Accessory [SFFn] Silverstone CS280 Reviewed - DIY NAS Made Easier

[confusis]

At CES 2018, Silverstone had a large number of 40 liter+ cases on display (which we chose not to cover).
Unfortunately for us, the ITX market was largely ignored at their suite. Save for a certain power-supply that we're pretty eager to get our hands on, there wasn't much for us to cover ...although there are rumors that we may see something special at Computex 2018.

What we didn't see however, was Silverstone's CS280 - and for a good reason. It's a niche case that was released back in 2016 but didn't get much coverage.
What is it? Well, it's an ITX/SFX based NAS chassis, perfect for the Plex/Kodi/Freenas HTPC users among us... or is it?

Read more here.

Thanks @3lfk1ng for the review!

 

[Biowarejak]

Good read. I suppose it might fit an Low profile GPU, but incompatibility with normal ITX length cards is a bummer.

 

[VegetableStu]

Maybe they were counting on an iGPU system and a RAID card? o_o

(interesting timing actually, I've been looking into getting an LSI RAID card or just biting into Windows Storage Spaces for internal midterm storage purposes. still figuring out which to commit to, like do I want hardware RAID or do I want to spend a bit of CPU time on something quick and flexible)

 

[jtd871]

Review of a predecessor, the DS380, here.

 

[Soul_Est]

Maybe they were counting on an iGPU system and a RAID card? o_o

(interesting timing actually, I've been looking into getting an LSI RAID card or just biting into Windows Storage Spaces for internal midterm storage purposes. still figuring out which to commit to, like do I want hardware RAID or do I want to spend a bit of CPU time on something quick and flexible)

Software RAID (ZRAID, mdadm, WSS) all the way. Hardware RAID brings with it another point of failure. This one would be harder to recover from as well.

 

[VegetableStu]

Software RAID (ZRAID, mdadm, WSS) all the way. Hardware RAID brings with it another point of failure. This one would be harder to receover from as well.

any idea how complicated would it be if I were to move disks between systems on a WSS setup? o_o

(and on a separate note, I'm on limeraid's webpage now, LOL)

 

[Soul_Est]

any idea how complicated would it be if I were to move disks between systems on a WSS setup? o_o

(and on a separate note, I'm on limeraid's webpage now, LOL)

Not possible. Once the disks are combined into a single pool, they cannot be moved. For keeping a level of redundancy, presenting a single pool of storage, and allowing the removal of drives and still accessing their data, I recommend SnapRAID and MergerFS. Coupled with the NTFS-3G driver, it may just be what you are looking for. THis would all be under Linux though. There are distros that target NAS systems. I have not tested this though so YMMV.

 

[axtran]

Oh boy, love the review for this unit! I’m thinking about building a 2400G NAS/server for storage and other needs around the house (single box K8S host) and was waiting for someone to really dig into this thing. Perhaps it’s time for my 8x 1TB SSD NAS dream?

 

[DaHans]

Thanks for the review! There is really no real good review out there.

I just came over this case to get a smiliar built to my SX79R5.
If you have a Single Slot GPU with a mini-DTX Mainboard. Is there a chance to bring it beside the hdd cage?
For ITX there might be a chance for a low profile GPU. They have 69mm so they might fit in the gap?

Edit: I'm just coming back to answer my question:

I got a reply from Silverstone Support Europe and they confirmed, that there will fit a Single Slot full size GPU on the outside PCIe Slot.

 

[DaHans]

Another two questions:

Are those fans A8015L 15mm in depth?

Are the motherboard standoffs screwed or riveted?

Thank you!

 

[opticle]

I bought one of these cases before reading the article.

I've got 8x900gb 10k sas drives. With the front door closed the system overheats after just a half hour and hard locks. The casing gets hot to the point that you can't touch it anywhere.

Thankfully, leaving the door open alleviates this issue altogether, it stays cool and runs 24x7.

They should have had some holes drilled into the front door.