I'm interested in finding a fanless NAS with at least two drives for silence and reliable storage (RAID 1), but I haven't been able to find anything.
Do these exist? Or does having a CPU in the NAS necessitate a fan so the device doesn't fry?
I'd be interested in a DIY solution (maybe something with an ITX board?) if there's no off-the-shelf one. How could I build this myself? What would I need to consider?
As of 2018, several NAS manufacturers offer fanless NASs:
QNAP: HS-251, HS-251+, HS-453DX
Synology: EDS14 (I just spoke with Synology support: this item is discontinued.)
Western Digital: My Cloud, My Cloud Home, My Cloud Mirror, etc. (Read up on My Cloud security issues first.)
Alternatively you could build one yourself by, for example, installing DSM (Synology's open source OS) on a fanless mini PC with XPEnology's bootloader.
This is a typical question where the answer changes based on time. The question has been asked in 2011, and by early 2014 sufficiently powerful x86 processors have arrived on the market that do not require active cooling.
You still need to worry about cooling the disks, which now can consume a lot more power than any other component (easily 10 W per disk, depending on the disk). This can be addressed with a good passive cooling solution, or by selecting disks that do not produce as much heat. If the case is not specially designed for passive cooling, heat will build up and if you have components producing as little as 20 W of heat, they will boil themselves to death.
There are 3 options:
There are many articles on the internet which discuss passively and actively cooled computer solutions which often summarise by stating that seeking a completely passively cooled solution is unwise, given fans can be so quiet as to be inaudible, yet necessary in order to create just enough of that airflow to keep operating equipment within safe operation range.
I would basically say no is the answer to your question, but if quiet is what you seek, look for a NAS with silicon anti-vibration supports for the HDDs and as large a fan as you can find (larger means same airflow at fewer RPM, hence less dB).
I don't recommend considering a fanless NAS. It can build up enough heat so that either the drives or the actual circuit board will burn out. I have the D-Link DNS-323. It has a fan and it's quite quiet if you're concerned about fan noise.
The Western Digital My Book World Edition II may not have a fan if memory serves me correctly - you'll want to verify this though.
You may find some other suggestions here: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/finders/nas/products (filter by "Noise:Very Low")
Qnap HS-210 is a fanless NAS. Pared with SSD or WD Red hard drives it should be quite quiet. Qnap is a good NAS company so I dought they would but something on the market that would not hold up, and damage their reputation. At the moment that is the only fanless NAS I know of. If you get one, it would be nice if you could post your impressions here.
Qnap HS-210 fanless NAS http://www.qnap.com/en/index.php?lang=en&sn=822&c=351&sc=514&t=523&n=20179
Review of Western Digital Red 3TB hard drives http://www.silentpcreview.com/WD_Red
If you're willing to fork out more money for SSD's your heat issues will go away assuming the controller doesn't heat up, but I doubt it would. If you do need fans, you would be surprised by how quiet large slow fans are.
The TerraMaster F2-NAS describes itself as 'passively cooled with system fan redundancy'. I assume that means the fan is off during normal usage, and only kicks in to avoid your disks frying if you are working them hard. It has a thick aluminium case which I imagine acts as a large heat sink.
If you don't mind having a huge fan hanging off the back, you can make a small off-the-shelf NAS virtually silent by removing the included fan and replacing it with conical size adapters and a much larger fan, from companies like Noctua that design for quiet. Bigger diameter blades allows for slower blade movement and less noise vs small diameter fans.
