R&D
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ONCE AGAIN, this should be the correct order of
proceedings, but it made life a little claustrophobic for
us in the next step. Fit the PSU and screw it securely
in place. The PSU’s kettle connector is extended to the
rear of the case with a well-designed right-angled cable
that will lie alongside the motherboard. If your PSU’s
connector is close to its edge, though, this will be a bit
of a tight fit. Don’t be tempted to fit the PSU upside down
to work around this—the resulting updraft of hot air into
the case (actually aimed right at the hard drives) will
properly mess up the airflow. The connector can handle
being gently squished, and it may be worth connecting
it before securing the PSU. Remove the central bar (or
is it more of a beam?) that until recently held the drive
trays in place. Fit the four motherboard standoffs in the
corners, ready to support our tiny motherboard.MEMORY IS THE EASIEST component to fr y, so discharge
any static you’ve accumulated by grounding yourself on a
heating pipe (or use an antistatic strap connected to the
case). Insert the RAM and ensure it’s seated correctly.
If your motherboard has a speaker, connect it now—its
beeps may be useful if anything goes awry. Place the
backplate over the mobo connectors and wrangle the
motherboard into place. If your SATA data connectors
are going to be hard to reach after the mobo is interred,
connect those cables first. Ensure the backplate is fitted
flush in the case, and screw the mobo in place. If you have
a modular PSU, plug in the cables you need or discard
the ones you don’t. You’d run into space issues trying to
fit a full-length graphics card and a modular PSU.FIRSTLY ROUTE THE ATX POWER CABLE carefully
alongside the heatsink and connect it to the motherboard.
It looks like an alternate route is possible along the top of
the PSU (beneath the front fans), but our cable was just
too chunky, and didn’t leave enough room to fit the drives
atop it. Fit the case connectors (this can be tricky), and
connect the CPU fan if you haven’t already. Reattach the
140mm case fan, ensuring the orientation is correct, so
it will vent hot air from the rear of the case. The two front
fans connect to two of the three-pin connectors at the
rear, and all connect to the PSU via the four-pin Molex
connector at the back. There’s a three-position switch on
the case to govern fan speeds and balance temperature
and noise. Make sure the cables don’t interfere with
any of the fans’ ability to spin; secure them with the
generously provided miniature cable ties if need be.EACH HANGING TRAY can hold two drives (2.5 or 3.5-
inch). We only used two of the three trays (with our three
hard drives and one SSD), which worked out pretty well,
as it allows some extra breathing (or cable-stuffing)
space. You’ll need this space if you’re fitting a long
graphics card, too. It takes a bit of dexterity to fit a second
3.5-inch drive into each tray, but once you’ve got one
screw in (use the large-headed ones for 3.5-inch drives),
it’s straightforward. Just be mindful not to bump drives
into one another during installation. Once the trays are
secured, put the lid back on the case, attach a monitor,
cross your fingers, and power up your glorious NAS box.
If it works, tr y to convince it to boot OpenMediaVault from
a USB stick. The NAS should display its IP address once
booted, at which point you can log in from your browser.POWER TRIP OF MEMORY AND MOBO
OUR MANY FANS HARD DRIVIN’