SilverStone Technology CS382 8-Bay SAS-12G / SATA-6G Hot-swappable High Performance Micro-ATX NAS Chassis, SST-CS382

Upped to 5 stars based on both the quality of the chassis and Silverstone's fast and easy RMA in the end.When I got this case, it took me awhile to actually be able to build in it due to some health issues, and I got a bad backplane PCB. There's two of them, each supporting for SATA drives with hotswap, if supported. It took me quite awhile to get in touch with Silverstone (issues mostly on my end), but when I did a human being answered the phone and told me what to do with my RMA form. That was less than two weeks ago as I write this and I just installed the replacement PCB tonight.First bit of advice for this case: Use a downdraft server CPU cooler, not a big dual tower box air cooler like I did. The tower cooler fit, but it means that every time I need to really get at the back of the drive cage for cabling stuff, I need to take out five screws and at least partly remove the drive cage so that I can route cables.Likewise, Silverstone says something about water cooling being possible in this case … no, no not really it just isn't. By the time you pack in even relatively short mini-SAS to 4 SATA breakout cables, run all the power lines, etc., this case doesn't have a lot of internal room for an AIO, and you'd be stuck with like a single 120 as it was. You can do better with air cooling in this case, and for less money.The case is well-built and has a lot of flexibility within the constraints of the mATX form factor otherwise. The case is upside-down from what's traditionally done, so if you have a heavy GPU you're going to need to find a way to keep it from sagging the opposite direction, which is something you might need to think about if you have a multi-slotted monster like some of the most recent cards—though this case screams media server to me, so your video card might wind up being a pretty small thing that does H.265 pr AV1 encodes and little more.In my case I opted for an AMD chip that's got both onboard graphics and ECC support, which left the x16 slot free for a SAS card in IT mode. These things run hot so I've got some fans mounted in the top, and I generally recommend doing so no matter your configuration.The two stock fans behind the drive cage are "fine" but they're not silent by any means—you could replace them with quieter PWM fans. Note, this requires removing the drive cage's PCBs. and you really want a good long #2 philips for that.Which requires me to segue for a moment to discuss tools: I swear by my iFixit Pro Tech toolkit for most electronics work. For PC cases though, I use two nothing-fancy/nothing cute Klein #2 Philips drivers. One is a Klein #603-4 (your average 4" bladed philips) and the other is a #603-7 which is, you guessed it, a 7" blade. To get the PCBs and fans out of the drive cage, use the 7". These drivers don't have spinny caps or ratchets, and they don't have magnetic screw retention (unless you use a magnet on them periodically, which I do), but I want precision more than anything else and a grippy handled "basic" screwdriver is indespensible for this kind of thing.The drive bays… You obviously have your eight sleds for classic spinning rust. You could screw a 2.5" drive into it, but that's not what this case is made for (and they're obviously not toolless that way.) You've got space for a couple of 2.5" drives screwed into place on the left (back) side of the case. It requires removing the drive cage (five screws) and then the platform the cage sits on (didn't count how many screws) but you could install a 9th drive under the cage, but I don't know who realistically ever would.You're probably not going to do that though. But there's also provision for a 5.25 optical drive or device if you need one, and a slim laptop optical drive! Cabling around this is a little tight but I made it work, and you can remove the big 5.25 bracket if it interferes with your monster GPU.The toolless drive sleds … the little rails that snap in to make them toolless feel breakable to me, but I've yet to break one and I've had some drive turnover in this case. I didn't ask Silverstone if I could buy some extras, but … I might do that JIC.Using the case for a server under Linux … drives connected to the LSI SAS card appear _in random order_. They appear before the 2.5" SSD I'm using for containers. Of course ideally your server setup only ever cares what the UUID of the drives or the partitions on them are. It'd be really cool if you had a nice dashboard that would show you all the drives in physical order—and that's something you could do using /dev/disk/by-path:pci-0000:01:00.0-sas-phy0-lun-0 -> ../../sdapci-0000:01:00.0-sas-phy1-lun-0 -> ../../sddpci-0000:01:00.0-sas-phy2-lun-0 -> ../../sdc…etc…but it'd be a roll your own sort of thing. If TrueNAS Scale has a facility to do that, neat, I don't know about it. Whatever random fedebuntuEL Linux you install won't unless you feel like writing a module for Cockpit, which might be cool but I haven't done it. If you're a terminal user it would be trivial to write udev rules to create per-bay device symlinks using the physical path and set up your monitoring scripts to use those. But that'd again be a custom-rolled solution that isn't what a canned storage appliance server distribution is going to do for you.Oh, how do I know those physical disks are in the right order? Why, I created labels on the partition tables, and the partitions themselves, of course! NOT that the OpenMediaVault web interface even knows those labels exist, or care. No, it mounts the partitions by UUID and refers to them by whatever /dev/sd[a-h] they get assigned.But this isn't a review of OpenMediaVault. If it were it would not be five stars—I'm using OMV because it's the only storage appliance distribution that supports mergerfs/snapraid, which make a lot more sense than any other form of disk spanning and parity I could come up with. It just has a UI that's obnoxious and the backend salt database is basically technical debt IMO.But in terms of the hardware, it all works very well at this point.What more could I want here? Full ATX maybe. If this machine were going to use a modern monster GPU, I might want that to be able to have that and room for a NIC or something. But since this is just a file server, I was able to make it work with a good mATX board.But seriously, you NEED those skinny SATA cables if you're not using a SAS controller like I am. That's not optional here.

This case is definitely not what I'd consider a "small NAS case." It's somewhere between a compact NAS case and large tower. Check the dimensions carefully if you're planning on putting it on a shelf in closet or something like that.I have a Supermicro X12STL-F mATX motherboard with a Xeon E-2334 (80w TDP) and a Noctua NH-U9s heatsink in this case. CPU temps idle in the low 30C range and under about 50% load are in the high 30's/low 40's. Perfect, IMO. The fan for the bottom drive cage blows directly into where the PSU goes, which is a dead end, airflow-wise. Those bottom drives run about 4-5C hotter than the top cage does, but 100% drive usage temps are still really good for this type of case. I have 7200-rpm SATA drives and the top cage drives run mid-30s under load and top drives high 30's/low 40s. Again, really not bad.I had an Audheid K7 8-bay NAS case previously and the same drives would hit mid-50's under load, which really isn't great. Big improvement there.I have also swapped out the thin hard drive cage fans with Noctua NF-A9 92mm fans. You can see the fans are a tight fit, but they do fit. You will need to remove the two backplanes to access the fan screws.Inconvenient, but easily doable. Just need a long Philips screwdriver. I swapped out the rear 120mm fan for a Noctua Redux fan. System runs cool and quiet.Because of the very small interior space to work with, you do have to be creative with your cable routing, but the many backplate passthrough grommets make it pretty easy to do so. With a mATX motherboard, the first 2" or so of the board are covered by the drive cage when it's inserted. As such, you must remove the drive cage before installing the motherboard or you won't be able to reach the motherboard mounting holes in that area. You also won't be able to plug in any cables at the front of the board with the drive cage inserted.Building in this case isn't hard, just different. Especially if you're used to full size ATX cases or 4U server style cases. Take your time and things will go well.The front door is removable and you get better airflow with it off anyway. I already recycled mine. You also can't leave anything plugged into the front ports with the door closed, if that matters to you.This case can take a 120mm radiator up top, fits a full size CPU HSF, has an 8-bay HDD backplane, 5.25" bay, slim ODD bay and space for another 2 SSDs and another 3.5" HDD under the drive cage. It's pretty much the perfect NAS case. I am very happy I bought it.

Got this to replace a microatx cube case for my more-than-a-nas-but-less-than-a-homelab server, after getting tired of taking it apart to add or replace disks. So I've always thought of Silverstone as a brand you go to if you want good looks and serious quality, at a bit of a price premium, and this looked like the best option.Sadly, t·his definitely comes with the price but the quality leaves much to be desired.- The front facade is all plastic, including the main door, and all the drive sleds. It's not even a particularly good feeling plastic.-The drive sleds, being plastic, have a lot of flex and it's very easy to put them in a bit wrong. My case actually came with one of them misaligned and i had to exert more force than I'd like to get it out.-The sleds come with these semi-toolless rails that feel incredibly flimsy. A cheap coolermaster case I got 15 years ago had better drive mounting hardware.-The metal feels noticeably thinner than I'm used to in a PC case. it feels like there were some more corners cut here.-The front door only has a magnetic closure if it's unlocked, so it really likes to swing open while you're moving around. Best to lock up (and hopefully not lose the key)That said it's not completely horrible-No sharp edges on the metal. Most of the edges are folded over.-The design itself is nice and understated. No windows, no fancy gamer lights.-Good cable management options-Has a lot of drive bays in addition to the hotswap ones. It can take a full-size 5.25 bay at the very top, a couple drives underneath the hotswap bays, and even a bonus slim optical slot off to the side.