A Look Inside

Taking apart this NAS wasn't easy. I had to remove far too many screws, and detaching the rear was tricky as well. However, I did take it apart because nothing leaves my test bench without a detailed internal analysis.


The chassis is made out of metal in order to withstand the increased weight of twelve drives.


The plastic front frame, its LED indicators, and the power button are connected to the server's mainboard with three cables.


This cable connects the COM port to the rear of the NAS.


This part was the toughest to remove and reinstall.


Both fans are installed to a plastic frame, which can easily be removed. Removing the fans from the frame is not as easy, and you have to be very careful while doing so as you might otherwise damage the enclosure.


Two 120 mm fans by Y.S. Tech are used, and their model number is KM121225LL (120 mm, 12 V, 0.33 A, 2000 RPM, 61.2 CFM, 31.5 dBA). These fans utilize ball bearings for a lifetime of roughly 60,000 hours.


The mainboard is installed to a metal plate. The SoC is passively cooled. The TDP of the Atom processor is only 15 W, so there is no need for a larger heat sink and active cooling.


There are two RAM slots of which only one is occupied by a 4 GB SO-DIMM.


I upgraded the server's memory with a HyperX module and everything worked fine. However, I did get a notification about it being a non-Synology memory module.


Despite this notification, I didn't notice any problems with the RAM I had installed.


Three power phases handle the CPU's energy needs, and there are two more phases on top of the SoC. All filtering caps are polymer and provided by FPCAP and Chemi-Con. I also found a Texas Instruments 2-phase TPS-53626 step-down converter in this area.


The flash memory shown above only contains the part of the DSM operating system used to boot up the system. The rest of the OS is installed on the HDDs. The first of the photographs above also includes the BIOS battery.


This is an Altera Complex Programmable Logic Device (MAX V 5M240ZT100C5N).


All four Gigabit Ethernet transceivers are provided by Marvell (Alaska 88E1543); these also support port trunking and Jumbo frames.


One of the PCIe slots is occupied by the SATA expansion card, while the other is empty; it could be used for any of Synology's optional expansion cards, including the M2D18 M.2 adapter.


Three Marvell 88SE9215-NAA2 SATA RAID controllers can handle up to twelve SATA ports in total. I also found a Marvell 88SE9235-NAA2 SATA controller; it can handle up to four SATA ports.


Right next to the mainboard's speaker is a PIC16F18345 8-bit microcontroller.


The huge SATA expansion card.


The server uses an internal open-frame power supply, which is basically a normal PSU without its top and side covers. The PSU's cables are nicely routed inside the chassis, and the line filter is the first point of entry for the AC input, after which the PSU's transient/EMI filtering stage takes over.


It looks as though this power supply is provided by Seasonic, although I cannot be entirely sure. It has 500 W max power output and uses a group regulation scheme on the secondary side, which is an outdated design with low performance for unbalanced loads among the rails. However, based on the needs of this NAS, I don't believe the group regulation design pose a problem.


The transient filter is complete. It even includes a server-grade filter on the first part.


These are the bridge rectifier, APFC converter, primary FETs, and main transformer.


A look at the secondary side. The two coils are an indication of the group regulation scheme.


The caps are of decent quality. However, I would still like to see a 105 °C bulk cap. At least the caps of the secondary side are good models rated at 105 °C.


The PSU's 5VSB circuit.


All controllers that handle the PSU's functions.