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- May 19, 2017
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I am a bit biased when it comes to this case: IMO, it is the finest Mid-Tower, mini-ITX case ever made.
For starters, it is a very simple anodized Al case from the outside. My version was black, others come in silver, I guess. The two side panels come off easily with the help of captive fasteners that click into place. So, unlike my larger Lian Li A76, there are no issues with aligning the various slots / crevices / etc and the need for knurled fasteners, these side panels simply click securely into place. There are no screws to lose, and the only downside of this system is that you have to pay attention to wire management - bulging wire masses means that the panel may not click into place.
The front panel has a power button, two USB ports, and a Mic / headphone combination.
Thankfully, all that (save the power button) can be removed to reduce clutter. None of those components have a real use in a FreeNAS box anyway. Behind the front panel, three fans push air across ten 3.5" drives and one 2.5" fixed bay (in the floor), all mounted sideways to allow them to slide out from the left side of the chassis (as seen from the front).
Note that the top most and the lowest bays get relatively less air flow than the other ones. I mounted one of the mirrored boot pool SSDs in either location, figuring that they'd unlikely, if ever, to be exercised vigorously. Air flow is from front to back, there are three 120mm fans ups there (I use Noctuas). I modified the case further for more directional air flow by using gorilla duct tape to seal the case sides against the frame of the HDD tower on both sides. This forces all the air from the fans through the holes punched into that frame and also prevent recirculation inside the case.
As is the custom with Lian Li, backplanes for the SATA drives can be mounted. Hot-swapping should likely be avoided even if you go through the trouble of retrofitting the missing capacitors on the backplanes like I did (you can see the electrolytic capacitors in the picture above). FWIW, there are holes for electrolytic capacitors as well as 1206 pads, suggesting the use of electrolytic capacitors for bulk storage and the ceramic caps for high-frequency noise.
You can bring power to the backplanes via IDE or 15-pin power SATA connectors. I prefer the former as they are simpler. IIRC, there are no 3.3V traces on the backplanes but I could be wrong. The use of IDE eliminates the possibility of your drive being put into reset mode by 3.3V to the wrong pin as there is no 3.3V on a IDE connector and there is no 5V->3.3V power supply on the backplane either. As sold, they only contain a connector for SATA, SATA power, IDE power, and a 3.5" combined SATA/Power connector on the other side.
The right shows the underside of the Mini-ITX board as well as the SATA cables (light blue). For this case, I suggest the use of right-angle SATA cables on one end. Also visible is a inexpensive power splitter for multiple fans getting run off of one fan connector on the motherboard. Thus, the motherboard does not have to supply all that power, it simply tells all the 4-wire fans how fast to turn. And yes, I could / should have cleaned off that previous double-sided foam-tape Schmutz.
There is pretty good work space around the motherboard, in this case a C2750D4I, my 4th or 5th? I've had a few RMA issues that I'll spare you. However, the space is strictly limited to a mini-ITX board. I tried my best to get a Flex-ATX board in there (including retrofitting new mounting points) but found that the Flex-ATX is simply too deep. Unless you want to go to town with a dremmel, a hunk of Aluminum will be in your way. Additionally, you'll have to us a SF-sized power supply instead of a standard ATX, then mount it with a off-set ATX-SF adapter. In the end, I gave up and put it all in the A76 case.
Also mounted on the motherboard is a 100mm-heatsink adapter which allows the 100mm fan to cool the CPU very well. There are two exhaust fans - 80mm in the back and 120mm on top. Between the CPU cooler and the remaining fans, this rig stays cool and quiet, and is incredibly compact for all the drives it contains. I'd wager that if money were no object, this would have been the preferred embodiment over the Mini XL case (plus availability is another issue, this case isn't being made anymore). It is very quiet and unlike the MiniXL, this case does not allow hot drives to auto-toast themselves.
So, for a small NAS, this is a great setup. I have a 10GbE iXsystems Chelsio private-label in the sole PCIe slot, 48GB of RAM, a 200GB Intel 3610 (?) SLOG SSD, and two 128GB mirrored boot pool SSDs also. While the case has room for two PCIe card slots, I wonder if slot #2 is only there for a double-wide graphics card or somesuch. Hopefully soon, this will become my remote server.
For starters, it is a very simple anodized Al case from the outside. My version was black, others come in silver, I guess. The two side panels come off easily with the help of captive fasteners that click into place. So, unlike my larger Lian Li A76, there are no issues with aligning the various slots / crevices / etc and the need for knurled fasteners, these side panels simply click securely into place. There are no screws to lose, and the only downside of this system is that you have to pay attention to wire management - bulging wire masses means that the panel may not click into place.
The front panel has a power button, two USB ports, and a Mic / headphone combination.
Thankfully, all that (save the power button) can be removed to reduce clutter. None of those components have a real use in a FreeNAS box anyway. Behind the front panel, three fans push air across ten 3.5" drives and one 2.5" fixed bay (in the floor), all mounted sideways to allow them to slide out from the left side of the chassis (as seen from the front).
Note that the top most and the lowest bays get relatively less air flow than the other ones. I mounted one of the mirrored boot pool SSDs in either location, figuring that they'd unlikely, if ever, to be exercised vigorously. Air flow is from front to back, there are three 120mm fans ups there (I use Noctuas). I modified the case further for more directional air flow by using gorilla duct tape to seal the case sides against the frame of the HDD tower on both sides. This forces all the air from the fans through the holes punched into that frame and also prevent recirculation inside the case.
As is the custom with Lian Li, backplanes for the SATA drives can be mounted. Hot-swapping should likely be avoided even if you go through the trouble of retrofitting the missing capacitors on the backplanes like I did (you can see the electrolytic capacitors in the picture above). FWIW, there are holes for electrolytic capacitors as well as 1206 pads, suggesting the use of electrolytic capacitors for bulk storage and the ceramic caps for high-frequency noise.
You can bring power to the backplanes via IDE or 15-pin power SATA connectors. I prefer the former as they are simpler. IIRC, there are no 3.3V traces on the backplanes but I could be wrong. The use of IDE eliminates the possibility of your drive being put into reset mode by 3.3V to the wrong pin as there is no 3.3V on a IDE connector and there is no 5V->3.3V power supply on the backplane either. As sold, they only contain a connector for SATA, SATA power, IDE power, and a 3.5" combined SATA/Power connector on the other side.
The right shows the underside of the Mini-ITX board as well as the SATA cables (light blue). For this case, I suggest the use of right-angle SATA cables on one end. Also visible is a inexpensive power splitter for multiple fans getting run off of one fan connector on the motherboard. Thus, the motherboard does not have to supply all that power, it simply tells all the 4-wire fans how fast to turn. And yes, I could / should have cleaned off that previous double-sided foam-tape Schmutz.
There is pretty good work space around the motherboard, in this case a C2750D4I, my 4th or 5th? I've had a few RMA issues that I'll spare you. However, the space is strictly limited to a mini-ITX board. I tried my best to get a Flex-ATX board in there (including retrofitting new mounting points) but found that the Flex-ATX is simply too deep. Unless you want to go to town with a dremmel, a hunk of Aluminum will be in your way. Additionally, you'll have to us a SF-sized power supply instead of a standard ATX, then mount it with a off-set ATX-SF adapter. In the end, I gave up and put it all in the A76 case.
Also mounted on the motherboard is a 100mm-heatsink adapter which allows the 100mm fan to cool the CPU very well. There are two exhaust fans - 80mm in the back and 120mm on top. Between the CPU cooler and the remaining fans, this rig stays cool and quiet, and is incredibly compact for all the drives it contains. I'd wager that if money were no object, this would have been the preferred embodiment over the Mini XL case (plus availability is another issue, this case isn't being made anymore). It is very quiet and unlike the MiniXL, this case does not allow hot drives to auto-toast themselves.
So, for a small NAS, this is a great setup. I have a 10GbE iXsystems Chelsio private-label in the sole PCIe slot, 48GB of RAM, a 200GB Intel 3610 (?) SLOG SSD, and two 128GB mirrored boot pool SSDs also. While the case has room for two PCIe card slots, I wonder if slot #2 is only there for a double-wide graphics card or somesuch. Hopefully soon, this will become my remote server.
