I turned an old NAS into a SLEEPER home server

'While it technically works' pretty much describes my home lab setup...

I really appreciate your enthusiasm and drive when it comes to projects like these. There is something nice and calm about your presentation and explanation - which means this is one of the very few YouTube channels that I do not run at 1.25 speed. Thanks!

This may be a fire hazard but it's pretty common on this channel inmediatly subs

Behind the scenes, hardware haven style, We can still use the nas, until it becomes a bonfire

Nice video, love reusing stuff like this myself. On the front PCB, come across this sort of thing often. What I've found works more often than not.... Find the traces to those LEDs you want to use. Cut them somewhere convenient and just solder on your own wires to power them.... do similar for the USB if you got some old headers. For power.... wall wart with molex ends always served my needs for 120VAC to 12/5vdc. Crack them open and take the PCB(s). Wire the 120VAC lines together and add all that safely into the shell of the original powersupply or 3D print an enclosure. Could add a 19 volt supply internally and pass a cable for the MOBO out the back so your only plugging in one 120volt end. Also add an internal SSD for OS since that M.2 has room.

when you upload the day instantly gets even better

time to get in on that PCBway sponsor money and create a new front panel that slots in where the old one was with all the same LED/button placements, maybe with RGB leds for the meme

With this 6 port M.2 SATA adapter you could squeeze in an additional SATA SSD (zip tie, tape, velcro) as an OS drive, power would need an adiitional Y-adapter.

Nicely done! I didn't know that little backplane header also had a +5V rail. I'm going to re-do mine to be more like yours now. I janked up mine so long ago there wasn't much DIY posting about it yet, so I had to decode the pinouts myself and missed that -- I ran jumper wires from the MB's USB header +5V, but your way is better since it doesn't need wires in the system. Some of my panel decoding that might help you... - HDD LED: On the longer front panel connector, the green wire between blue and yellow is +3.3V for HDD LED, and orange and red at far end of connector (not orange and red pair in middle) are both ground. - Power LED: Blue wire next to above mentioned green lights up the power LED, but the original MB feeds +5V on that lead so it must be meant to power more than just the LED. Connect at your own risk as the circuit might be trying to draw more than 3V3 and could burn out the MB's LED header. - Front USB: On the shorter front panel connector, find the side with all 5 wires populated, they are standard USB2 connections, in order: black = s-ground, black = ground, green = data+, white = data-, red = +5V. S-gnd is not necessary to connect, but can be more stable connection with higher speed devices (USB2 "high speeds", that is).

i feel like the purpose of the proprietary connector to the motherboard is if it detects that moment within the past 5 mins is to Cut off power when its idle and save power when not in use and enables it when there is background network access

As shown on other channels / blogs the Asrock DC motherboard accepts anything between 12v and 19v so: - A laptop power supply will work - A 12 + other voltages will work fine too (with a slightly higher current then for 19v) The slightly higher current for 12v will not be a problem if the 12v for the drives does not need to pass through the motherboard but goes directly from the power supply to the backplane. Good luck.

I love simple, quick videos like this where everything goes right on the first try! Keep em comin'!

It seems to have been a pain in the butt, that said it's actually usable for any number of things now which is pretty incredible. This is the kind of project that makes this channel a must see. Thank you!

From what I know there are 2 versions of that ITX board 1 using a barrel jack 1 using the standard 24 pin

You could easily add your own LED's for any of the motherboard's functions, and wire it yourself. Just place the LED's under the front panel. Boom.

5:32 Pop the pins by sticking something flat & strong in those tabs by the wire side of the connectors. You can see the terminals on both connectors at the timestamp. Then you can swap them. Try one from the new harness on the MB pin just to check the fit. Then check for fit in proprietary connector. If good, swap one by one to maintain the correct pinout. They do sell crimp tools & terminals for different sizes and conmectors. Good thing is that there are certain ones that'll work well for you computers, cars, and other things. You can save soooo much money and time from broken wires. My brother could've did that fixing a Lexus. Whole problem was a bad factory crimp job on the camshaft sensor wires and vibration broke the wires. He only found that out after the parts & labor. New connector with longer wires to splice, $9 with tax. Heatshrink already on deck.

4:33 unlocks the true performance, must do. at 7:55 If you really want to you can cut all the traces then solder directly to the switches and LED to the standard headers

This is great. I updated one of these just a few months ago which has been hanging around actually since it launched but didn't use components with enough oomph. It's still around, though, and maybe it CAN be improved...

My Coral TPU works great in the A+E key slot formerly occupied by the WiFi/BT card on my N100 based GMKtec G3.

nicely done! :) used to have one of these and really liked it. eventually moved to the HPE microservers (N36, N40, and N54) for several years. amazing how much expansion they offered. if i recall people were kitting them with 10+ drives via the optical drive bay and eSATA port. i think someone managed a 16 drive build. Good times! :)