Review on 📁 SilverStone Technology CS381B 8-Bay SAS-12G/SAS-6G NAS Storage Case for Micro-ATX/Mini-DTX/Mini-Itx, Hot Swap 2.5"/3.5" with Dual 120mm Ball Bearing Fans, Black by John Ghattamaraju

The CS381B seemed like the perfect NAS case. 8 hot-swap bays in a compact form factor with Mini-ITX support. It even has two SSD slots, ideal for cache drives. I have a Supermicro A2SDi-8C+-HLN4F for this chassis. Mini-SAS HD to Mini-SAS HD, perfect! There don't appear to be any other cases or 4 x 5.25" drive bays in the US market that support this connector. Everything was going great until I started working with bad blocks. The drive temperature rose to 65 °C! Totally unacceptable. It came with two 120mm intakes on the sides and two 120mm exhausts on the rear. I've tried all sorts of experiments with blocking parts of the case and different combinations of fans and ducts. To put it simply, this case has one critical design flaw... It's not designed to allow air to circulate over the surface of the drives. Seems like every NAS case has this problem. Even at 2000rpm industrial Noctua, it doesn't matter if they just would have done a better job with the airflow on this case. everything else about it is so great. I'm also out of the return period after all the time I've spent experimenting. Don't waste your $330 on this piece of junk!