So we've now had three Alienwares built, water cooled and modded. It's finally time for me to use a NAS so I can tie them all together. This shouldn't be an epic big build but it is an important one. I've been looking at getting a NAS since the year 0. Thing is I've never seen one I like the look of. Not so much not like the look of, but don't like the look of the cooling situation. Most have poxy little fans that would drive me nuts. Any way, recently a friend was selling his Dlink Sharecenter for £20 so I bagged it. I did ask him about the noise and he said it really wasn't nice. After doing some more digging (reviews, customer comments etc) I realised that I did not want to run it as it is, which is a shame because I am almost loathe to cut it up as it's really rather pretty. However, noise just does my head in these days so I decided to buy it and then buy an ITX case or something to mod it into, so I could remove the bumblebee fan. About two months back a company called Kolink released the K6T. It looks like this. And the back. Now originally I wanted one of these. Quick explanation. It's called a Graphics Amplifier, and is basically one of those external boxes for a GPU to go in if you are using a laptop. There was a load of them on Ebay at one point for £100 or so (which I guess I would have paid) but lately they are all silly money (like £300) so I decided to go with the Kolink instead, modding as I went. OK so both the NAS and the case arrived today and I was very pleasantly surprised. The case (Kolink) is one of those rare examples where it actually looks better in the flesh than it does in photos. Usually a cheap case looks OK in photos then rotten in the flesh but this is the opposite I am glad to report it is also far, far smaller than it looks (I would not even try cramming a MATX board into it) which also eased my mind a little. OK, so obviously this isn't going to be a very long project really. Well, not unless it gives me any headaches. My main plan is thus - 1. Get a crap PSU to fit into the case to run the LEDs on the front (more on that in a sec) and possibly run the NAS also. 2. Mod the case to take the NAS guts and a 120mm fan instead of the bumblebee. 3. Make cover plates/panels to close it up. 4. Possibly add some internal lighting, though I am not decided on this yet. I have plenty of options (including a set of purple cathodes etc etc) but I am not fully decided yet. 5. Either leave the clear side panel as it is and use internal lighting or repaint both panels in flat black (so they match). The first thing I did was pretty much rip every last part of it out. I then tested the LED panel (it's 5v) and got a nice surprise. I didn't realise that they are active LEDs and slowly chase 7 different colours around the front. Vid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA9VkogT1HE Apologies for the racket. That's open back headphones for you, might want to mute the vid. Also to note, some of the LED colours appear only as white, so the vid doesn't really do it justice. Next job - gut the NAS. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quick update before I go out. Here it is all stripped down. Still got some more to remove yet. Trying go give an idea of size here.. Erm, here it is next to the router and modem. It will live on the floor in front of them when it's done. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Modding has begun. First I got some tools and a piece of acrylic I cut to width a couple of days back. Marked it so I could cut it to length and the centre point of the hole. Lower front panel. Cut to length. Plastic weld. And a short while later.
