Tuesday, March 5th 2024
Jonsbo Intros N4 Micro-ATX Case for 8-bay DIY NAS Builds
Jonsbo over the weekend introduced the N4 White and N4 Black, a series of cube-shaped Micro-ATX cases designed for DIY NAS server builds. The case has eight drive caddies, six of which are 3.5-inch, and two 2.5-inch. All 8 bays come with SATA 6 Gbps backplanes, so you can hot-plug them. These drive caddies, along with an SFX PSU bay, and a 120 mm fan vent, make up the lower 60% of the case. The upper 40% holds a Micro-ATX motherboard tray with four half-height expansion slots. Besides low-profile expansion cards, you can have a CPU cooler as tall as 70 mm up there.
The lower compartment has a perforated front panel covering the drive caddies, while the front side of the upper compartment has a classy wood embellishment. This wood embellishment has the power/reset buttons, a type-A USB 3.2 port, and a USB 3.2 type-C. The upper compartment has panel perforations along the sides and top. The Jonsbo N4 comes in two trims as we mentioned—black and white. The case measures 286 mm x 300 mm x 228 mm (WxDxH), weighing 3.75 kg. The company didn't reveal pricing information.
The lower compartment has a perforated front panel covering the drive caddies, while the front side of the upper compartment has a classy wood embellishment. This wood embellishment has the power/reset buttons, a type-A USB 3.2 port, and a USB 3.2 type-C. The upper compartment has panel perforations along the sides and top. The Jonsbo N4 comes in two trims as we mentioned—black and white. The case measures 286 mm x 300 mm x 228 mm (WxDxH), weighing 3.75 kg. The company didn't reveal pricing information.
13 Comments on Jonsbo Intros N4 Micro-ATX Case for 8-bay DIY NAS Builds
_ 6 HDD for data, run in raid/ raidz mode.
_ 2 ssd for cache or swap file.
_ main m2 drive OS is on mainboard, installed fake-nology or truenas or vm esxi with whatever.
The Jonsbo looks somewhat similar :confused:
That's the executive version of this:
I had one and it was quite fresh and organized... it had room for improvement, yes... but a shame Coolmaster discontinued it... for me it is one of the best layouts from ITX to E-ATX...
There is a flaw in this design though, there is no fan for the two drives on the right. Such a setup needs airflow for drive longevity.
And for a home(?) NAS that's not going into a big rack, I would probably sacrifice hot-swapping for a fairly silent case (e.g. from Fractal Design). The case in this article will be fairly loud. Someone running 6 disks in a file server will probably average >2 years between drive failures, so it's not like people can't tolerate that 5 min downtime opening a case.
These days I no longer run a complex RAID setup at home, I'm sticking to RAID1 or single drives, depending on how important the data is.
But those of you who do, what kind of sustained read/write speeds are you achieving? (for realistic setups, not massive servers)
It will look dated quickly.
Server has two front fans for intake, top 200mm and rear 120mm for exhaust.
Gaming system has 240 rad on front with 2 fans in push configuration, top 200mm and rear 120mm for exhaust. The front panel is the only spot to mount a 240 rad so this means you loose out on a little bit of space for a GPU. You get just shy of 13 inches (safe bet is anything shorter than 12.5") for a GPU. I've got a 12" long 3080Ti right now (I used to have a 12.9" 980Ti and it butt up right next to the rad).
Only thing I wish it had was 2 more spots to house HDDs/SSDs.
Also, you're limited for CPU cooler height, especially if you want to mount the top 200mm fan.
Otherwise I love the case.
If I had a micro-ATX board and not the ATX I'm currently using, I wouldn't mind picking up something like this Jonsbo Intros n4 for my server.