A Look Inside

It's time now time to strip this NAS down to uncover which components it hides inside. Removing the piece on top and bottom and the side panel was an easy task; however, many screws had to be removed to get our hands on the mainboard afterward. But we have disassembled worse, so it was a pretty straightforward task. You just have to remember which screws go where once it's time to put the NAS back together.


The drives' cage is metallic, while the enclosure is made of plastic. This is a step back for the latter since the TS-x69's and TS-x70's enclosures aren't out of plastic, but we prefer the white look, and the enclosure does cost less, which results in a lower retail price.


The mainboard is very small and there is no need for extra controllers or chipsets since it employs a SoC (System on Chip).


The CPU is passively cooled by a small heatsink. It is an Intel Celeron J1800 (Bay Trail) with two cores running at 2.41 GHz.


One of two RAM slots is occupied by a 1 GB Apacer SO-DIMM (PC3-12800). The other empty slot is hard to reach, so users who feel uncomfortable about breaking apart such expensive units will hesitate to upgrade the memory total. You should also keep in mind that not all SO-DIMMs are compatible, so be careful about which memory module you purchase.


The mainboard's BIOS battery.


An Asmedia ASM1442 controls the HDMI port the HD Station exploits.


The hardware monitor IC, a Fintek F71869AD.


We only found polymer caps by Nippon Chemi-Con and an NCP6133 phase controller on the mainboard.


Like in most QNAP units, the flash memory is provided by Apacer.


The mainboard's obverse side hosts very few components.


On the mainboard's solder side are also a pair of Intel WGI210AT Ethernet controllers.


The PCIe expansion card that hosts all four SATA ports. On it are two ASMedia ASM1061 controllers and a single PIC16F722A microcontroller.


The fan is provided by YS. Tech, and its model number is FD121225LB (120 mm, 12 V, 0.18 A, 1800 RPM, 73 CFM, 34 dBA, 80,000 h MTBF). It uses ball-bearings and will, as such, last fairly long.