Jonsbo N3 Mini-ITX NAS PC Chassis, ITX Computer Case, 8HHD+1-SSDD isk Bays NAS Mini Aluminum with Steel Plate Case

I need a relatively mid server to as a data backup repository and to power my media server, some tech in my home, plus a few services that I use professionally. Was running off a self-contained NAS for a few years and honestly it just isn't scaling well and we needed more drive bays. Using this case, I built a new server with a high end ITX mobo and a real processor. SO much better! This has some amazing features. The backplane that connects the HDDs works great with the bays. My ONLY complaint is the dang 4-pin molex power connectors on that backplane. Those are old and unnecessary. I had to get adapters so I didn't have to add yet another power cable from my PSU (especially with such tight space inside). Anyway, the trays work great. The rubber screw gromit system is simple and firm. I like it a lot. Only could have been better if it was toolless maybe, though I don't think the 4 screws per drive are bad. There is plenty of space for everything I needed. Love the amount of tiedown points. Cable management was really satisfying. My only other complaint is the top section being secured by 4 hex screws. I feel like now that the system is done and running it won't have to be accessed all that often I guess? Either way I had some anxiety trying to figure out when I finally wanted to close it up. Overall I think this unit is solidly built. Cooling has been totally adequate under load so far as long as you tune the fans well. No complaints about noise either. The included fans are totally fine. Footprint is compact enough to keep tucked away, though cool looking enough to show off to your tech friends.

Gyakusetsu · 2025-02-02 · via amazon

This case has been great so far. Probably the most challenging aspect is finding a Mini ITX board that is suitable for NAS, and finding a suitable power supply. I’ll touch briefly on these, but this review is about the case. The build is solid - nothing feels cheap, although I am not a huge fan of the drive mounts (basically rubber grommets attached to the drives with screws and a pull handle to assist in removing the drive from the bay). It works though, and I hopefully will not be swapping drives often, so not a huge deal to me. Inside the case, with a SFX power supply and mini ITX motherboard, there is plenty of room, and nothing feels cramped. The power cable is a bit odd, as the PSU mounts in the top of the case at the front, with an extension leading to the back of the case for the external power cable. It prevents you from using the power switch on the PSU, but again, not a deal breaker for me. Cable management is pretty easy, and there are options for different motherboard configurations and presumably PSUs. Heat management has been fine so far, but there are mount points for additional fans if needed. Noise is a bit high (I can’t measure it), but it is on par with my 2022 era tower case. I can hear both of them, but it’s bot terrible. I would not recommend it in a recording studio though. The weird bits… First, mini ITX - finding a board with 10GBe and at least 6 SATA ports is challenging. I could find maybe 4 total, but I am sure other options exist. Most ITX boards lack both of those features, and only one or the other can be added via the PCIe slot. I did find one though, and while it mostly works, the network chip on the mobo is not really designed for server use. I seek kernel warnings from TrueNAS regularly, and gave to wonder if it is responsible for the occasional network performance issues I see. I may try another board at some point, but my recommendation is to do your homework - there are not really a lot of options. If you don’t need 10GBe, then you have more of a selection. Overall though, I am quite happy with the case. In fact, I am already thinking about future upgrades, and the N5 case is at the top of my list.

Jay · 2025-07-22 · via amazon

Bought this to build a NAS running Unraid since an 8 bay NAS from Synology was far more expensive than just building my own. It is a small for factor case so if you're not used to building in ITX cases it can be a bit cramped, but more than doable. The manual isn't very helpful when installing the PSU so pay attention to how and when you route the power cable. The only downside of this case I have found are the stock fans. They are super loud so if you have this case on your desk, or in an area in your house you'll hear the fans all the time. The stock fans are 100mm according to Jonsbo. I was able to replace them with a pair of Noctua 92mm fans. They mount just fine and the included fan grills work as well. Using the low noise adapters that come with the Noctua fans they are barely audible. Chances are your HDDs are louder. Max temps I see on the drives are never past 28c, which is ideal! Love this case and as of now if really seems to be best and smallest form factor case that also supports 8 HDDs AND a spot for an SSD cache. Loving the setup and my wallet is happy I went this route instead of the Synology setup I was looking at.

Ryan Tarbutton · 2024-01-20 · via amazon

Finding a SFF case for a DIY NAS isn’t as easy as I thought it’d be when I decided to build my own instead of buying something like a Synology. There are really only a few options and this one was by far the most aesthetic, in my opinion. That said, it took way more planning than any build I’ve attempted in the past. ITX is not ideal for large storage options due to limited SATA ports as well as a single PCI-E slot on the vast majority of ITX motherboards. Because of this, you really need to plan your build around your priorities and be willing to make some sacrifices. For example, I had to really hunt for a motherboard that had onboard 10GBE as well as enough SATA ports for 8 drives to run at full capacity without sacrificing the NVME or PCI-E slots. I found exactly 1 lol. Regardless, once you do nail down your plans, this is a great case that allows you to slam a decently sized GPU and CPU cooler in it without too much hassle (RTX 3050 and Noctua NH-U9S is what I’m running with room to spare). That said, I’m knocking a star off for 2 reasons: 1) I *hate* the rubber handles on the HDD drives. They’re sloppy and loose and make it an absolute chore to get your drives out 2) The PSU you can use is very restrictive. I went with a Corsair SF750 only after realizing the SF850 (which is cheaper and more readily available) was a few mm too long. This is because it’s mounted very oddly in the case that forces you to run an extension cable out the back rather than plugging in directly to the PSU. Consequently, this means you can’t access the power switch directly when the case is buttoned up. It’s pretty annoying when first building and testing but not as bad once you’re ready to set it and forget it. All and all I do recommend this to anyone looking for a good looking SFF NAS. Just be ready for its quirks.

Will & Marianne · 2024-01-29 · via amazon

I'm slightly obsessed with this odd case... I was in the market for many years for a storage dense atx or matx or itx case, I was actually very much trying to find a well build older atx case like an antec that had the old school front hdd mount stack that was commen befor we all went and becase obsessed with putting radiators everywhere and started building graphics cards that are longer than some of our more commen mid tower are long lol, but I apparently have zero luck when it comes to realizing what I need befor there is already a wide demand and I could find an nice antec or equivalent used atx case on the market even as a antiquated full or partial build or I could find any that were appropriately showing the inside of the case, and I'd been eye balling this jonsbo for a while, basicly since it became avalible on Amazon, and yes I had held off for a while because the price, I just assumed it was ur typical pressed sheet metal cheap build that couldn't be water cooled and couldn't bairly be air cooled but has 8x 3.5in bays so we haf to charge and arm an a leg for it... and to be fair to the target market here yes that is what this is so expensive, just go look around at the options and youl see what I'm saying... BUT no this is not just cheap stamped metal it is thick aluminum, I'm sure it's still mostly press formed but wow is it well built, these guys have put together a very compelling product here and knowing what I know now I actually realy love the price for what you get here... just to maybe prove how not full of it I am, I just picked up another one of these just cuz lol, the first one was built out as a very odd build becase I'm insane lol, I put in a am4 asrock pro b550 with a ryzen 7 5700x3d(had a 3600 in it as a temp waiting for this cheaper 5800x3d that was announced last year) and 32gb of ddr4 at 3800mhz and a 4tb m.2 pcie 4.0 nvme ssd for file caching and a simple 500gb sata ssd for the linux install and I put in a dual m.2 pcie 4.0 risser that also passes threw 8x pcie 4.0 lanes to a physical 16x slot and turns a full hight pcie slot into a half height slot(the mounting screws point need to be modified to make this work tho as I found out here, I had no idea after 20years of experience on custem consumer and commercial systems building and servicing that the screw point for the low profile bracket is actualy located on the opposite side as it is on the taller bracket, lol, I can see how I missed that, as why tf would anyone "need" to put a low profile bracket into a full hight slot...) and in that now half hight pcie 4.0 8lane slot I have a low profile rtx 4060 8gb card from gigabyte and on the 2 m.2 slots I have one populated with a m.2 marvel AQC107 10GBps ethernet adapter that works amazingly and in the other slot I haf a m.2 to 6x sata ports adapter to supplement the 4 ports I have on this motherboard, what I did is take 4 of these ports to 4 of my 16tb segate exos helium filled enterprise HDDs and 4 of the ports on this m.2 adapter to the other 4 same drives becase I wanted to build out a array and give myself the best chance of "load balancing" across controler, yes it works fantasticly and the other 2 sata ports on the m.2 are occupied by a esata to sata i/o adapter so I can easly plug in esata devices as needed and the other is used for my target operating system drive, I needed to be able to use pcie bifurcation 8x4x4 and with this board and core I can easly do that, and when that setting isn't set I don't get a booting system so it's kind of self incriminating when it dosnt eventually present itself to the network after remote power up, no kvm necessary lol, I also put in a 850watt true sfx(you can't use sfxl in this case, like I belive you can with the 5bay version, trust me u tried) that systems works so well, I also absolutely do not want my hdd bay fans running at 12v full speed all the time so I paired them with an adapter and ran the non pwm fans to a motherboard fan header so I can controle those via linux depending on the reported temperature of the hdds, and I also added in 2 80mm high quality pwm fans for exhaust and also tucked in another small pwm fan over the m.2 10GB nic to keep it cool, this system works so well I'm absolutely gitty lol, it's not even that powerfull compared to any of my large water cooled gaming rigs BUT I can remote into this "server" from a cheap quad core celeron based few watt mini pc that I also put 10gb nit into and BOOM I'm looking at an aggressively competive linux gaming system without any of noise or heat anywhere near me lol, I build a nice "poor man's swith" into a cheap hp usf system with a quad port 10GBps ethernet adapter also from the marvel product line, I belive its a new in box dell nic I got of ebay for way to cheap and works good enough that I went a purchased another from the seller becase they work much better than all the x540-t2 or t4 or even tbe newer x550 nic iv been testing over the last couple months, and then I was thinking... "I like this case so much, I also have another 8x 8tb HDDs from seagate(I think the are terrascale drives that run fantasticlyrics fast compared to other budget white label drives from them) I also now have a spare cheap sfx non modular psu on hand and I have this spare b450 asrock fatality board that I just pulled from another itx 4bay server that was also equipped with 32gb of ddr4 and has a ryzen 7 4750GE 35watt chip and low profile cooler, and I can get another of those m.2 rissers(why thay are so cheap is beyond me, I only paid $17 each for these for 2 of them now) and the 6ports sata m.2 adapter was only about $30 seriously... so ya I'm going to build another system in this case that is a bit less crazy that will focus on low power consumption and always on functions and will replace or supplement my cheap poor man's 10Gig switch and will also have a substantial amount of local storage but just the basic Vega graphics of that core which is fine becase I will probably run alpine on this "swich/archival target" with only local ssh access and no remote desktop and I will be tuning down everything except the nics to be low power with he help of underclocking and spinning down drives and tunning down fsns... ya I think iv made my point... lol... it's a solid case option, perfect for the homelab or nas, iv also had a flood of my enterprise clients requesting I build them a storage solution in this case so I will likely be aqureing a substantial percentage of the supply of these and who knows how long this maybe limited product will be on the market so if you catch it on sale for the $200 or less regular price point shaped just get it, you wount like how challenging it is to build a complex system in but you will feel away once your done and admiring your wierd acsentric pc lol

theking8713 · 2024-03-01 · via amazon

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