N2 Black NAS ITX Case 5+1 Disk Bays Mini Aluminum Case, Built-in 12cm Fan, SFX Power Bite (L150mm Max.), Support 65mm CPU Cooler, Integrated Upper Cover Removable,Black

This is the best small factor NAS case there is. I tried a few and this is leagues above the others. Build quality is great, almost all brushed metal construction. Style is timeless. Easy access to hot-swap drive bays. Good separation of mobo and drives. Good airflow. Easy to build. And takes a tiny amount of space. The only things that would make it even better are: 1 - A better built-in fan for the drives, I swapped it for a silent arctic cooling one. 2 - Slightly better layout that may allow for more space between the drives and fan, and perhaps the PSU. But this might come at the expense of the small size.

Great little case! Just put it together and it was really simple. Has instructions on cable management and fit everything I needed in it. Time will tell if the hotplate holds up but so far so good. The fan it comes with is pretty loud since the plate runs it at full speed, but I’m going to replace it with a 15mm Noctua with the quiet cable. If you’re going to have this on your desk, I’ll plug the fan it comes with into the motherboard instead for PWM control. Tip: Enable Hot Plug in PCH Storage Configuration, BIOS!

Nicely thought out and good looking case. I build a brand new 12+ bay rackmount NAS, and transplanted the old NAS parts to this case to use elsewhere. The rubber screw/handle system is unusual but is a cheap way to make the drives swappable without increasing the size or cost of the unit. It's "convertible" into a 5+2; they used the same upper bar on both sides so there are two screw holes present on opposite side of the designated SSD mount too. With some squeezing I got a second SSD in there ok. The slim fan is sandwiched between two very restrictive grills. Not quite sure how to address this yet. Also, it would have been a lot better if there was some kind of temperature control for the fan. I'm going to see if my motherboard temperature readout is effective enough to manage the drive temperatures, and connect the fan to the motherboard instead of the built in fan header. Route all your cables first before you screw anything down. I had to remove the motherboard to re-cable and somehow stripped a standoff screw hole in the process.

These are great cases. I’ve been building a few of these now for friends to run Plex server off of. Easy access to motherboard and processor. Only issue is making sure the cable management allows for good airflow. Some say the fan comes with it isn’t enough. I disagree. The fan has maintained all my builds at approximately 46°C when I move the connector straight to the mobo. If you’re gonna work at hard harder than just a NAS. Then you might need to look at better airflow.

I don't have a lot of space in my apartment, so this NAS sits less than 2 feet from my head as I work at my desk. ITX form factor with the compute on top and the drive storage below means that it fits in your average ikea shelving unit made to fit those cloth storage bins. Cooling seems sufficient, I can easily feel the air from the back fan flow out the front of the case. I did replace the stock fan with a Noctua one, using a 3D printed bracket to mount the thicker Noctua to the back of the case. Nose level was pretty good with the stock fan, and with a Noctua case fan and CPU cooler this thing is near silent. Build quality is very great, nice finish to the metal, hardware is tucked away so it's there when I need to get into the case, and access is quick with the two screws on either side of the lid. Getting cables under the motherboard once it's screwed down is near impossible, so you want to do all your SATA power cable routing before lowering the motherboard into place, but I'm pretty sure they mention this in the instructions. As an added bonus, there's just enough space around the ventilation at the front of the case to do a bit of sticker-bombing.

This case is great—well-designed, well-machined parts, fairly intuitive assembly. It is small, so make sure your board fits and cables are routed early on. Any mobos with sideways SATA connectors are probably too tight to fit. (I tried to repurpose an old Z170 board first.) I only have two critiques: the instruction manual is a bit limited, and there's a few quirks not explained. The hard drive mounting pieces aren't symmetrical, so make sure they're oriented with the thicker side against the drives. (Look to the handles to see the correct thickness.) Additionally, there is no fan control on the board intended for the exhaust fan in back, so reroute that to a system fan header on your motherboard if you don't want that constantly running at full speed. Beyond that, it's great for up to five drives with one extra SSD, and most ITX NAS boards like a CWWK i3-N305 or similar fit perfectly.

It's one of the most volume-efficient NAS cases in its capacity class, but that does come at a cost. It looks great, but is cramped to build in and higher RPM drives will run warm. I fit an a310 and R5-5600+is55 CPU cooler without issues. Running the sata cables gets very cramped and the backplane is not very sturdy so I had to be careful

JONSBO N2 Black NAS ITX -- Add a motherboard, SFX (<= 150mm) power supply and drives. CPU Cooler Height: ≤65mm per spec. I put the fan on one of the motherboard fan connectors to control its speed as connecting to the internal drive board runs it at full speed. I modified the lid by drilling out the holes for the CPU cooler thin fan, only drilling where the fan was and then blocking the other holes. I counter sunk the holes on both sides for better air flow and painted the lid. I used this cooler: Thermalright AXP120-X67 Low Profile CPU Air Cooler with Quite 120mm TL-12015 PWM Fan, 6 Heat Pipes, 67mm Height, for AMD AM4/AM5Intel LGA 1700/1150/1151/1155/1156/1200 I am using Unraid and like it. It seems this storage method is more robust - if a drive fails, it can be replaced as with any Raid but if 2 failed, you don't loose everything, which is my understanding of Raid with only 1 level of failure. Two drive failures at once should be very unlikely. If new to Unraid, it isn't free but TrueNAS is. There are levels to Unraid licensing. If using Unraid, check out AlienTech42 for help with Unraid in general and his 11 recommended plugins/dockers to add. Also, SpaceInvaderOne has some helpful videos. Hope it is OK to suggest these. ITX and mini-ITX are the same thing from what I read.

A**

Probably not necessary to give this NAS box another 5 star review, but I will. Great product. Good design. Good quality. I was migrating my NAS from a previous enclosure that kept overheating my drives with 3 fans. With the open top design, its nice to mount your ITX board, and route your cables however you like. Routing 5 SATA cables may require some thinking. Especially because most ITX motherboards don’t have 5 SATA ports. As luck would have it, I was already using a PCI-SATA card, and all my previous 90deg SATA cables worked perfectly for minimizing cable traffic, but more importantly avoiding interference zones with the rear fan and restricting airflow. All went together nicely. Couple lessons learned. Immediately replace the mesh intake and exhaust mesh plates with 120mm grills. That will increase airflow and reduce noise considerably. And, connect your fan to your motherboard so you can control it, and not have to run it at full speed. The fan cable is plenty long enough to reach your motherboard. There are several posts on replacing the fan with an exterior Noctua, even a 3D printed mod to minimize how far it sticks out. These are all good posts, but I thought I would first try the stock fan. As it turns out, running the fan at about 30% rpm yields ample cooling and is quieter than my CPU fan. No need to be quieter than your CPU fan. All-in-all. A Great Product!

I purchased this PC case for a NAS build with the hopes that I could replace an aging "server" I cobbled together years ago. Reality far surpassed my hopes because to my surprise, this PC case is probably the highest quality case I've ever built with. From the design decisions to the ease-of-installation of components, it was a joy to with within the constraints that this case imposed. I was easily able to install 4x IronWolf Pro HDDs in the bays (it supports a 5th drive but my motherboard does not), and the whole thing fits in the same footprint as my previous CM case and supports almost twice as many HDDs! If I had to fault one thing about it, it's the mesh grill on the exhaust fan; it makes the fan suuuuuper loud compared to other PCs I've built, and it's simply just due to a airflow restricting mesh grill. If you're purchasing this, upgrade the fan with a Noctua (almost a no-brainer) and get 2x non-mesh fan grills for both sides of the fan, or just go without the grills (your choice). Other than that, I would gladly purchase another one of these cases!

I use it for TrueNAS with 4x 3.5 inch drives, 1x 2.5 inch SSD boot drive and an M.2 NVMe cache drive on the motherboard. You would think the build process and cable management would be a challenge in this form factor but it was very easy to build in with well designed spaces for cables to be tucked away without hassle. Great design and highly recommended for a DIY NAS solution. Fits nicely behind my TV.

Tight squeeze but great size. Quiet