Page 3 - A Closer Look - Hardware (Internal)
As I have discussed on the previous page, disassembling the Thecus N2310 is pretty straightforward. The trick is to remove two screws located on the back panel, as well as two cleverly hidden screws underneath the pair of front rubber feet. Next, pry the panels open, which I did with some nylon pry bars, and we are down to business. Quite a number of plastic clips either bent of broke off completely, which was rather unfortunate, but it does not inhibit the reassembly of the network attached storage system. Again, there is no warranty seal on the unit, so there is nothing stopping you from taking a peek inside to fuel your curiosity. Of course, as always, there are no user serviceable parts inside.
The interior is as simple as it can get. As you can see in our photo above, the hard drive rack doubles as a sort of metal frame to give the system a bit more substance. The SATA backplane is connected to the motherboard perpendicularly; where the latter can easily be removed from the chassis by some careful hand coordination work. Surprisingly, there are no heatsinks inside the Thecus N2310. In the center of it all is an AppliedMicro APM86491-SKB800T 800MHz system on a chip. This SoC is based on a single PowerPC 465 processing core featuring 32KB L1 I-cache, 32KB D-cache, and 256 KB L2 cache that consumes as little as 2.5W, rendering the use of a heatsink quite unnecessary. This SoC has native support for two USB 3.0, two PCIe 2.0, two SATA 3Gb/s, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports. Two Samsung K4B2G1646E-BCK0 are soldered on the PCB for 512MB of DDR3 RAM. A Micron MT29F2G08ABBEAH4 256MB SLC flash memory chip stores the onboard operating system. Lastly, the N2310's lone Gigabit LAN port is powered by a Realtek RTL8211E IC.
There is nothing much interesting going on at the back of the Thecus N2310's motherboard, other than a CR1220 battery, if you count that as interesting. Therefore, I removed the lone fan at the back of the NAS to find out who manufactured it, as well as any relevant information derived from the model. After removing four plastic pegs, the fan is revealed to be an ADDA AG06012DB159000. The ADDA AG06012DB159000 is a 60mm ball bearing fan rated at 12V 0.06A. The motor noise is quite prominent, making the N2310's noise profile to be quite annoying during operation as I have mentioned on the previous page.
The power supply is an external brick manufactured by Channel Well Technology. The CWT KPL-040F is a 12V power supply specified for up to 3.33A of current. This means it can deliver a maximum of 40W. As far as efficiency is concerned, it is "V" rated. To skip over all the nitty gritty compliance details of this technical specification, the basic gist of it is it has to be at least 87% efficient in given conditions. CWT rates it as 85.3% efficient.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware (External)
3. A Closer Look - Hardware (Internal)
4. Configuration and User Interface, Part I
5. Configuration and User Interface, Part II
6. Configuration and User Interface, Part III
7. Performance and Power Consumption
8. Conclusion
