Notice how the RAID card partially covers the bottom drive, and the MoBo Standoffs that are stacked 4x tall to allow me to "stack" the second 2.5" Drive ontop of the first one, but still leave room for the RAID Card (gets sandwiched in-between).





And with the second 2.5" Drive "stacked" ontop (it's now a 40GB Intel SSD ). You can see how the RAID card is comfortably "sandwiched" in-between the 2 drives (only using 3x standoff points to allow RAID Card clearance):




Here is the Heatsink Clearance with the Dynatron 30mm tall heatsink on the 1155 MoBo. Room to spare :




A pic of the rear panel with modified fan wire (shortened and combined both fans to a signgle header - the header is on the mid-plane board):




And a few pics demonstrating the finished unit, and showing the size comparison from my old 3RU NAS Chassis, to the NSC-800, and with a 4-Bay ReadyNAS Ultra-4 Plus on top (the ReadyNAS has 4x 3TB Drives for 8.1TB of RAID-5 Formatted Capacity )





The NSC-800 DWARFS the old 3RU and ATX chassis I've used for this same NAS in the past! Not even close lol


It's running extremely well! Quiet, cool, and FAST!!! Saturates my Gig-E network w/o much effort. It runs circles around the (admittedly less robust) ReadyNAS - but the ReadyNAS actually has about 1TB more capacity with half as many drives 2TB drive upgrades will be next for the NSC-800 once HD prices settle back down - and with the Hot-Swap bays - that will be 100% painless!!!

Rock on

Excelent Work Randyman!

If this case had a pci/pcie expansion slot ( would need to be about 2cm taller ) it would solve most of the problems and be near perfect!

Thanks mademax!

Yep. I did end up attaching the RAID card by the two PCIe Standoff mounts - and the PCIe Cable Extender is held in place by friction alone at both ends. The card itself is solid IMO.

Did you check out how I managed to get both 2.5" drives in there? Pretty slick IMNSHO. I was SO HAPPY when I stumbled on the fact that you can remove the rear panel to make the build go a lot easier and cleaner. I was really stressing over the SATA cable management until then.

Have you done anything more with yours - or with developing a mass-marketed NAS solution based off these sweet little cases?

Rock on!

hey!
had no time to reply when I first read your post, and then it passed me...

The case is now my home project, and I'm going to use it to replace my current NAS server.
I'm going to get 8 4TB hdd's to go with it.
The NAS solution that the company I work for is making is doing great progress on the software side. We still need hardware, and unfortunatly, as it is, this case won't do, simply because you have to hack it to be able to use it. The major problem is really the compatibility with raid cards. We can't sell a solution where the card is hacked into the box!
The good news is that the manufacturer is going to make some changes to the case to acomodate this problem and some others. And I do belive that they are going to fix it
Plus, they will be working on a 12 bay or more NAS case, similar to the NSC800 ))

mademax said:

The good news is that the manufacturer is going to make some changes to the case to acomodate this problem and some others. And I do belive that they are going to fix it

Click to expand...

I sent in design alterations to my rep which responded favorably to my ideas. At first, I was looking to drop the cage to fit what I wanted. But, I discovered a much easier approach was by adding 0.5 into to 1.0 inch to both the depth and height and reducing the diameter of the fans a little. By doing this, I've been able to add:

mATX board (cheaper & higher density 4x DIMMs vs opposite 2x SODIMMs),
2x low profile slots (3 slots if they adopt a 2U MB clearance),
500W redundant power supply (380W & 420W available),
2x 2.5" HDD,
2x 2 port 8087 to 8088 SAS adapters
and 1x (maybe 2x depending on the card's component height) SAS Expanders

For those that wouldn't need a redundant power supply, a filler plate with the cut out for the standard 1U mini would be used.

A dual port SAS backplane with 8087 connections needs to, or should, be adopted along with a more polished drive cage.

Attached is a pic of the mock-up using spare parts and dimensionally correct foam cut-outs.

Except the fact that the space for a cpu heatsink looks even smaller than it is now, the design alterations look great. maybe if they grow the case a bit more. Anyway, I wouldn't mind if they kept the ITX form factor.

Thanks for the update - mademax. 8x 4TB Drives - WOW!!! Do the Areca cards support the current 3TB/4TB Drives? I'm running 7200.12 1TB's now with plans to upgrade to Hitachi 2TB's once HD Prices settle back down (same ones I use in my desktop PC's RAID-6).

Going mATX with dual PSU's sounds neat, but I'm fine with the ITX for now. If you keep the ITX layout but still expand the dimensions like mademax was hinting at - I do believe this could be the PERFECT NAS Case. As it stands - it's "perfect enough" for me, but a 12-Bay version with an actual PCIe "slot" would be sick!

I'm actually fine with the RAID Card mounting as I am using the two standoffs to securely mount the card to the chassis (and added a little insulating tape to the top of the bottom 2.5" HD to avoid PCB>HD shorts). It's the PCIe extension cable that is only held in place by the friction of the slot at the card end (the MoBo end is secured with the x16 slot's retaining lock). The NAS would literally have to fall off a desk or get dropped to have any chance of jostling the PCIe extension cable loose (and at that point, it's likely dead anyways!).

My power LED's burnt out on both my NSC-800 and my NSC-400. Anyone else's power LED's burn out as well?

Keep on keepin' on!

The areca's are based on LSI chips, and LSI support's them on the current and past generations ( 9260 and 9265 ). In not sure of the exact SoC used by both, but I'm sure that the current and past generations of areca use the same.
They still don't support 4k sectors, and, as far as I know, no hardware raid controller on the market does. The drives I am testing have 512b sector emulation ( hitachi 4tb ), so, apart of some performance hit, they work fine.

Also, I've read somewere that intel raid controllers are going to support 4k sectors with a firmware upgrade, and as the intel controlers are also based on LSI SoC's, I'm sure both LSI and Areca cards will support them too.

I had no problems with the case leds for now. I would say that it was powered on for maybe 20 days or so. Anyway, my power and reset buttons are diferent than yours! The ones on your case look better!

With the design I submitted, the ITX can still mount as it currently does and the redundant power supply moves on top. The low profile slots then rotate 180° and a bifurcating PCIe 16x to two 8x riser is installed.

I heard back from my rep. From the details of his message, it looks like the mini-ITX only board will remain while adding a single, FL/FH slot. (I've already replied requesting that they consider adding just a knock-out low profile slot so I can still use the chassis with a bifurcating riser.)

His message is below:

We have been working on improving our chassis and your input was very helpful.

We have decided to make the following modifications to NSC800:

1. Increase the height by 1.8CM on the top.

2. Adding a Full Height PCI-E slot on the back.

3. Modifying the backplane plate to allow an extra 2mm – 4mm of space for Heatsink. the following 1U heatsinks will fit nicely with XeonE3/i7 with 95W+ TDP while Increasing the chassis width will be very expensive/time consuming.
http://www.dynatron-corp.com/en/product_detail_1.aspx?cv=1-4-281-283&id=190&in=0#
http://www.dynatron-corp.com/en/product_detail_1.aspx?cv=1-4-281-283&id=191&in=0#

4. new redesigned drive trays – Thicker, stronger with smoother operation

5. Cutting out a large area of the backplate and use different adapter plates for 1U/Redundant PSUs.

6. Moving 2x 2.5” HDDs to the side.

7. We are currently looking at different OEM suppliers on a new front I/O assembly with USB3.0 port while removing the reset button.

Those above are top priority while we are still considering many other improvements such as MINI-SAS Backplanes, etc.

I'll keep an eye out for this "NSC-800 v2"! More elegant drive trays and better LED/Fiber Optic tolerances for the Drive Activity & Power LED's would be welcomed. Most of my "Drive Activity" fiber optic carriers needed to be massaged back into place so they mate up with the Mid-Plane mounted LED's. Making them a bit brighter would be nice, too (the Power LED's drown out the Drive Activity LED's on mine).

Any word on a 12-Bay model?

Keep us posted.

"The 12-bay will feature a Micro-ATX, Redundant PSUs, standard rackmount width with optional screw-on handles/rails." A response to a follow-up email stated that a standard ATX is a possibility and that there will be plenty of room for expansion.

As for how the 12 bay looks, I can't show you a rendered picture as I was asked to keep it confidential. However, consider my mock-up picture on 4-14-12. Visualize 4 more bays to make it 12 bays wide, and beef up the chassis sides so it can be railed and racked.

I was told I'd be updated with more information next week.

Hi there, I'm a user from HK, and like most of you here, I've been interested by the NSC-800, and I think I can order from China easier than in Europe or US, feel free to discuss with me if you need my help in ordering, as I'm planning to build my own NAS with this case, in that sense, I think it will be cheaper for a bulk purchase.

To both @Randyman and @mademax,
Thank you for sharing your detailed feedbacks on your builds.

Me too, I decided to want this box replacing 2 (Infrant x600 TL, Netgear NV+ v2) of my 3 exisiting ReadyNAS.

@TronOfBerg: When will we get to see that NCS-800 v.2 or even the NCS-1200? Any news from your side? Was anything shown during recent Computex 2012.

@jerometam: Can and will you really place orders? What's your price tag? Shipment to Europe - for me single unit only, no bulk.

Like many I did a lot of research during the past few weeks and can conclude that this is indeed the best solution (at least for my needs).

Thank you all.

snah said:

To both @Randyman and @mademax,
Thank you for sharing your detailed feedbacks on your builds.

Me too, I decided to want this box replacing 2 (Infrant x600 TL, Netgear NV+ v2) of my 3 exisiting ReadyNAS.

@TronOfBerg: When will we get to see that NCS-800 v.2 or even the NCS-1200? Any news from your side? Was anything shown during recent Computex 2012.

@jerometam: Can and will you really place orders? What's your price tag? Shipment to Europe - for me single unit only, no bulk.

Like many I did a lot of research during the past few weeks and can conclude that this is indeed the best solution (at least for my needs).

Thank you all.

Click to expand...

I can and I will place order, a single unit will be around 200US, I dont know how much will it cost shipping to europe, and dunno if ur area need import tax I suppose shipping plus tax may exceed the cost of the unit itself for a single unit

Man, looks like I've arrived on this way late.

I guess I'll have to wait for version two. Any updates since April?

kalieaire said:

Man, looks like I've arrived on this way late.

I guess I'll have to wait for version two. Any updates since April?

Click to expand...

No, I'm still discussing with the Vendor, and they, till now, still holding the quote for me.

Do you have the contact information of the maker? I'll give them a call and see what's up. It might be worth it giving them a call too so they know that there are more people interested. Driving up demand might make the more likely to pay attention to potential OEMs.

kalieaire said:

Do you have the contact information of the maker? I'll give them a call and see what's up. It might be worth it giving them a call too so they know that there are more people interested. Driving up demand might make the more likely to pay attention to potential OEMs.

Click to expand...

I contact them with a TaoBao IM, AliWangWang...

Hello,

i would be very interested in ordering this with shipping to Czech republic and even more interested in 12 bay version. Also if there would be a possibility for some cheaper shipment then dhl it would be awesome.