A Look Inside

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


The dismantling process was moderately difficult since lots of screws had to be removed. Our advice to whoever wants to take this NAS apart is to keep notes on which screw goes where, which should make reassembling everything easier.


The mainboard looks similar to the one in the DS215+. It is very small and under-populated since most of the required controllers are a part of the SoC (Alpine AL-214). The latter is only cooled passively by a thin but quite wide heatsink.


The mainboard's solder side hosts a few components. We spotted several EMI pads on this side, which short and ground some of the mainboard's areas with the chassis in an effort to suppress EMI.


The RAM is soldered directly to the mainboard, close to the Alpine SoC, which makes upgrading it impossible. The DDR3 Samsung RAM DIMMs (K4B4G0846D-BYK0) have a total capacity of 2 GB.


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.


A Marvell 88SE9170 host controller is used to connect the two 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.


An PIC16F1829 8-bit microcontroller is used, and we also spotted the system buzzer, which is quite loud, with the CMOS battery next to it.


The first photos above show an STMicroelectronics 24C64F EEPROM with a capacity of 64 Kbit and an S-35390A IC, the system's real-time clock IC. The other photo shows a Macronix MX25U6435F serial flash module.


Two Fairchild FDMS0309AS mosfets are used by the mainboard's DC-DC converters. Exactly the same fets are used by the DS215+'s mainboard. The filtering capacitors are provided by FPCAP, a Japanese manufacturer of high-quality caps.


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). As shown in the second photo above, there is a Fairchild FDMS7694 fet close to the Semtech SC417, on the left. The third photo is of a Semtech SC403B integrated MOSFET regulator with a programmable LDO, and the last photos show two fets (AP4410GM and AP4435GM).


A pair of Realtek RTL8211DN controllers handle the Ethernet ports.


The fan is by Y.S. Tech, and its model number is FD129225LL-N (12 V, 0.12 A, 1900 RPM, 36.3 CFM). The fan's speed is kept low, so its noise output won't annoy even the most noise sensitive of you. According to Y.S. Tech, the fan uses a Sintetico bearing, and it does looks to be of high quality. Y.S. Tech also claims this bearing type to last much longer than a sleeve bearing.