A Look Inside

Compared to other NAS servers we have come across in the past, taking the ReadyNAS 202 apart was very easy.


The main PCB is very small and comes with two pre-installed expansion cards, one with the SATA ports and the other for all the I/O and the Reset switch.


An ARM Cortex-A15 dual-core CPU is the brains of the ReadyNAS 202. It supports Hardware Virtualization and is significantly faster than the ARM Cortex-A9 several budget NAS lines like the QNAP TS-x31 use.


The DDR3 RAM chips, four Samsung K4B4G0846Ds, are soldered to the mainboard. Their capacity reaches 2 GB, which should be enough for such a home-centric NAS option with a custom-tailored Linux distribution.


There are some Ltec caps on the mainboard. These are definitely not among our favorite cap choices.


Two Atheros AR8035 controllers handle the two Ethernet ports.


The USB 3.0 ports are controlled by an EtronTech EJ188H IC.


Here is a Texas Instruments TPS53319DQPR Buck (Step-Down) controller with an input voltage range of 1.5 V to 22 V and an output voltage range of 0.6 V to 5.5 V.


The SLC NAND flash memory chip is by Spansion, and its model number is S34MS01G200BHI000. Its has a capacity of 128 MB.


An IDT5V411 spectrum clock generator is used to reduce EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) on the PCIe and Ethernet ports.


Here are the LED indicators, two buttons, and the USB 3.0 port for the front.


The SATA controller is an Asmedia ASM1060 IC.


The two-port SATA expansion card.


This small PCB is connected to the main PCB through a PCIe 4x slot. It hosts most of the NAS server's I/O ports.


Here are the two PCIe ports for the expansion cards.


The 92 mm fan is by Delta Electronics. Its model number is AFB0912HH (12V, 3200 RPM, 57.92 CFM, 38 dBA), and it uses two ball-bearings, which will make it last for a very long time. It is also fairly quiet since it spins at low speeds.