NAS boxes are designed to draw air from the front and output at the rear this keeps the hard drives cool. If you have blocked this air flow then the temp will rise.

I would move the NAS to another room if noise is an issue without your custom box

My Synology in a closed door cabinet has been playing all morning & is now at 28'C (room is 20'C)

When idle/hibernating its normally about 2 degrees above ambient

The system temp has gone up to 43c, and the HDD to 40c. It looks like plan 'B' aint gonna work!

 Ah !!!!    Oh well its only £225 for 12m of Cinnamon.  

Meerkat

Is that a QNAP TS-112P? If so, I have one on my main equipment shelf situated about 3 metres from my sitting position. You can sometimes hear the hard drive starting-up but other than that it's no noiser than my "humming" Naim NAP200 (which isn't that loud).

Dave

Qnap 110 or 112, hard to say with the single disk version as there are no vents on the front. My Qnap is a four disk version and it definitely pulls air in from the front as does the twin disk versions from TS-219 upwards. The Qnap 210 or 212 have a similar case design to the 110 or 112.

Has the temp gone up by much since placed in your custom case?

From the Qnap manual 

While you are spending, go for a UnitiServe! Only £2,350, but it will sit happily on your rack. 

With that hat over your ears, I'm surprised you can hear anything......

NAS Idea, Is it crazy?

Apparently so. Glad you got it sorted.

Good entertaining stuff Meerkat. Like many threads in this section; it's a great advert for sticking with a CD player.

John.

Why not just get a quiet NAS ?

E.g. QNAP TS-112P + WD Red hard drive. But is the OP listening? 

Dave

Thought about immersing it in a bucket of water? ...that would keep the temperature down (probably).

I use a Netgear Duo V2 inside a Tapley 33 cupboard and on a sorbothane mounted base, with an open back (Stanley knife + padsaw = open back).  This runs quiet and cool, even without the bucket of water.

I know so! CDS3 + XPS2DR

Sorry if I was spoiling your fun. I'm just too serious. 

Dave

You can buy a fanless Assetnas, and they are superb

I have no idea if this is of any help, but I had a problem of the hiss from the fan of my Mac MIni. Despite being in a cupboard, it was just too annoying. I tried fitting sorbothane squelchy feet, no good, still audible. So, in desperation I inverted it  . So far, seems to have quietened it down about 90%. If it fails, I will have to replace it with a SSD. I assume these SSD's do not have or need fans. 

Happy Listening,  Richard

QNAP have released the 453S which has 4 SSD's ( http://www.qnap.com/i/useng/ne...=showone&cid=382) , but this is their higher end range, so it wouldn't be in the price point of the 112. 

I have a 459 Pro II, it has 4 Hitachi drives in it and the fan is pretty darn quiet - they are on 24/7 (bar firmware updates) and have been for nearly the last 3 years.  Currently they are running at 36C.

The 112 has a pretty small chassis, so it will only have a small fan. As it's only one drive, it's working all the time and not sharing the load like a 2+ bay machine, plus it doesn't have the benefit of fail over/redundancy/RAID setup etc.

That is a darned sight cheaper than a SSD Mac Mini. I priced one up around £1,500, but that might have included more memory. But expensive, very expensive.

Happy listening,  Richard

A suggestion, instead of spending money on replacing your existing Qnap why not get some quotes on a professional install of CAT6 and place the Qnap as far away as possible in another room?

Bear in mind that as the ambient temperature within the enclosure rises the life time of the components (man time to failure) within will likely decrease.  I saw a great example of this at the Dell assembly plant in Texas where they had a room set up for accelerated testing of new hardware.  The room was at around 40C.

Synology make some nice quiet 2 drive NAS systems.  I have one in my office and it's inaudible in this quiet room and is only 4 ft from me.

Have you tried opening up the case to your NAS and cleaned it? Use an Air Duster or something similar. If there is a lot of dust in the case the airflow will be limited and the fan will have to work harder. Also check if there is a setting for fan speed on the NAS. My Synology can be set to 3 different settings in the software.

Sorry to hear that your NAS is making the burrow noisey.

I concur with the airflow statements, the fan in a NAS enclosure normally is is set to exhaust, the air inlet is usually at the front or at the bottom near the front.  This does though, allow some noise reduction to be achieved:

1  Place the NAS on a sound absorbing surface (but make sure the air inlet is clear - raise it on feet if necessary to clear the air inlets, using sorbathane feet for this can be even better)

2  Place a sound absorber (e.g. a towel) over the body of the enclosure (again avoid any ventilation slots)

3  Point the fan at another sound absorber (e.g. a carpet tile or piece of 'egg box' style foam) placed at least 50mm away from the fan.

This will give a reduction of sound (which can in fact be quite significant), without too much reduction of airflow).

I hope you can sort this, it's really annoying!  The newer NAS enclosures are a lot quieter, even the fanned ones.

Replaceing the fan for a more quiet one might also be an option.

Ok. I was under the impression that it had gotten louder recently.

Then in my opinion you have two options.

1. Move it away from your listening room.

2. Replace the fan with something more quiet.

On both of my Synology NAS' the fan hardly runs at all.

I have tried stressing it by playing music from it, copying files to it that it wants to transcode (so giving CPU load) and also doing a remote copy but it just sits there being silent.

Both sit in their respective living rooms with an ambient temperature of above 20 never making any noise.