Jonsbo N3 8 Hot Swap Bay NAS Case Review 

Great to hear! It is a nice case isn't it?

Could also get an M2 to Sata adapter and leave out the HBA in favor of a 10gbt NIC.

been researching for a few weeks, and it's been frustrating finding that itx+10gbe+8sata, and i'm smacking myself reading your comment why I didn't think of that

@@zacki5663 i got a qnap qm2-2p10g that has dual m2 slots on it, since i used the only m2 on mb to add 6 more sata ports, pricey but, was the best solution i could find, other than possibly one of the pcie to m2 with pcie riser to add a ded gpu if i ever needed one for my plex server.

Yes, this is a great idea

I had the same idea. I think the PSU is in the way of using deep ITX.

Thanks for your comment! It is good to have the option for sure. Just for those looking for a NAS case (which seems to be its primary intent) it is just extra unnecessary bulk. In my mind ultimately make the footprint a bit bigger to fit mATX board and then can mount GPU sideways, move PSU down next to hard drives, and not be much larger overall. But that's a wishlist, lol. The case is pretty nice as is.

Good question! It seems it's a "dumb backplane". I'm not sure the refresh interval of this power meter, but it pops up to 200W or so pretty instantly. It also sounds like they power on simultaneously: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0rWryODz7p0.htmlsi=WeIoqpw2T8J-erog

@@htwingnut Ah that's too bad! Even my 8 year old synology had it. Guess those "dumb backplane" are old stock or something that they are trying to clear first. If you're in touch with a jonsbo representative, maybe you could enquire about it.

I am not 100% certain, but I would imagine if it were "SAS compatible" that it would be 12G as it's just an electrical pass-thru and speed is more dependent on the SAS controller than the slot. Not to mention that unless you have drives that can run 1200 MB/sec it'd be hard to validate either way. SAS 12G is more for total bandwidth for expanding to multiple drives, which wouldn't be a factor in this situation, because each disk would get their own dedicated 6Gbps or 12Gbps lane.

PSU is a Silverstone SX300-B 300W. I no longer have the system assembled, so unfortunately can't tell you at this point. Either way, that would depend entirely on the disks used, motherboard, CPU, RAM, PSU, etc, so it could vary greatly from setup to setup.

The rubber standoffs really make a difference. I didn't notice any vibrations through the case at all. Of course disks make noise in general when seeking and newer high capacity disks use PWL which can cause a slight "thump" sound every 5 seconds or so.

Fully agree, Mini ITX is OK for a 4 bay NAS, as you can find motherboards with four SATA ports, but 8, you need an HBA PCIe card. They could widen the case by a few inches, shorten it by a couple inches because you don't need full height cards or massive CPU coolers, and put the SFX PSU next to the hard drives.

​@htwingnut can use a m.2 to sata ports card on mitx but yeah make it a little wider to fit matx would be great

@@Andreas-w Agreed. But if you use M.2 to SATA port adapter you lose the M.2 port for your OS. I know there are mITX motherboards that house two m.2 slots but one is on the bottom of the board and uses a separate controller and usually are much more expensive boards. I just think that this device wouldn't need to be much bigger to house an mATX, just make it wider and house the SFX PSU next to the drive bays, and allow room up top for an mATX board, and doesn't need to be quite as thick either. Just my opinion though. Otherwise case is actually quite nice.

@@htwingnut yes matx would be a better solution

It requires an SFX form factor PSU.

Agreed. That's my one of my biggest gripes too. Nobody needs a mile high cpu cooler for a NAS case. And no need for full height PCIe card either, really. It's not a game case. This would be perfect if it accommodated a microATX board and reduced the height.

@@htwingnut Exactly! In my case I'm still running a 4 year old Asrock c2750d4i board with a SOC and only needs 1U with fans in the front. I know many people had issues with those boards but so far mine has been good but I'm out looking for a case to houses 8-12 case in a tiny footprint. Difficult.

No, unfortunately, because it is mounted to a bracket that only mounts one way in the chassis.

I prolly should of watched the video first, im sorry lol

@@lordnikon981 No problem, LOL. Yes it can accommodate SAS drives if you have the proper SAS controller. Thanks for watching!

Ambient room temperature was about 23-24C

@@htwingnut, thanks so much for the response! Planning on building a NAS using this case, but will be using the Topton n100 based MB, mainly because of the ultra low power consumption. Your video was really helpful and very detailed. Would have been great if you had some rough power-consumption stats. Thank you.

This is an older 4th gen Intel motheboard. It has 6 onboard SATA ports, and I used the wifi slot to add another two. Unfortunately it's hard to come across a current gen Intel (or AMD for that matter) motherboard with more the four ports in a mITX form factor. Asrock Rack makes server motherboards with 8 SATA ports, although they are a bit expensive.

I'm looking for a motherboard socket lga1151 with more than 4 Sata. This is a big problem. The QTJ2 processor will be in my NAS.

Haha. For a quick build, I don't bother with back plates, I was disassembling afterwards anyhow. This wasn't intended as a practical usable build. Just for building up the case. The motherboard is just a test board. It's an antiquated ASRock Z87E-ITX for 4th gen Intel CPU's. It has six onboard SATA ports and one mSATA port on the back. But if you use the mSATA port you lose functionality of one of those six SATA ports. The additional two SATA ports come from an adapter board in a full size wi-fi slot. So while technically I could run 8 off that motherboard, I'd also need one slot for boot drive, leaving only 7 remaining slots. In this case, that wouldn't fly because the case supports 8 drive bays. But I've used this mobo a few times before for builds that had 5 or 6 drive bays, so there is one free SATA for boot drive. Not to mention I wanted to test SAS compatibility and that can only work with a proper SAS PCIe HBA card. Not to mention most ITX motherboards only support 2-4 SATA ports onboard, so figured they'd want to see a full length HBA card. All that said, I do have a video coming up showing a couple modern solutions though. As far as transcoding as long as you have an Intel CPU with an integrated GPU supporting Quick Sync, there really is no need for a dedicated GPU. I've seen reports of users getting upwards of a dozen or so simultaneous 1080p -> 720p transcodes with Quick Sync, and at least 6-8 4k transcodes. But you are correct, it is not the most practical build how I had assembled it.