A Look Inside

It's time now to strip the NAS down to discover what components it hides inside the casing.


Dismantling the NAS wasn't an easy procedure, but our experience in doing so allowed us to finish the procedure quickly and without any problems, and we only had to remove screws instead of fighting with weird locking mechanisms that break easily.


Two small PCBs are installed to the front of the case. The first hosts the USB 3.0 port, LED indicators, and two push buttons, while the second features the IR receiver.


The mainboard is really small, but houses all the necessary components a NAS needs. Well, all but eSATA ports.


The solder side of the mainboard is protected by a plastic shield we removed to provide a clear view to the components installed on this side.


The NAS is equipped with Intel's fresh Atom SoC CE5335 dual-core processor clocked at 1.6 GHz. This processor is actually a SoC (System on a Chip) and was initially codenamed Berryville but is now called Evansport. It supports Hyper-Threading, has a PowerVR SGX545 IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) and a hardware H264 trans-coder along with hardware AES encryption. It also supports HDMI 1.4a, USB 3.0, PCI Express 2.0, and Gigabit Ethernet. As you can see, the CPU is cooled passively by a large enough heatsink, thanks to its low TDP.


The DDR3 modules are directly soldered to the mainboard, so you cannot upgrade the RAM. Four K4B2G1646E-BCK0 Samsung ICs total up to 1 GB of RAM.


For additional USB 3.0 ports, an Entrontech EJ188H controller is used.


This is a TPS54426 synchronous buck (or step-down) converter that takes 4.5 V to 18 VDC input voltage and outputs -0.1 V to 5.7 VDC.


The single PCIe port of the mainboard. It is occupied by the PCIe expansion card that holds both SATA connectors.


The battery of the mainboard is installed vertically.


Polymer caps by CapXon filter the voltages on the mainboard.


The PCIe expansion card with its SATA connectors.


On the solder side of the main board is a Realtek RTL8211E Gigabit Ethernet Transceiver, which is weird since the Atom SoC includes a Gigabit Ethernet controller.


The flash memory of the NAS is located on the solder side of the mainboard. It is an FL128SA1F00 IC.


The fan is provided by YS Tech and is powerful despite its small dimensions, since it can spin at up to 4400 RPM if need be. Its model number is FD127025HB. This particular fan uses double ball-bearings to ensure it lasts a long time.