NAS Cases Compared - Fractal ARRAY R2 Mini ITX NAS Case Review

Cases & PSU/Cases by piotke @ 2010-08-22

Now that we have affordable unlimited internet in Belgium, the need for storage has grown. Of course you can fill your computer with hard disks, or to make it easier to share you can buy a bunch of external disks. But in my opinion a dedicated solution for storage, such as a NAS would be more practical. In this review we´ll be taking a look at some solutions.

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Testing

Test platform


Test Setup
CPU Integrated Dual-core Intel® Atom™ processor 330
Mainboard AT3IONT-I DELUXE
Memory 2 * 1024 Mb DDR3 no brand
Other 3 * WDC 1.5 TB hard disk


We'll be measuring:

  • Noise
  • Power usage idle / load
  • Temperature of the middle hard disk after 30 minutes of intensive usage

    Extra info:

  • Ambient noise: 37,8 DbA
  • Ambient temperature: 22,6 ° C (+/- 0,5 ° C)

    Noise production.

    Madshrimps (c)


    The Intel NAS is the noisiest one. The sound levels are still acceptable tough. Keep in mind that this is a product for the SME market, where it normally will be stacked in the server room, where a few DbA more doesn't matter.

    The shuttle is silent; you can't really hear the fans. Just the disks spinning, and the airflow going through the ventilation holes.

    The Fractal case is impressively g silent. A side note here: we haven't used the power supply that came with the case, as the Asus board uses an external power supply.
    I was very impressed by the front fan in the Fractal case as I really couldn't hear it.

    Power consumption

    Madshrimps (c)
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    The Intel NAS is the device with the lowest consumption, but that's where the positive point stop. The Fractal case is in our setup also very energy efficient, but this is due to the choice of motherboard & CP. You can put a high end ITX board in it with a high end Core i5, and power consumption will at least triple. You're free to choose.

    Temperature.

    Madshrimps (c)


    Normally you can use “the noisier the cooler” as a guideline. This is correct for the Intel NAS, where the disks remain quite cool, none of the cases actually caused any issues temperature wise, as you can see that the Fractal and Shuttle keep them around a healthy ~35°C mark.

    On to the conclusion ->
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