A Look Inside

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


As we already stated on the previous page, unlikely to DS412+, Synology made the dismantling of the DS212j a far easier process since you must do it at least once to install the necessary disk(s).


The PCIe card that holds the second SATA port and power connector is really small. The first SATA port is soldered directly onto the main PCB.


The 3pin fan header.


The CPU (Marvell ARM 88F6281) has such low TDP that it doesn't require a heatsink. It has 256KB L2 cache and supports two SATA ports, a single PCI Express x1 and one USB 2.0 port. Next to it resides an STMicroelectronics 25P32V6P which stores the firmware of the DS212j while a little further away we find an IT 430F2111 IC.


The 1Gb DDR2 RAM IC is provided by Samsung (K4T1G164QF-BCF7) and is soldered directly onto the mainboard.


The USB 2.0 HUB Controller is a Genesys Logic GL850G IC.


The red colored polymer caps are provided by FPCAP while the smaller purple ones are made by OS-CON (Sanyo). Both are Japanese companies so these caps should be of high quality.


The front panel PCB that holds the four LED indicators and the On/Off switch is connected to the mainboard through a ribbon cable.


The fan is provided by Y.S. Tech and its model number is FD129225LL-N (12V, 0.12A, 1900RPM, 36.3CFM). According to Y.S Tech this fan is equipped with Sintetico bearings, high quality bearings which have much longer lifespan than plain sleeve bearings.