If you are planning on building your own NAS box, I have some suggestions regarding the case.
In my opinion, most computer case designers have absolutely no taste. Antec and Lian Li do create nice cases, but not that spectacular. And Lian Li is just very expensive. A fairly new company called Fractal Design seems to be different. To me, their designs are a breath of fresh air. For instance, if you want to build just a small NAS system and you think that 6 drives is enough, take a look at this beauty:
Just a small box with room for 6 drives. No hot swap stuff, but for personal use, that is not that important I guess. Unfortunately, I also found this review which also agrees that the case is pretty but there are some drawbacks. Too bad. I would still want to see more of such cases, but maybe with a better designed interior.
If you want to store more drives, Fractal Design seems to have another nice case in store:
More like a regular computer case but small and very sleek. Has room for 6 drives but you can use the 5,25 inch slots to store two or three additional drives. It is still very small. It's fairly new, I found no product reviews.
If that is not enough, just take a look at the Define R3 case:
Seems very pretty to me, has room for 8 disks by default and can host at least 10 disks if you also use the 5,25 inch slots. This review is quite positive about the case.
A rather old case from Chieftec which I still like and is quite cheap:
This case is not in the same league as the Fractal cases, but is cheaper and still does the trick. I used this case to build my first NAS and I don't have much to complain. It is no problem to fit in 10 disks. There are two things to note:
- there are no filters on the case. You have to create something yourself.
- De space between the side panel and the drive connectors is 'limited'.
If you have any suggestions for nice NAS cases, feel free to leave a comment.
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