SilverStone CS382 Micro-ATX NAS Chassis Review

With the side panels removed we can get a look inside the SilverStone C382 and, for the most part it looks like any other PC chassis with several notable differences.

Before the dark times, when external drive bays were removed, we had three major zones inside a PC case.  The main zone held the motherboard, expansion cards and cooler.  The power zone held the power supply and cables required to run the PC.  Finally, the storage zone was an area at the front of the case that held the external drive bays for optical drives, extra hard drives, and bay devices.  It also held the drive racks for 3.5” hard drives, cooling fans and sometimes a PC speaker. 

When external bays fell out of favor, many case makers simply removed the hardware required to support these devices and left it as open space.  Enthusiasts can case modders often repurpose this location for watercooling gear while I hold the opinion that it is just left open because nobody knows what to do with it.

On the SilverStone CS382 NAS Chassis we have a major call back to how things were done with two separate four drive hot-swap racks, the single external 5.25” drive bay along with another storage location under the hot-swap racks.

As with most modern computer cases you are given plenty of room behind the motherboard tray for cable routing.  At the top you’ll find two 2.5” SSD trays while below is a HUGE opening for heatsink access and full access to the Slimline drive placement.

PSU is located under a basement panel at the bottom of the case providing a visual and physical separation of space between the power and main sections of the case.

 Primary cooling is handled by a very large opening at the top of the case that can support up to two 140mm case fans.  A 280mm radiator is supported however, given the proximity to the expansion slots it may limit the selection of cards you can install.

For those of you who have not seen a proper hot-swap system, you are in luck.  The SilverStone CS382 has two located at the front of the case and are nothing more than a cage to hold the removable drive trays and a backplane to link everything together.

The interface to the bay consists of four SAS / SATA cables along with a single SATA and Molex power connection.  These are the physical connections that remain while the storage drives can be freely removed when needed.  The Hot-Swap nature allows you to remove these without powering down the computer and without opening it up.

Cooling for the rack is handled by a single SilverStone slim 92mm fan which is driven by the power from the backplane.