A Look Inside

The one-piece top-and-side cover is easily removed, and we were very pleased by the fact that Synology used a metal cover instead of a plastic one. Metal increases durability and allows for lower system temperatures since it dissipates heat faster than plastic.


The mainboard is very small and rather empty since most of the required controllers are embedded into the SoC (Alpine AL-212). The latter is only cooled passively by a thin but quite wide heatsink.


The solder side of the mainboard looks empty as well. We spotted several EMI pads which short and ground some areas of the mainboard with the chassis in an effort to suppress EMI on this side.


The DDR3 Samsung RAM DIMMs (K4B2G0846Q-BCK0) have a capacity of 1 GB and are soldered to the mainboard, which makes upgrading their capacity impossible. Although DSM is very light on resources, we would like to have the option to upgrade the total amount of RAM.


An Altera 5M80Z Complex Programmable Logic Device, or CPLD in short, stores the server's configuration. As you can see in the first of the photos above, this IC was hiding behind a sticker we had to remove in order to identify it.


Synology used a Marvell 88SE9170 host controller to connect both Serial Ports of the SATA interface board with the mainboard, through the PCIe port.


The second PCIe 1x port on the mainboard is occupied by a board that holds the USB 3.0 and eSATA ports. The USB 3.0 controller is an EtronTech EJ168A.


We spotted a PIC16F1829 8-bit microcontroller on the mainboard.


The first photos above show an STMicroelectronics 24C64F EEPROM with a capactity of 64 Kbit. The other photos show a Macronix MX25U6435F Serial Flash module.


A pair of Fairchild FDMS0309AS mosfets are used by the mainboard's DC-DC converters.


The first of the above ICs is a Semtech SC417 stand-alone buck regulator that integrates power MOSFETs, a boot-strap switch, and a programmable LDO (linear voltage regulator). In the second photo is a Semtech SC403B integrated MOSFET regulator with a programmable LDO, and the last photo shows two ICs (M448 and M447) we couldn't identify.


A pair of Realtek RTL8211DN controllers handle the Ethernet ports.


The fan is by Y.S. Tech, and its model number is FD129225LL-N (12V, 0.12A, 1900RPM, 36.3CFM). The fan's speed is kept for as long as the unit operates normally, which keeps noise output incredibly low. According to Y.S Tech, the fan uses a Sintetico bearing, and it looks to be of high quality. According to their claims, this bearing type will last much longer than a sleeve bearing.