Enclosure Silverstone CS381 - 28L mATX NAS case

[ermac318]

So not sure when exactly the web page for this went up, but there have been a few threads over the last few months (including one from me) talking about NAS cases. While this doesn't qualify as SFF <20L, it supports mATX, FlexATX, mDTX, and mITX motherboards, supports 240mm AIOs, and more.

It's got 8 hot swap trays, two 2.5" drives that can sit on top, and space for multiple PCIe cards. It's narrower than a rackmount server, but it's about 5 RU tall. I can't find pricing on it yet, but this seems like a neat NAS case for people that need more than your usual Norco or UNAS chassis.

I was thinking of transplanting my desktop mATX Z97 Haswell build into one of these to turn it into a NAS. Max cooler height is listed as 59mm but recommend more clearance for airflow reasons, so something like an L9i or an AIO are your best bets I think.

 

[Phuncz]

I went with an AIO in my Silverstone CS01S-HS, because I'm going to stuff an 8-core Ryzen in there. I did need to do a lot of research to find one that's slim enough and is geared towards reliability. I went with the Cooler Master MasterLiquid 120 because the Silverstone TD03-Lite was EOL and nowhere to be found. In the end I needed the Noctua slim 120mm fan to make it fit but that was expected.

 

[chx]

The chassis layout best can be understood from a picture I couldn't find at Silverstone but it's at https://www.techpowerup.com/256591/silverstone-unveils-cs381-chassis-for-diy-nas-creation-rigs https://www.techpowerup.com/img/Yi5jSX3IiBv9Zpg4.jpg 244mm for the motherboard, 125mm for the PSU is already 369mm and the chassis is only 400mm wide. And you can fit two 3.5" hotswap bays on top of the PSU + CPU area, that's like 280mm width and each HDD is 100mm wide. Very neat. The chassis depth allows for normal AIOs, not just thin ones, I believe.

For the best sort of insanity they could've added a second PSU space on the front, opposite the primary one, the chassis depth is enough for it... especially with AIO ... remember the terrifying max power consumption figures from https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-2-2990wx-2950x,5725-13.html here. And then two 2080 Ti

 

[ermac318]

The chassis layout best can be understood from a picture I couldn't find at Silverstone but it's at https://www.techpowerup.com/256591/silverstone-unveils-cs381-chassis-for-diy-nas-creation-rigs https://www.techpowerup.com/img/Yi5jSX3IiBv9Zpg4.jpg 244mm for the motherboard, 125mm for the PSU is already 369mm and the chassis is only 400mm wide. And you can fit two 3.5" hotswap bays on top of the PSU + CPU area, that's like 280mm width and each HDD is 100mm wide. Very neat. The chassis depth allows for normal AIOs, not just thin ones, I believe.

For the best sort of insanity they could've added a second PSU space on the front, opposite the primary one, the chassis depth is enough for it... especially with AIO ... remember the terrifying max power consumption figures from https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-2-2990wx-2950x,5725-13.html here. And then two 2080 Ti

I was thinking the completely opposite direction. So you could actually power this entire thing using a silent PSU like the Fanless 450W from Silverstone, although I wonder if you'd be able to get airflow across the PSU since it's underneath the airstream, or you could power it with a HDPlex 400 and an external brick.

Something interesting is the drive cages themselves are powered by a PCIe 6-pin connector, and the backplane has a 12V->5V step down transformer for the drives. This means you just need a strong 12V rail, or you could use a motherboard that's only powered by a 12V connector like a SuperMicro server board, plus something like the Dynamo 360 as your only PSU. Send EPS12V to motherboard's DC-in, send PCIe to both drive cages, and you're done.

 

[ermac318]

Thought I'd throw an update on this thread. Gamers Nexus did a video on building in this case:

As for me, I ended up going with the UNAS NSC-810A. It was a HUGE pain in the ass to build in, but it's indeed very very small.

 

[huh.sure]

How about that ITX Lian Li case? The PC-Q26, its pretty hard to find but it can hold 10 drives, but it is >20 liter class for SFF but I still find it notable.

 

[ermac318]

How about that ITX Lian Li case? The PC-Q26, its pretty hard to find but it can hold 10 drives, but it is >20 liter class for SFF but I still find it notable.

That's a fantastic case, that sadly hasn't been built in more than 2 years so good luck finding one.

 

[huh.sure]

That's a fantastic case, that sadly hasn't been built in more than 2 years so good luck finding one.

Shame that they discontinued it.

 

[bubbl3]

I have this case on the way for a 3950X workstation/nas build.

 

[ermac318]

I have this case on the way for a 3950X workstation/nas build.

Sounds exciting, keep us posted with a build log if you can! Be careful with your cooler as Gamers Nexus had issues fitting CLCs in the chassis.

 

[bubbl3]

Sounds exciting, keep us posted with a build log if you can! Be careful with your cooler as Gamers Nexus had issues fitting CLCs in the chassis.

Yep saw that, got the V2 of this: https://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?area=en&pid=597
Mostly the issue is with orientation and position of tubing, this one should be much easier to fit than the EVGA CLC he was using.

I actually just completed a 2700X build in the DS380 and need to create a build thread for it, is going to be short lived as the fan noise when encoding is unbearable, gonna reuse some of the HW for this new build.

 

[ermac318]

@bubbl3 please give some detailed measurements (tube length, actual dimensions and thickness of radiator) of that cooler when you get it! I've been considering getting that cooler for my UNAS 810A, which should be able to fit that in the bottom behind the drive cages. Will be very curious how well it handles the 3950x!

EDIT: Also what the mounting mechanism is like, and whether it uses the standard Asetek design or something else. Curious if I can get it to work on an LGA2011 Narrow ILM.

 

[bubbl3]

@bubbl3 please give some detailed measurements (tube length, actual dimensions and thickness of radiator) of that cooler when you get it! I've been considering getting that cooler for my UNAS 810A, which should be able to fit that in the bottom behind the drive cages. Will be very curious how well it handles the 3950x!

EDIT: Also what the mounting mechanism is like, and whether it uses the standard Asetek design or something else. Curious if I can get it to work on an LGA2011 Narrow ILM.

This is the V1 mounting kit

This is the mounting kit for the V2, that adds AM4 support


From the manual here doesn't look like it uses a standard Asetek mounting mechanism, but maybe with some drilling it could fit a narrow LGA2011.

 

[ermac318]

This is the V1 mounting kit
View attachment 347
This is the mounting kit for the V2, that adds AM4 support
View attachment 346

From the manual here doesn't look like it uses a standard Asetek mounting mechanism, but maybe with some drilling it could fit a narrow LGA2011.

Thanks so much for the pictures. So AM4 mounting is 54x90 and 2011 narrow ILM is 56x94 so maybe I can fudge it. Or I should just wait for the AsRockRack X570 board.

What mobo are you using?

 

[bubbl3]

The only consumer X570 mATX mobo https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X570M Pro4/

Should be fine at stock, I'll see in the future if it's worth to upgrade to an ASRock Rack one.

 

[ermac318]

The only consumer X570 mATX mobo https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X570M Pro4/

Should be fine at stock, I'll see in the future if it's worth to upgrade to an ASRock Rack one.

If you are building a server and have space for mATX, consider the X470D4U2 from AsRockRack. It's a proper kick ass server board and you can get it with 10gbe integrated if you want

 

[bubbl3]

If you are building a server and have space for mATX, consider the X470D4U2 from AsRockRack. It's a proper kick ass server board and you can get it with 10gbe integrated if you want

I had an ASRock Rack mobo before with my Xeon NAS and is awesome, but that's x470 and doesn't seems to have a good enough VRM for the 3950X, if I go for a server mobo is when we have x570 with PCI-E 4.0 given the investment required.

 

[bubbl3]

Build thread coming soon


Temps are while building parity on the second drive, great case.

 

[Cantello]

Looking forward to the build thread... :-)
Do the drives remain that cool while under load and is the case in a temperature-controlled rack? Also, which OS is the second to last screenshot?

I want to change from my current big Silverstone NAS case (CS350) to the CS381 but have read some ambiguous things about cooling the drives (not enough airflow, etc.).

 

[bubbl3]

Looking forward to the build thread... :-)
Do the drives remain that cool while under load and is the case in a temperature-controlled rack? Also, which OS is the second to last screenshot?

I want to change from my current big Silverstone NAS case (CS350) to the CS381 but have read some ambiguous things about cooling the drives (not enough airflow, etc.).

I was uncertain it qualifies as SFF, but given a few here seem interested, will get to create a build thread. Curiously enough the drives cooling is great, when I encode it gets even better as the radiator fans ramp up (and they are not noisy actually) and more air gets sucked in on the front towards the back, I find the HDD cooling design is great.
The hdd cages have a 3pin fan connector each and you can have fans controlled based on HDD temps, you can also achieve that in the OS if you want, I personally have them fixed at 50% and then they ramp up based on CPU temp. By the way, my cpu never went over 75C average even during 2 days of straight 4K encoding with all cores loaded.

The OS I use is unRAID, you can check it out here: https://unraid.net/