Custom NAS Builds In DESKTOP Cases

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🖨 3D Print Models:

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Music (in order):
🎵 "If You Want To" - Me
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🎥 Curious About the equipment I use to make my videos?
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Timestamps:
0:00 Finding a NAS Case Can Be Hard
0:38 PIA (Sponsor)
1:58 The plan
3:10 The cases
5:23 The other components
7:29 The HDDs
8:27 making sure the parts work
9:15 Building in the Define 7 XL
11:02 The build is done
12:26 Building in the Storage Master
17:14 Adding wheels!
18:16 how things turned out

[DanielHMC]

My family has a Fractal Node 804 NAS build, and it holds 8 drives (we only populated 4 bays so far), pretty sufficient for the average family I'd say.

[danielfisher]

Another DIY case option: Antec Performance Series P101 Silent. Big and heavy, but quality and quiet for just over $100. 8x3.5" bays with toolless (but plastic) caddies, 2x2.5" SSD mounts, PLUS it has a 5.25" bay. I installed an Icy Dock 4x2.5" insert into the 5.25" drive for the additional space for SATA SSDs. This gives a lot of flexibility to add SSDs for app/VM use. It is now my main TrueNAS machine. This replaced my Cooler Master N400. The N400 is an even cheaper option for a DIY NAS (currently $75 on Amazon) but is more along the lines of cheaper, light weight metal case. The N400 now holds my 2nd backup TrueNAS system.

[iamamish]

10:17 - here we see a man who has clearly built a NAS before and learned the hard way - "umm which drive is JFH882-NX2023?"

[ghosttheoremproductions]

Instead of the "cheap" case you're probably better off hunting 2nd hand stores or asking your local SI. I have half a dozen old style monster cases that are just too dated to build a modern gaming PC in. Those giant cases of yesteryear often had ridiculous HDD mounting capacity, provisions for 200mm case fans, and are usually hanging out in someones storage collecting dust. I'd happily sell you all of mine for cheap just to clear out that closet.

[ryanmalone]

I had that fractal in my shopping cart 5 months ago and was so close to purchasing it. Ended up deciding to get a rack and get some enterprise gear and I’m so glad I did.

[harrisonm]

The Define series of cases are great for home NAS builds. Had an R5 Define as my main PC case for years. I built a new system a couple of years back and repurposed some old kit in the R5 to be a home NAS. Easily holds 8 HDDs with ease and (if I remember rightly) can fit more in if you get creative. Quality is solid and I also put it on wheels - well, a wheeled tray which was mainly to lift it off the carpet. Being older, they can be picked up for cheap money in the used market, but just make sure all the drive cages and trays are included. Top work Fractal.

[timmy]

I just build my DIY NAS in an IKEA kitchen cabinet, with 4 drawers inside.
- First or top drawer is for networking
- Second drawer is my Proxmox server
- Third drawer is empty, for future expansion
- Fourth or bottom drawer, is my DIY NAS...

The cabinet costed me about 200 USD, and could easily fit a psu + motherboard + 18 drives, in each drawer...
I currently have 6 x 18TB in raid 6, good for about 70 TB usable storage. Maintenance is as simple as, opening one of the drawers...

[tuttocrafting]

I'm literally designing my 3.5" version of my 2.5" cages. but this time i'm using off the shelf caddies.
The 4 bay 2.5 is available in printables for those interested :D

Another cool case is the P101 Silent, I have 10x3.5 drive and 3x2.5 ssd (for now) as I've just designed a 4x2.5 cage to fit more in it!

[SuperMakeSomething]

As a fellow YouTuber, I probably don’t comment as much on others’ content as I should, but I just want to say THANK YOU! I am only a few months into my personal self-hosting/homelab journey, but I have learned so much from your videos. There is never any clickbait, your videos are thorough, straight forward, honest, informative, and you openly discuss any issues/mistakes you run into during a project, which is INFINITELY helpful to people watching/learning from your videos. Overall just fantastic job and keep up the good work! I always look forward to your next upload.

[gunnarrathbun]

The Meshify cases also have the "NAS" layout since it is the same case just with mesh front ant top panels.. It also has the solid side panels. That is what I have and gives you better breathability than the Define series. Got a 5 pack of Artic P14 140mm fans and a Noctua cooler and I almost never notice the sound of it once I tuned the case fans down a little. I set them to be essentially a static 800rpm. The drives are the only thing you really hear from it since I decided to get enterprise drives.

[alexanderthegray]

I’m building my own case out of wood for a really strange DIY NAS server. It needs to be custom, because I’m putting two NUCs inside it and weird PSUs. So far I’ve spent about $70 on it. So I can’t buy one because of my odd requirements, but if I wasn’t being so weird a $90 case would definitely be worth it.

[Altirix_]

with enough work you can make any case a NAS when you have a 3d printer. I converted (hacked apart) a lenovo M82? all the guts were replaced. printed a custom front on it and a 8 bay 3.5mm hdd rack for it. its maybe 20mm longer due to the new front but all the drives fit in the case with a short txx psu and low profile ecc memory. keep in mind this pc is one of those super slim towers.

if you have a 3d printer and want to actually design your own stuff, i can recommend it, my suggestion is to design in a modular way.

[AuramAlexander]

Huge props for talking about the 3.3v power issue that A LOT of renewed drives have. Half my drives have this and it took me forever to figure out a proper solution. Yours is great, I did something similar by removing the 3.3v pin from the PSU side of the SATA power cable for those drives.

[fatchobok]

15:00 A lot of seasoned datahoarders just kapton tape off the necessary pins on the drives to get going without power disable. I've personally had drives running for a few years like this without any issues.

[DaWord]

If you don't need as many drives, the Meshify 2 is basically the Fractal Design 7 (non-XL). That is what I have for my backup NAS and it regularly goes on sale for just a little over $100

[jttech]

Part of the mojo with a used supermicro chassis is that you get hot swap drive trays, and the backplane exposes management features (for locating drives, inlet air temp, disk activity).

What you don't get is a quiet solution. At best, it's pretty loud, and if your setup is running hot, it's quite loud.

Also a noctua nhd12L will fit in a 4U case, and if your memory is of reasonable height, you can squeeze in a second fan in front for some extra handling.

[clunkclunk]

A big reason I love unRAID for home NAS - you can start with two drives (well technically one, but you won't have parity), and you can add additional drives as you need or can afford. Or you can populate the server with whatever jumble of drives you currently have, and expand by replacing small drives with larger ones over time. Yes, there's some tradeoffs in terms of performance for sure, but the flexibility is a great option for budget conscious users, or people moving from a bunch of random drives in to a NAS.

[tomdrx]

Have my unraid server in an Antec P101S, 8x 3.5" and 2x2.5" drive bays and a ODD bay for Blu-ray drive. Really pleased with it, hosts Plex server and a mix of old and new hard drives drives ranging from 1TB to 10TB - drives from my old laptops, computers and consoles.

[xPLAYnOfficial]

In my opinion the best modern-day "old-school" case is the Phanteks Enthoo Pro. You can get the non-clear side panel option for around $100USD, it comes with support for lots of 3.5" drives, supports multiple 5.25" bays (people do NOT realize just how useful those still are in 2024), supports up to a 420mm liquid cooler in the top, ATX-L PSUs, eATX motherboards, has great build quality, and in general is a case that I deeply appreciate it's existence.

Personally I scored a Rosewill Thor V2 when they still had some NOS off Newegg for $150USD around 2019, and it continues to still be the very best case I have ever built in (and that is saying a lot considering the thousands of cases I have worked with over the years), but I have no come to the point where I have maxed it out and need to go bigger. I am currently eyeing the Anidees Raider XL at $310USD.

[TheGoodestDave]

Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 is also another cavernous PC case that's great for a giant NAS build, currently runs $150 or so.