A Look Inside

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


To remove the single-piece top and side panel you need to remove two screws on the rear side first, and gently pull the panel up and back. You must be extra cautious during this procedure, as you risk breaking something.


Afterwards, to gain access to the mainboard you must remove the HDDs cage which also holds the PCIe card that houses all SATA ports.


The mainboard of the DS412+ is small and features two PCIe slots. In the bigger slot the expansion card that holds all SATA ports is attached.


In the second PCIe slot sits the card that holds the two USB 3.0 and the single eSATA port along with the two fan headers. The USB 3.0 controller is a NEC D720200AF1.


The dual core Atom CPU (D2700) is cooled by a small aluminium heatsink. Since its TDP is low (10W max) only passive cooling is used, something that boosts reliability and reduces noise output.


The single SO-DIMM slot houses 1 GB of DDR3 1066 RAM. The chips are provided by Hynix and their model number is H5TQ1G83DFR.


On the mainboard we also found a version of the famous Intel ICH10 southbridge and more specific the ICH10R or 82801JIR I/O controller, which supports up to twelve USB 2.0 and six SATA II port along with Intel's Matrix Storage Technology. The latter offers all popular RAID levels along with JBOD support.


The monitoring IC is an ITE IT8728F.


The Lattice LC4064V High Density PLD (Programmable Logic Device). You can read more about PLDs and their functionality in a circuit here.


On a connector of the main PCB a much smaller one is attached holding a Samsung flash memory (K9F1G08U0D-SCB0) and a UT165-L46 controller. In this flash memory resides a part of the DSM operating system which is used only for booting up the system since the main part of the DSM is installed on the HDDs.


A Silicon Image Sil3531, single-lane PCI Express to single port Serial ATA (SATA) II host, controller is soldered on the mainboard. Normally this controller is used to connect the NAS with an expansion unit (e.g. DX510) through the eSATA port but currently the DS412+ is not compatible with the DX510.


The two Gigabit Ethernet controllers are provided by Intel (82574L) and they support port trunking and Jumbo frames.


We also found a PIC16F883 8-bit microcontroller installed on the mainboard.


The buzzer/speaker of the DS412+. It is quite powerful despite its small footprint!


The two, 92mm diameter, fans are made by Y.S. Tech and their model number is FD129225LL-N (12V, 0.12A, 1900RPM, 36.3CFM). Their speed is kept at low RPMs at normal operation so their noise output is minimized. According to Y.S Tech they are equipped with Sintetico bearings, a bearing type we have never encountered before, but it looks to be of high quality and should last longer than sleeve bearings or double-ball bearings.