A Look Inside

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


To take out the single top and side panel, you need to remove two screws in the rear first, before gently pulling the panel up and back. It isn't easy, and you have to be very careful to avoid breaking something.


The HDD cage holds the PCIe card that house all SATA ports.


The mainboard, while small, packs all the components a modern SMB NAS needs.



On the solder side of the mainboard are two PCIe slots. The card with all SATA ports comes attached to the bigger of the two. The other holds the USB 3.0 card.


This is the card that holds both USB 3.0 ports and the two fan headers. The USB 3.0 controller is an EtronTech EJ168A.


The quad-core Atom CPU (C2538, Rangeley) is cooled by a small aluminum heatsink. Since its TDP is low (15W max), only passive cooling is used, which boosts reliability and reduces noise output.


The single SO-DIMM slot houses 2 GB of DDR3 1600 RAM. Its chips are provided by Samsung and their model number is K4B2G0846Q.


As everything else will be on the HDDs, the flash memory shown above only contains the part of the DSM operating system used to boot up the system. The photograph above also includes the BIOS battery.


The two Gigabit Ethernet controllers are provided by Marvell (Alaska 88E1512), and they support port trunking and Jumbo frames.


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


A Silicon Image Sil3132, single-lane PCI-Express to dual-port Serial ATA (SATA) II host controller is soldered to the mainboard. Next to it is a 39VF01070-4C-W multipurpose flash chip with a capacity of 1 Mbit.


Here is the voltage regulator that handles the CPU's needs, an Intersil ISL95831. It supports up to four phases (3+1).


Both 92mm fans are by Y.S. Tech, and their model number is FD129225LL-N (12V, 0.12A, 1900RPM, 36.3CFM). Their speed is kept low so long as the unit operates normally, which minimizes noise output. According to Y.S Tech, these fans use Sintetico bearings, a bearing type we have never encountered before, but it looks to be of high quality and should last longer than sleeve or double-ball bearings.