Log Dan A4-NASFX

[nascentparadigm]

After building a more recent A4 build (see here), I couldn't figure out what to do with the old one. Recently came to the realization that I could use it as a NAS (since I would only need to add drives and can re-use all the other components), and started going down the rabbit hole of "just how much storage can i cram into this case?"

The case itself only has mounting points for up to three 2.5" drives, and ITX boards tend to max out at 4x SATA and 2x NVMe connections...but after a little research I think I found a way to support up to 10 SSDs, 8 of them hot-swappable. It turns out the GPU side of the case can hold a lot, when you don't need a GPU.

The first step is to add support for more SATA drives, which is a accomplished with an ASM1166 adapter and a tiiiiiiiiny modification to the motherboard tray...

 

[endosan]

Interested to see where this goes! Perhaps eject them out the top like poptarts in a toaster?

 

[nascentparadigm]

And here's the final piece - an 5.25" 8-bay SSD hotswap device (Athena Power BP-15287SAC)
So if anyone wants to add a CD drive to their A4, its technically possible.
Only half the bays are loaded, will get some additional drives to fill in the other 4 (gonna be a lot of SATA cables in here).
Also need to replace the built-in fan with a Noctua equivalent, its quite loud compared to all the other fans in the case.
Feel like there's probably enough room for a half-height GPU if I ever need one (full height would interfere with the additional SATA ports), really only need it if I need to access BIOS settings or transcoding down the line.