A Look Inside

Removing the one-piece side and top cover is very easy since you only have to remove three screws at the rear. This cover is made out of metal, making it heavy enough.


Here's the NAS with its top-side cover removed.


Here's a quick look at the mainboard.


A huge heatsink handles the CPU's cooling.


Two fans have been installed on top of the mainboard. One cools down the CPU's heatsink and the other removes the heat from the system. Both fans are provided by Y.S. Tech, and their model number is BD129733LB. Their lifetime is high due to to the double ball-bearings these use.


The rear fan uses rubber mounts instead of screws to keep vibrations that would increase noise output to a minimum.


We spotted a number of On Semiconductor ICs on the mainboard. The CPU's voltage regulation circuit utilizes several NCP5369 FETs with integrated driving ICs. Other areas of the mainboard contain a number of NCP81243 phase controllers and a few NCP81109F voltage regulators.


Next to an NCP81109F IC is a Richtek voltage regulator with model number RT9025. It features very low dropout voltage and up to 2 A current output.


The mainboard uses polymer caps for filtering purposes, which is great since polymer caps last much longer than electrolytic caps and are more resilient to heat.


This NAS is equipped with an audio amplifier add-on card that drives connected microphones. The audio amplifier is a Texas Instruments TPA3113D2 IC capable of up to 6 W per channel, with 8 Ω loads and 12 W with 4 Ω.


Near the PCIe slot into which the 10 Gbit card is installed is an ASMedia ASM1184e PCI express packet switch.


Both PCIe slots shown above are occupied by the Thunderbolt 2 card.


Here's the synchronous buck converter by Texas Instruments. Its model number is TPS53513.



The PSU is by FSP and is unfortunately only 80 PLUS Bronze certified. We would like to see a PSU with 80 PLUS Gold or higher efficiency in such a high-end NAS server.