Small/quiet case needed for Atom D525 NAS

alexellisuk

alexellisuk

alexellisuk

Associate
Joined
20 Mar 2011
Posts
4
This is my first thread, so hi to everyone at Overclockers. I'm looking for some help with my PC build.

I have built a PC to act as a Network Attached Storage server which I intend to run most of the day and possibly some of the night. It will be on a landing by bedrooms, so it must be very quiet.

The computer is currently housed in an old (large) ATX tower case with a noisy 300W PSU.

Here are the rough specifications:
  • The board is a Gigabyte Intel Atom D525 which has a small CPU fan.
  • I have two 5200rpm Samsung 2TB drives which will run in a RAID 1 array.
  • The boot drive at the moment is a 7200rpm 250GB drive which I may replace with a 2.5" 5200rpm drive.

Current noise levels:
  • The hard disks are quite noisy on spin-up, but settle after booting. Spin up is under 70W, idle/load ranges between 40-60W.
  • The CPU fan is a bit whiny, but I don't think there's much I can do about that.
  • As mentioned above the current PSU (from an old Dell P4) is noisy.

What I'd like to do is to find a case which would be as small and quiet as possible and still be able to house my 3 drives. An optical drive isn't important.

Has anyone built a similar quiet system?
Can anyone offer advice?

Thanks in advance,

Alex
 
CFI-A2059

Internal 300W PSU ..

Bays: 2x 3.5in Hot-Swap Caddies; 1x 5.25in Optical Drive Bay; 1x Internal 3.5in/2.5in HDD/SSD Bay

For Mini-ITX motherboards ...

3884-CFI-A2059.jpg


yhst-27518546784426_2152_56278743



Measurements: 200mm (W) x 210mm (H) x 345mm (D) (7.9in x 8.27in x 13.58in).


may be too big ... lol
 
Last edited:
So, the million dollar question is, does it meet the sound level requirements? I've already looked at that case, but couldn't find any information on the sound levels.
 
I have just built my NAS and decided on a few things to keep it low power and as quiet as possible.

Firstly I made sure I use an external Power Supply like a laptop (Brick). I chose my motherboard the ASUS because it has this as standard but you can get external power supplies that pug into a normal ATX motherboard slot. This is the bigest win with regards noise and your power draw is low enough to use external.

Secondly, I made the decission to use laptop hard drives rather than Desktop, with a small SSD for the OS and boot. I find 5400 laptop drives are much quieter. I have 4 640GB drives, so not quite as much space as you have.

For my case I then modified a shuttle (picked up a broken one for £20), this gives a great looking chassis with plenty of space and in my case the ability to add the laptop drive hot-swap bay.

Here are some pics
 
alexellisuk said:
This is my first thread, so hi to everyone at Overclockers. I'm looking for some help with my PC build.

I have built a PC to act as a Network Attached Storage server which I intend to run most of the day and possibly some of the night. It will be on a landing by bedrooms, so it must be very quiet.

The computer is currently housed in an old (large) ATX tower case with a noisy 300W PSU.

Here are the rough specifications:
  • The board is a Gigabyte Intel Atom D525 which has a small CPU fan.
  • I have two 5200rpm Samsung 2TB drives which will run in a RAID 1 array.
  • The boot drive at the moment is a 7200rpm 250GB drive which I may replace with a 2.5" 5200rpm drive.

Current noise levels:
  • The hard disks are quite noisy on spin-up, but settle after booting. Spin up is under 70W, idle/load ranges between 40-60W.
  • The CPU fan is a bit whiny, but I don't think there's much I can do about that.
  • As mentioned above the current PSU (from an old Dell P4) is noisy.

What I'd like to do is to find a case which would be as small and quiet as possible and still be able to house my 3 drives. An optical drive isn't important.

Has anyone built a similar quiet system?
Can anyone offer advice?

Thanks in advance,

Alex
Click to expand...

This saves me creating a new thread ;)

Any help on finding a case would be appreciated.

Cheers! :cool:
 
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