This was an excellent review video and actually gave me some ideas to modify my setup. Thank you. For the SATA connectors to the bottom bay, I actually routed mine behind the cable tray so they popped out basically under the PSU shroud. That helped alleviate the sharp bend angle. I also don't use the fan connectors on the backplane because they have 1 setting: "FUULLLL POOOWWEEEER" and "Nothing". Many people I know have swapped those 90mm fans with Noctuas, and connect them using a fan hub to a pwm port on the motherboard
Glad I sat through this and saw the cable pinching issues noted from 19:00 onwards, might honestly consider getting a different case altogether because of that
@htwingnut hey ! thank you for this video. I built my NAS with this case a few months ago and I faced the same issues I want people to know if they buy this case. I thought I was going to get away with 50-60% speed on the disk fans and I was so happy the NAS was so quiet at first, but the SAS drives quickly raised to the 60s degrees. After playing with the fans speeds I was still unsatisfied with 50+ degrees on full speed. Looking at the specs I'm certain they lie on these fan specs. I bought two Noctua NF-A9 PWM because thicker = more static pressure (yes they fit with no issues) and even at full speed it's so much quieter and cooler (45 degree max temp on hottest disk under load). I also isolated (with tape) the whole disk cage to force the fans to get air from the front and not recycle air from the case. Other than that I'm happy with this case. TLDR for everyone that is considering this case: - Get 2x Noctua NF-A9 PWM if you want quieter - Isolate the disk cage to force airflow through the disks with fresh air from the front - If your PSU has the turn off fan feature (my case I used seasonic focus), set the fan as always on!
That case seems to have been designed to get the most amount of flexibility and maximum use of space and connectivity. Although for that price, I might expect it to make me a cup of tea too.
What a great and comprehensive review! I was considering this case and Node 804 from Fractal. Node 804 is more than half of the price, but CS382 comes with a hot swappable backplane. After watching the review I will go with the Node 804. Seems that with the mATX motherboard that I'm planning to use the drive cage would interfere with SATA cables (mobo has 10 SATA ports on the edge facing upwards). Also looks like Node 804 has a lot more fan mounts options, so I can add fans, slow them down and make everything less noisy (NAS will be in the same room as my main PC). On the side note, I really like your non-nonsense, comprehensive approach to the reviews. Watched a few of your videos and I'm definitely subscribing.
I wrote a more comprehensive response, but YT ate my comment, happens a lot lately... Mobo I've used was C612 nas motherboard from Ali. It's a version with 10 white SATA connectors facing up and 6 memory slots (2 on the left, 4 on the right of the CPU). 65W at idle (from wall with 2 m.2 drives and 4x32GB modules), 125W fully stressed with Intel E5-2680v4. I also tested E5-2620v4 and power consumption dropped to 93W fully stressed. At the end I went for a LGA1700 board with i5-13500T (35W PL1 and PL2) that dropped power consumption by 40W both at idle and stress compared to E5-2680v4. Power is expensive here, so that was the only reason. Overall C612 mobo was very stable in all of my testing (TrueNAS, Proxmox, Windows) and I recommend it for someone looking to make a build on a budget that is OK at a little higher power consumption.
Another thing I noticed is that you will want to put some active cooling on that LSI adapter, those are intended to be installed in a rack mounted chassis with high air flow cooling, which is why they don't come with a fan on them. They get quite hot really quickly with no fan installed on them.
Your explanation and demonstration of the key issues was fantastic! Thanks for all the details. I'm looking into building a NAS storage unit to replace my ReadyNAS Pro4. Was this system a Linux or Windows system/
So frustrating these days that the consumer boards are just designed for a huge gpu, and have abandoned pretty much hosting anything else through the PCIe lanes.
This plus the number of PCI-E lanes in some consumer CPUs. The moment you plug anything into other slots, usually you get your main PCI-E cut to x8. Granted, it's hard to saturate x8 gen 4, but still :) I'm glad that at least some Ryzen boards and CPUs support ECC UDIMMS, so you can have some resemblance of memory error protection when running TrueNAS :)
Yeah. It's a bit disappointing. I did check their website for fans that they make and this is the only one that made sense. But it seems they could always source one from a third party and put their branding on it. But the stock fans do work. They're just loud.
Included fans are always cheap, Fractal's are loud af too. It's not that bad for most I guess but if you put a premium on silent builds the included fans will never be good enough. It's like asking them to be Noctuas when that's Noctua's entire business model. Unless you're going to have the NAS out of ear range you will always need to buy Noctua, it sucks but that's what I've learned doing this.
@htwingnut I think that the issue with regard to the SATA data connectors would be rectified by moving the power supply slightly to the motherboard side of the case. This would then allow the connectors (which are on the opposite side to this) enough clearance to plug in while leaving the cable management unaffected by the power supply's shroud
I think I've seen that the backplane can be powered from either the molex connectors or the SATA-power ones, and there's no need to connect both. Want to try that out? It could save you some cable-clutter if you only have to run one type of cable.
I could try. But I think running four hard drives off a single cable could be problematic. But I'm not sure how the backplane is wired to draw power. It may be fine at idle, but under load, could have too much voltage drop.
@@jasonmako343 Yes it’s running good but the parts are crammed in so tight that I do have misgivings sometimes. I have considering moving it all into a Jonsbo N5 case.
@@LetsGoLook1 So, I got the case and put in 8x 18TB Exos SATA drives. I took all the components out of my main server which have been running for at least 6 months. On this Silverstone case I kept getting one slot giving me issues showing read errors upon insertion. I did some more reading and came across a post where the person stated that the manufacturer recommended connecting both SATA and Molex power to ensure sufficient power during spikes like when all the drives spin up. I added the Molex power, cleared the zfs errors, ran long SMART tests, powered off and on multiple times and haven't seen an error since. I have one power cable dedicated to 4 drives, another for the other 4 drives, and one to both Molex connectors. I went with Noctua fans for the drive cages and the case, and temps were not very good during a long SMART test that took about 24 hours to run on all the drives. Some went over 50c (60c is manufacturer max) which I'm none too pleased with. I don't think I would recommend this case, but sadly don't have another case that I would recommend. For my other server I have a Fractal Define 7 with 9x 20TB drives and some SATA, which I much prefer, but it's larger and doesn't have hot swap bays - something I'm fine with but certainly not an apples to apples comparison.
Ya, I got the original case (8bays + 3x5.25) and had WD tell me heat was the cause of death on drives. Silverstone was contacted and told me about this case..... after seeing they still havent learned to build a home case, decided to go with a 4U blade. Let me tell you, old case, drives ran in the 50's, 4U 24bay, they run in the low 30s. If your using your nas for plex or have it on 24/7, save yourself the time and effort, cry once and just go with the rack. When you consider the cost of this or the older design, your half way too a 24 drive case, with space for 120 fans, 2 SSD boot drives and plenty of room to work. Also, on the 4U cases... no individual SATA drive connections. There is 1 cable per 4 drives. Silverstone basically tried to check all the boxes with these cases to reach the most customers, and failed to do anything good. But, they are your drives and it's your data, this is just my suggestion.... a suggestion from someone who tried to double stick aditional fans and mod the case to lower temps and not buy another case.... it's a design flaw, you can't.
His review helped me to go with Node 804 from Fractal after seeing the temps and mounting problems. Unfortunately I can't go with any rack solutions. I can't accommodate a rack cabinet in an apartment. I need to start planning for buying a house, so I can have more room for toys :D
This case has been tested on other youtube channels, the 4 drives below will be hotter because the airflow is blocked by where the PSU is mounted, this case is not on my buying list, in my opinion this chassis is even worse than the Antec P101 Silent because the hard drive backplane has no holes, resulting in unsatisfactory heat dissipation, paying much money on such product is stupid.
@@htwingnut Not only the case design is poor, but also the hard drive backplane has no ventilation holes. I haven't use the 'not only but also' sentence pattern in a long time.
Thanks for this comment. This is a big concern but not many people telling it. Some says noisy intake fans can be DIY for slower spin, that won't be wise if resulting in insufficient disk cooling.
The clip things that go into the sides of the cradles can be a bit fiddly, and if they're not perfectly attached (tab at the end not all the way in or one of the holes not clicked all the way down) they stick out just enough to scrape along the sides of the bay. Funny that it was still happening even after swapping the disk to a different cradle, but I've had the same thing happen more than once when filling disk-shelves in a datacentre way back when.
Traditional 90 degree adapters will either pass towards the fan, and won't fit, or pass outboard towards the case panel and wont' be able to plug in because it's too close to the panel. There are other left side angle adapters and cables (www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVTY2G4B or www.amazon.com/dp/B004GZIU4S) but they are hard to find or expensive, and they don't make SAS to SATA breakout cables like that.
My wallet/Bank account cringes when i hear those words Silverstone. So expensive on cases. I woulda actually loved this but went with a Ncase N3 since it wasnt $900 lol.
Why not go with AMD B550 or X570 with a 5600 CPU and a $30 GPU for your NAS? You could save money and get the same performance in running hard drives and networking, but you can also use ECC RAM with AMD. No need for the latest generation for a NAS computer.
You shouldn't be powering the whole backplane with a single SATA power rail, it is likely that far apart to try to force you into using two separate power rails. Also using any kind of power extension is a fire hazard and I would avoid that like the plague.
I say this because I have had a few splitters and extenders melt themselves, it didn't really cause a fire in these cases (no pun intended), but sure did make a mess and damage to the case I was using.
No, it's fine. The PSU has a single 12V rail anyhow rated at the wattage of the entire PSU. The power connectors are separated like they are because they're two separate backplane PCB's, that's all. I've used backplanes that use two 4-pin molex to power a full 8 bay backplane like this SuperMicro one (www.supermicro.com/manuals/other/BPN-SAS-743TQ.pdf).
I guess the hot swap ability adds significantly to the price. A non-hot swap case probably would be cheaper. I use Fractal node 301 for up to six fixed discs but they be very easily swapped. Here in DK a node 301 is about $100. But there are even cheaper cases.
@@DanSuneKronvold Agreed. I think if this were $150 vs $250 it would be reasonable. But at the asking price, I think it should be much better than it is: low fan noise, better cooling, better wire routing, less cheap front panel cover.
Thanks for a really comprehensive review, especially the gotchas with drive temps and fan noise. Much appreciated!
Great review and very detailed with the specific challenges with the installation.
Just bought one of these, waiting for the rest of the parts to show up. I'm really loving the case from what I've seen.
This was an excellent review video and actually gave me some ideas to modify my setup. Thank you.
For the SATA connectors to the bottom bay, I actually routed mine behind the cable tray so they popped out basically under the PSU shroud. That helped alleviate the sharp bend angle.
I also don't use the fan connectors on the backplane because they have 1 setting: "FUULLLL POOOWWEEEER" and "Nothing". Many people I know have swapped those 90mm fans with Noctuas, and connect them using a fan hub to a pwm port on the motherboard
Glad I sat through this and saw the cable pinching issues noted from 19:00 onwards, might honestly consider getting a different case altogether because of that
@htwingnut hey ! thank you for this video. I built my NAS with this case a few months ago and I faced the same issues I want people to know if they buy this case. I thought I was going to get away with 50-60% speed on the disk fans and I was so happy the NAS was so quiet at first, but the SAS drives quickly raised to the 60s degrees. After playing with the fans speeds I was still unsatisfied with 50+ degrees on full speed. Looking at the specs I'm certain they lie on these fan specs. I bought two Noctua NF-A9 PWM because thicker = more static pressure (yes they fit with no issues) and even at full speed it's so much quieter and cooler (45 degree max temp on hottest disk under load). I also isolated (with tape) the whole disk cage to force the fans to get air from the front and not recycle air from the case.
Other than that I'm happy with this case.
TLDR for everyone that is considering this case:
- Get 2x Noctua NF-A9 PWM if you want quieter
- Isolate the disk cage to force airflow through the disks with fresh air from the front
- If your PSU has the turn off fan feature (my case I used seasonic focus), set the fan as always on!
That case seems to have been designed to get the most amount of flexibility and maximum use of space and connectivity. Although for that price, I might expect it to make me a cup of tea too.
What a great and comprehensive review! I was considering this case and Node 804 from Fractal. Node 804 is more than half of the price, but CS382 comes with a hot swappable backplane. After watching the review I will go with the Node 804. Seems that with the mATX motherboard that I'm planning to use the drive cage would interfere with SATA cables (mobo has 10 SATA ports on the edge facing upwards). Also looks like Node 804 has a lot more fan mounts options, so I can add fans, slow them down and make everything less noisy (NAS will be in the same room as my main PC).
On the side note, I really like your non-nonsense, comprehensive approach to the reviews. Watched a few of your videos and I'm definitely subscribing.
what mobo are you using for that build? (10 sata sound goods, now days only get 4 sata)
I wrote a more comprehensive response, but YT ate my comment, happens a lot lately...
Mobo I've used was C612 nas motherboard from Ali. It's a version with 10 white SATA connectors facing up and 6 memory slots (2 on the left, 4 on the right of the CPU). 65W at idle (from wall with 2 m.2 drives and 4x32GB modules), 125W fully stressed with Intel E5-2680v4. I also tested E5-2620v4 and power consumption dropped to 93W fully stressed. At the end I went for a LGA1700 board with i5-13500T (35W PL1 and PL2) that dropped power consumption by 40W both at idle and stress compared to E5-2680v4. Power is expensive here, so that was the only reason. Overall C612 mobo was very stable in all of my testing (TrueNAS, Proxmox, Windows) and I recommend it for someone looking to make a build on a budget that is OK at a little higher power consumption.
Another thing I noticed is that you will want to put some active cooling on that LSI adapter, those are intended to be installed in a rack mounted chassis with high air flow cooling, which is why they don't come with a fan on them. They get quite hot really quickly with no fan installed on them.
Yes, valid point. I normally just zip tie a 40mm fan on them and that does the trick.
@@htwingnut I did this in my NAS as well
Your explanation and demonstration of the key issues was fantastic! Thanks for all the details. I'm looking into building a NAS storage unit to replace my ReadyNAS Pro4. Was this system a Linux or Windows system/
Thanks for the complement. Linux OpenMediaVault.
So frustrating these days that the consumer boards are just designed for a huge gpu, and have abandoned pretty much hosting anything else through the PCIe lanes.
This plus the number of PCI-E lanes in some consumer CPUs. The moment you plug anything into other slots, usually you get your main PCI-E cut to x8. Granted, it's hard to saturate x8 gen 4, but still :) I'm glad that at least some Ryzen boards and CPUs support ECC UDIMMS, so you can have some resemblance of memory error protection when running TrueNAS :)
Wow, between the temperature performance and the cable wear issue, the fans shipped with this case seem kind of unacceptable for a NAS focused case.
Yeah. It's a bit disappointing. I did check their website for fans that they make and this is the only one that made sense. But it seems they could always source one from a third party and put their branding on it. But the stock fans do work. They're just loud.
Included fans are always cheap, Fractal's are loud af too. It's not that bad for most I guess but if you put a premium on silent builds the included fans will never be good enough. It's like asking them to be Noctuas when that's Noctua's entire business model. Unless you're going to have the NAS out of ear range you will always need to buy Noctua, it sucks but that's what I've learned doing this.
@htwingnut I think that the issue with regard to the SATA data connectors would be rectified by moving the power supply slightly to the motherboard side of the case. This would then allow the connectors (which are on the opposite side to this) enough clearance to plug in while leaving the cable management unaffected by the power supply's shroud
I think I've seen that the backplane can be powered from either the molex connectors or the SATA-power ones, and there's no need to connect both. Want to try that out? It could save you some cable-clutter if you only have to run one type of cable.
I could try. But I think running four hard drives off a single cable could be problematic. But I'm not sure how the backplane is wired to draw power. It may be fine at idle, but under load, could have too much voltage drop.
@@Lord_Teaspoon I used sata power only on mine and it seems to be working fine. But the system has only been running for 2 days.
@@LetsGoLook1 Still good? No problems?
@@jasonmako343 Yes it’s running good but the parts are crammed in so tight that I do have misgivings sometimes. I have considering moving it all into a Jonsbo N5 case.
@@LetsGoLook1 So, I got the case and put in 8x 18TB Exos SATA drives. I took all the components out of my main server which have been running for at least 6 months. On this Silverstone case I kept getting one slot giving me issues showing read errors upon insertion. I did some more reading and came across a post where the person stated that the manufacturer recommended connecting both SATA and Molex power to ensure sufficient power during spikes like when all the drives spin up. I added the Molex power, cleared the zfs errors, ran long SMART tests, powered off and on multiple times and haven't seen an error since. I have one power cable dedicated to 4 drives, another for the other 4 drives, and one to both Molex connectors. I went with Noctua fans for the drive cages and the case, and temps were not very good during a long SMART test that took about 24 hours to run on all the drives. Some went over 50c (60c is manufacturer max) which I'm none too pleased with. I don't think I would recommend this case, but sadly don't have another case that I would recommend. For my other server I have a Fractal Define 7 with 9x 20TB drives and some SATA, which I much prefer, but it's larger and doesn't have hot swap bays - something I'm fine with but certainly not an apples to apples comparison.
Ya, I got the original case (8bays + 3x5.25) and had WD tell me heat was the cause of death on drives.
Silverstone was contacted and told me about this case..... after seeing they still havent learned to build a home case, decided to go with a 4U blade.
Let me tell you, old case, drives ran in the 50's, 4U 24bay, they run in the low 30s.
If your using your nas for plex or have it on 24/7, save yourself the time and effort, cry once and just go with the rack.
When you consider the cost of this or the older design, your half way too a 24 drive case, with space for 120 fans, 2 SSD boot drives and plenty of room to work.
Also, on the 4U cases... no individual SATA drive connections. There is 1 cable per 4 drives.
Silverstone basically tried to check all the boxes with these cases to reach the most customers, and failed to do anything good.
But, they are your drives and it's your data, this is just my suggestion.... a suggestion from someone who tried to double stick aditional fans and mod the case to lower temps and not buy another case.... it's a design flaw, you can't.
His review helped me to go with Node 804 from Fractal after seeing the temps and mounting problems. Unfortunately I can't go with any rack solutions. I can't accommodate a rack cabinet in an apartment. I need to start planning for buying a house, so I can have more room for toys :D
I was interested in this case and now I'm not. What's up with all the issues when their prices act like it's primo.
This case has been tested on other youtube channels, the 4 drives below will be hotter because the airflow is blocked by where the PSU is mounted, this case is not on my buying list, in my opinion this chassis is even worse than the Antec P101 Silent because the hard drive backplane has no holes, resulting in unsatisfactory heat dissipation, paying much money on such product is stupid.
Yeah, it's unfortunate. I like the case otherwise. I was just surprised it requires so much airflow to keep the disks cool.
@@htwingnut Not only the case design is poor, but also the hard drive backplane has no ventilation holes. I haven't use the 'not only but also' sentence pattern in a long time.
Thanks for this comment. This is a big concern but not many people telling it. Some says noisy intake fans can be DIY for slower spin, that won't be wise if resulting in insufficient disk cooling.
What is the power consumption for this build, idle and full load?
To know for sure measure the drives with a pair of calipers. I bet there not all the same.
Thanks for the suggestion. I actually did do that, but they are exactly the same, within less than 0.1mm
The clip things that go into the sides of the cradles can be a bit fiddly, and if they're not perfectly attached (tab at the end not all the way in or one of the holes not clicked all the way down) they stick out just enough to scrape along the sides of the bay. Funny that it was still happening even after swapping the disk to a different cradle, but I've had the same thing happen more than once when filling disk-shelves in a datacentre way back when.
9:45 you forgot to add LSI card's price...
Good point. You can find those on eBay for $30-40 usually.
@@htwingnut cool, thanks
NICE
We used to have proper full ATX cases, thanks gamers.
who 💩d in your oatmeal grandpa?😂
Get a bunch of 90 Degree SATA Adapters for the drive backplane
Traditional 90 degree adapters will either pass towards the fan, and won't fit, or pass outboard towards the case panel and wont' be able to plug in because it's too close to the panel.
There are other left side angle adapters and cables (www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVTY2G4B or www.amazon.com/dp/B004GZIU4S) but they are hard to find or expensive, and they don't make SAS to SATA breakout cables like that.
Did you test the blackplanes with legit SAS drives?
Yes, 36:21 in video.
i think i3 14100 is 4c 8t if im not wrong
My mistake, you are correct.
Which SAS controller is used?
LSI 9211-8i
I hate when they just write the slotsize and not the actual lanes... but nice build there! and interesting case
My wallet/Bank account cringes when i hear those words Silverstone. So expensive on cases. I woulda actually loved this but went with a Ncase N3 since it wasnt $900 lol.
Why not go with AMD B550 or X570 with a 5600 CPU and a $30 GPU for your NAS?
You could save money and get the same performance in running hard drives and networking, but you can also use ECC RAM with AMD.
No need for the latest generation for a NAS computer.
You shouldn't be powering the whole backplane with a single SATA power rail, it is likely that far apart to try to force you into using two separate power rails. Also using any kind of power extension is a fire hazard and I would avoid that like the plague.
I say this because I have had a few splitters and extenders melt themselves, it didn't really cause a fire in these cases (no pun intended), but sure did make a mess and damage to the case I was using.
No, it's fine. The PSU has a single 12V rail anyhow rated at the wattage of the entire PSU. The power connectors are separated like they are because they're two separate backplane PCB's, that's all. I've used backplanes that use two 4-pin molex to power a full 8 bay backplane like this SuperMicro one (www.supermicro.com/manuals/other/BPN-SAS-743TQ.pdf).
This case is really expensive and hard to get.
Expensive, yes I agree. Not hard to get though, at least if you're in the USA. It can be found on Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKTYSZV9
I guess the hot swap ability adds significantly to the price. A non-hot swap case probably would be cheaper. I use Fractal node 301 for up to six fixed discs but they be very easily swapped. Here in DK a node 301 is about $100. But there are even cheaper cases.
@@DanSuneKronvold Agreed. I think if this were $150 vs $250 it would be reasonable. But at the asking price, I think it should be much better than it is: low fan noise, better cooling, better wire routing, less cheap front panel cover.