A Look Inside

It is now time to strip this NAS down to discover what components it hides inside its casing.


Remove both screws in the rear to take the side cover off.


As already mentioned, our NAS came with two pre-installed WD HDDs.


A small connector connects the on/off switch to the mainboard.


After removing a metal shield that protects the NAS's mainboard, we found the board to be really small and without any heatsinks. Even the CPU doesn't need a heatsink because of its incredibly low TDP.


The PCB model number.


The NAS's CPU, a Marvell Armada 370 (88F6-BM12), is only clocked to run at 800 MHz.


The unit comes with 256 MB of DDR3 RAM by Samsung (K4B2G1646E - BCK0).


Right below the single PCIe 1x slot is a Marvel Alaska 88E1318 Gigabit controller.


The battery of the mainboard is provided by Mitsubishi.


The NAS uses an SMD magnetic buzzer, and it is quite loud. Its model number is AD-7504-MA1-LF.


The solder side of the mainboard hosts one of two SATA connectors.


The SATA PCIe expansion card to which the second HDD is attached.


The 3-pin fan connector.


The fan is made by YS. Tech, and its model number is FD129225LL-N (92 mm, 12 V, 0.12 A, 1900 RPM, 36.3 CFM, 23 dBA, 50.000 MTBF). It uses a Sintetico bearing, an upgraded type of sleeved bearing with better longevity. It never spun up terribly high in our tests, which kept noise produced pretty low.