Housing for home server / NAS

Many use at home NAS. They make it a jailbreak or install a modified firmware. But there comes a time when the capabilities of standard NASs are starting to be missed. At this point, I want to collect my NAS, so that it will be installed productive iron, economical on power and all this is not noisy. I want it to be no longer just a NAS, but a full-fledged server on which additional tasks can be assigned. So one day I was puzzled by this problem. As it turned out, there are not so many options for server chassis of the Mini-ITX format with the ability to install four hot-swap SATA-drives. Review of one of these buildings offer to your attention.





Searches, reading forums prompted me to the work of our Taiwanese friends, corpus CFI-A7879, the manufacturer of Chyangfun Industry Company. Unfortunately, these cases are not sold in Russia, at least I have not found it. But nevertheless, in the 21st century it is not a problem to order anything from abroad. My case came from USA, and cost $ 149.95 + $ 21.74 delivery in USA + $ 140 delivery of FedEX from USA to Russia.

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The first thing I’ll talk about is the characteristics of the case.

Specifications

• Body material: SECC (abbreviation derived from "Electro Galvanized Steel Sheet in Coil" - steel with anti-corrosion coating applied by the method of electrical galvanizing)
• Front panel material: ABS plastic
• Drive Seats: 3.5 "x 4 (SATA hot plug) and 3.5" /2.5 "x 1 (inside)
• Cooling: 12 cm fan on the back
• IO connectors: USB 2.0 x 2 on the front panel
• Indicators: 2xHDD, power
• Power supply: 100-240 V, 200 W
• Form Factor: Mini-ITX
• Dimensions: 200x250x303 mm
• Weight: 4.3 kg
• Certificates: CE, FCC, UL, CB, ROHS
• Warranty: 1 year

Contents of delivery

• CFI-A7879 housing with power supply
• Power cable (in my case according to the USA standard)
• 4 trays for SATA HDD
• 4 identical keys
• MOLEX Power Adapter -> SATA -> MOLEX
• Adapter 2.5 "-> 3.5" HDD
• Fastener kit

The case is assembled very high quality, the details fit together, no squeaks, no gaps.







In front of the case there are power and reset buttons, two USB 2.0 connectors and 3 LED indicators: 2 HDD operation indicators and 1 power indicator. The second HDD indicator can be useful if, for example, an external raid controller is installed.







Disc trays are opened by moving the latch to the right and look no less reliable than the case itself. When you purchase a case, you can also order spare trays.







A 12 cm low-noise fan is installed at the back. In my opinion, there is a drawback in using a fan with a three-contact connector; I would still like to see a four-contact fan in the server case.



The fan on the power supply is also almost not audible.



A PCI-e card slot is also provided.







The side covers are easily removed and secured with hand-tightening screws.











The Delta Electronics Flex-ATX power supply operates at 100–240 V and outputs 200 watts.







The following connectors come out of the power supply:

• 20/24-pin ATX
• 4-pin 12V-P4
• MOLEX - 2 pieces, but both of them are used to power hard drives

disadvantages

• Three-pin fan

For someone, perhaps the disadvantage is the lack of space for a CD / DVD drive. But I do not see a problem with this, because The enclosure is intended primarily for use as a server.

Virtues

• Stylish design
• Compact
• Excellent build quality and materials
• Mesh body, good ventilation
• Silent fans
• High quality rubber feet

For today, you can find a large number of Mini-ITX motherboards for this case. From silent and very economical on the Intel Atom to server boards with IPMI and Intel Ivy Bridge on board. We will consider one of such boards in the following review.