CPU Jonsbo N3 - ITX NAS CASE BACKPLANE

the-last-englishman

Minimal Tinkerer
Original poster
New User
Sep 3, 2023
4
5
Hi All,

I just ordered the Jonsbo N3 from Aliexpress, it will be replacing my Fractal Torrent Nano.
One thing that is not clear in the PDF instructions is the backplane power inputs, 2 molex and one sata.
I reached out to Jonsbo and they provided feedback that the 2 x Molex are needed for 5-6 drives and the 2 x Molex + Sata are needed for 8 drives.

Hope this is usefull to somebody :)



 

TechGuruz

What's an ITX?
New User
Sep 21, 2023
1
0
Hi All,

I just ordered the Jonsbo N3 from Aliexpress, it will be replacing my Fractal Torrent Nano.
One thing that is not clear in the PDF instructions is the backplane power inputs, 2 molex and one sata.
I reached out to Jonsbo and they provided feedback that the 2 x Molex are needed for 5-6 drives and the 2 x Molex + Sata are needed for 8 drives.

Hope this is usefull to somebody :)
Hey buddy,

I've just ordered the same case, it will probably be a while before it gets to me but I have been searching for information online. I am planning to make my own power cables so this was pretty useful, although I am planning on ignoring Jonsbo's recommendation. I'm not too sure how they came to the power requirments but 2x Molex should be more than enough to power all 8 drives and thats worst case including start up.

At startup a modern 3.5" HDD can draw around 20w (this will vary from one drive to another be sure to check your drives spec sheet if you want accurate numbers), so 8x 20w give you a peak draw of around 160w which will soon drop to less than half that once the drive are all spun up.

Molex is rated for 132w so 2x 132 give us 264w of peak power draw. I see no reason for the extra sata power port since it's only rated for 54w it just seems redundant to me.

Most PSU's come with a 6pin to 4x sata power cable and that doesnt seem to cause any problems. Either way I will be using 2x molex ran from different 6pin connectors and will update if it sets on fire lol.
 

Mark13

Cable-Tie Ninja
Sep 5, 2020
180
229
Looking at this case for just a bunch of drives, I initially thought about using 2.5" SSD's with adapters in place of the 3.5" drives. But with the price of NVMe drives nearing the price of 2.5" SSD's I am mulling over stripping out the SATA board in the bottom of this case and installing a powered USB hub getting power from the molex on the PSU and installing a bank of individual USB enclosures populated with whatever NVMe drives I choose - connected to the USB 3 motherboard connector. Any thoughts or suggestions or limitations on my idea?
 

Gingerbeer

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Sep 6, 2019
122
107
Arise, thread, long since dead...

Just ordered the N2 for my new NAS (got burned in the Storaxa Kickstarter, so I'm back to square one).

I'm hoping to shoe-horn my spare HDPlex 400W DC-ATX in there and power the rig with the Dell 330W brick, so I can make room for a 3D printed SSD bay where the SFX PSU would normally reside.

Like this
 
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