Joined in 2023 
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Should you desire a little more horsepower for 4k transcoding, emulation, or the occasional gaming session, this is no longer a possibility. My other alternative is using one of the very few mid-size case that still exist with top-to-bottom 5.25" bays (like the Sharkoon T9), and install three 5-into-3 or 4-into-3 hot-swap cages in them, but that ends up being fairly expensive, even using the cheapest cage ( from Rosewill).
I was also looking at the DS380 originally, but once I saw than it supported mini-ITX mobos only, crossed it off my list -- I want more than one PCIe slot for future expansion. I couldn’t seem to get the machine to boot up off either my Ultimate BootCD flash drive, or my Memtest86+ flash drive.Under the 8-bay 2.5” cage is a single 2.5” drive cage for an OS SSD. This cage can be removed if space is needed underneath. Technically, this makes the unit a 9x 2.5″ chassis. SilverStone CS280 HDD Cage
A small detail, but never the less something I can appreciate -the simple design of the the door hinge. To buy a computer case suitable for a Network Attached Storage, you first need to consider the form factor you’re looking for. Depending on the number of drives and how long you plan to use the rig, you’ll want to consider cooling options thoroughly. As the drives are the focal point of your build, the one features you will be most concerned about are the drive bays. Form Factor The fans utilized are 3-pin units. We would have preferred here if the fans were 4-pin PWM units which allows easier control of the fan speed. In 2019, virtually every motherboard that one would use in this chassis has 4-pin fan headers. So what did I wind up deciding to do in 2019? Make it even smaller! I’ve always preferred making my NAS builds diminutive on account of my limited desk space. Additionally, what I saw as one of the biggest advantages in comparing a DIY NAS build to the off-the-shelf NAS offerings from folks like Drobo, QNAP, Synology, et al. is the fact that the off-the-shelf NAS machines are nearly always compact. In building my own NAS, I wanted to demonstrate that a DIY builder could do it better! Here we have the SFX-SX500-G power supply installed for a test fitting. For final installation, we rotated the PSU so the cooling fan is facing down. Either position should work fine as there is space above the PSU. With cable management being a challenge with small form factor cases we needed to use the space above the PSU for extra power cables. That is why we rotated the PSU fan facing down. SilverStone CS280 PSU Installed 1Given what I’ve experienced of FreeNAS-11.2-U2, I’m looking forward to getting it installed and configured on my own NAS here in the very near future! Conclusion Everything installed fine, with one small exception. We needed to remove the 2.5” SSD cage below the main 8-bay HDD cage to give clearance to the CPU heat sink. SATADOMs and Velcro are good solutions to adding a boot SSD anyway. SilverStone CS280 PSU Installed 2 Cable clearance is very tight but everything fits. The fully modular power supply is almost a must here. SilverStone CS280 Cable Clearance The functionality of the hot-swap bays are very smooth and not janky. They don’t feel cheap at all. It’s a pretty clean look and the little SATA cables are so much easier to manage in both flexibility and organization.
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