I 3D Printed My Own Home Server – 6 Bay ZimaBoard NAS

sponsored by NordVPN. I got tired of juggling these small SSDs for my backups, and I knew I needed a better solution eventually. But first, I wanted to experiment with this low power single board computer called the Zema board. I'm pairing it with a bunch of secondhand drives I had lying around to create a compact home server. Something like a Synology NAS, but fully 3D printed. In this video, I'll show you how I designed and built this custom six bay enclosure and his power adapter PCB from scratch. Let's get started. Before jumping into the design, let's define few goals to keep the scope manageable. I plan to fully 3D print the enclosure, but I don't want to deal with slicing and glowing parts. So, I'll try to design everything to fit in a standard printer bed in one piece. I currently have four or five drives for this project, but I'd like to leave room to add more later. Also, swapping drives with bunch of screws sounds tedious, so I want to explore some sort of a toolless mechanism like the ones found in a real commercial NAS. One thing I found annoying about the ZMA board is it doesn't have a power button. You either have to initiate shutdown from the OS you're running or simply yank the cable. So, we'll make sure to add one in this build. If you're wondering about the specs of the Zema board, I'll be using the 832 variant with the Intel quadcore Celeron and 8 gigs of RAM, which is somewhat comparable to what you'd find in some entry-level NAS devices. Full disclosure, this one was sent to me for free by Icewell, but this is not a review, and I was planning to use one for this project. Anyway, next up, power. The Zema board ships with a 12vt 3 amp adapter, which is enough for the board and two hard drives. They even make these custom cables to power them both from the middle connector. But since we want to support four or more drives, we'll definitely need another way to power the entire system. There are several options for NAS software, and the Zema board conveniently comes pre-installed with one of them, Casa OS. It's a simple user-friendly way to set up file storage and self-host few services using Docker. A popular projects to start with is hosting your own VPN server. While that lets you securely remote into your network, it doesn't cover your outbound internet traffic. And that's where today's sponsor, NodeVPN, comes in. I've been using NodeVPN for years, well before they sponsored this video. I run the app on most of my daily devices, so whether I'm home or on the go, connecting securely take just one tap. They have thousands of servers around the world to encrypt your internet traffic and easily access your favorite g- restricted content. More recently, I've started routing entire network segments like my untrusted IoT devices through a NordVPN client directly on my router. That way, even when they report back to the mothership, their traffic is at least encrypted and my public IP stay hidden from any sketchy vendors. Another thing I appreciate about Nord is they claim to follow a strict no log policy, which means they don't track, collect, or share your private data. Right now, you can get a huge discount on the 2-year plan, plus an extra 4 months for free by heading to nordvpn.com/salem. This is the best deal currently available online and is completely risk-free with a 30-day money back guarantee. Again, that's nordvpn.com/salem or click in the link down below. Now, let's jump back into Fusion and get started on the design. The first thing I started working on was the drive Gaddy. I referenced the generic hard drive data sheet to make sure I have the correct dimensions and spacing for the mounting holes. Usually, you'd secure the drives with screws from the sides, but since this is 3D printed, I designed small nubs that will simply cach into the holes, and I left the option to use screws on the bottom, of course. Each of the caddies slice into a dedicated channel. To ensure drives don't accidentally pop out, I added two flexible ears with small locating feature on each end. I also offset the sliding guide a bit offc center, making it easier to naturally align the drives when inserting them. Typically on a commercial NAS, you would find the back plane with integrated connectors, but that's not something I can replicate for this build. Instead, I opted for a simpler solution using these SATA couplers at the back and precisely aligned them so that the drive can dock directly. If you're wondering about these six holes, that's how I'll pull together the entire drive cage using sixth threaded rods secured with bolts. Before moving on, I did few tests to tweak the spacing. Once I was confident in that, I added the drive covers, which used the threaded rod as rotational axis and magnets to hold them open. I then duplicated a few units and started building the main enclosure. I think six rays is a good start and that's the most we can fit in the boundary we set before. Stacking them closely together will build up heat. So, I included separators between the drives and kept the sides partially open to allow some air flow and better cooling. Speaking of cooling, I'll be using two of these 80 mm knockoff fans to force air through the gaps behind the drives and keep them cool. I extruded a base below the drive cage to get a sense of the remaining space we have for the rest of the components. I then added two smaller 40mm exhaust fan and this eliminated power button to the front. To complete the enclosure structure, we're using two plates and a set of braces to contain the drive cage assembly and the base. I'll add more mounting points and finer details later, but for now, let's tackle a more immediate concern, powering the entire system. Here's what I've had to account for so far. The Zema board draws between 6 watts at idle and up to 16 watts under load. Four cooling fans at another 4 watts at most. And for the six base, power requirements depend significantly on whether we use 3 and 1/2 in drives or 2 and 1/2 in SSDs. A worst case scenario would be with six three and a half hard drives means roughly 72 watts on the 12volt rail and about 25 watts on the 5vt rail. On the other hand, six SSDs will only need about 50 watts on the 5V rail alone. So I need a power supply that can provide at least 10 amps each on the 12vt and 5V rails. After a quick search on Amazon, I found a cheap multi output power supply typically used in arcade machines. According to the description in the product label, it can deliver 12 amps at 12vt, 10 amps at 5 volt, and has a 24vt rail that we want to use. I decided to go with it, a decision that I later regretted, but let's stick with it for now. Another issue I had to account for is controlling the power rails. See, a regular motherboard shares a few signals with the ATX power supply to verify that outputs are okay and to turn on and off the power for the rest of the system. This setup doesn't have that, meaning everything will stay on even after shutting down the Zema board. I checked the documentation and found two unused IO headers with a common header pitch. Apparently, they can handle power in and give you access to a power switch and other pins. My plan was to design a custom adapter PCB to distribute power from the power supply and use one of these, likely the LED signal, to switch power for both the drives and cooling fans. However, soldering the headers on the Zema board quickly became a nightmare. The pads were already fluttered with solder, and the holes were way too small. This made seating the connectors pretty difficult. I've tried with solder wick, hot air, and different techniques, but I only could get them to go halfway and had to stop in fear of damaging the pads. Heads up, if you ever attempt this yourself, it's not a pleasant experience at all. Despite the struggle, the pins made good contact and I connected a simple push button and confirmed that the power button worked and the LED pin signal pulled high when the Zema board powered up and went back to ground when it shut down. Now, I just need some sort of electronic switch. Normally a simple lowside switch with an end channel MOSFET would do the trick. But since we're dealing with hard drives and logic boards, I didn't want to disconnect the ground only. So instead, I put together the circuit with two pitch channel MOSFETs for high-side switching and two transistors that pull the gauge to ground when the LD goes high, turning power on and off based on the state of that pin. To complete the adapter board, I added few connectors for the cooling fans. Molex connectors display power for the drives and fuses on each rail for good measure. I'll order these PCBs with thicker 2oz copper to improve current capabilities and heat dissipation for the MOSFETs. These headers should align with those I soldered on the ZMA board previously. I've also broken out a connector for the front power button. With that done, I can send the design off to our friends at PCB Way and work on the rest of the enclosure. After placing the power supply, I just had enough space to fit the Zema board next to it. But since the Zema board only has two set of ports and we want to connect up to six drives, I will be using this PCIe expansion card and a 90° riser cable. Although the parts were modeled as solid, I plan to use a slicer trick by removing the top and bottom walls and tweaking infill settings to print them as meshes and allow air to flow through them. For the drive cage and some structural parts, I was worried about the heat buildup, so I picked this glass fiber reinforced ABS from Bamboo Lab. It's rated for high heat resistant up to 99° and seemed easier to print compared to regular ABS. For the external parts, like the drive covers and mesh panels, I went with regular black PETG. I prepared all the print plates, arranging the different parts, some of which will need multiple batches, and started to send them one by one to the printer. [Music] Aside from a slight layer shift on the base piece, which was totally my fault, printing went smoothly. Overall, after a few days, I had these two piles of parts ready for assembly. The only cleanup needed was removing the brim on the ABS pieces, which I quickly did using these diver tool on all the edges. With the parts cleaned up, I moved on installing all the heated inserts. To keep things simple and organized, I used mostly M3 fasteners for the whole project. In the meantime, the adapter PCB arrived. So, I started assembling the electronics with the SMD components. [Music] After that, I added the wire terminals, fuses, and two power connector. And it was time to test the circuit. [Music] I was skeptical about the cheap power supply, so I brought this electronic load tester to see if it actually can deliver what's claimed on the label. After crimping a few wires, I used a multimeter to confirm the voltages are actually okay without any load and started testing. On the 5V side, I gradually increased the load and managed to get closer to the 10 amps as claimed. Although there was some voltage sag, it wasn't as bad as indicated on the tester. Checking with the thermal camera, the MOSFET and surrounding copper stayed cool enough, which was also reassuring. Unfortunately, testing the 12VT rail didn't go as smoothly. As soon as I creeped around 7 1/2 amps, the voltage sagged significantly and the fuse exploded. I was able to get a replacement from Amazon, but was pretty certain that I encountered the same issue again. So, I didn't bother testing, but I will be mindful of the total load in the system. Moving forward, I added the remaining throughhole connectors, but then discovered that I made another stupid mistake. I used the same connectors to those on the splitters instead of the maiden ones. Luckily, I can fix this with a few of these from Djiki that I ordered with the right housing this time. I will be making two small jumpers to bridge between the PCB connector and the power splitters. I tried to find alternative connector that I could solder directly on the PCB, but it seems that those aren't very common, so the jumper will do the trick for now. It's time to assemble everything. Starting from the base, I mounted two small exhaust fans at the front, secured the power supply, and shortened the cables I used for testing for a cleaner fit. I also extended the power button wires using some Dupon jumpers and plugged them into the right angle header. Before adding the drives, I did a quick power on test with the Zema board to verify everything was functioning. [Music] Next, I connected three drives using the Molex splitters and tested the SATA expansion cards to confirm that the drives appeared properly in Kaza West. Curious about the power consumption, I added a four drive and monitored the system using a power meter. These 7,000 RPM drives are quite power hungry. They pull around 160 W during initial spin up before settling down around 45 W. If you're planning on using something similar, you definitely want to upgrade that power supply. I think I'll stick to using three or four of these mechanical drives and fill the remaining bays with SSDs to keep the power demands manageable. Next, I moved on to assembling the drive cage. Starting by styling all the SATA couplers into the drive slots. Depending on the print tolerances and the threaded rods you'll get, you might need to slightly enlarge the six holes for a smaller assembly. I began with one of the plates using nylon washers for spacing in the advanced the rods one at a time. [Music] [Music] I also glued magnets intended to hold the drive covers open, but later realized that the friction from the bolts and nylon washer alone was enough to keep them open. Finally, I combined the drive cage and the base, carefully managing cables in the less accessible spots before sliding the cage on top and securing it with the M3 screws on both sides. [Music] At this point, I plugged all the drive bays, installed the final back plates in the two fans, and check the temperature once more with the thermal camera. All remained was adding the mesh panels to the side and front and the assembly was complete. Here is the final result. [Music] This was a fun experiment to build and I'm happy with how it turned out. Of course, there is plenty of possible improvements and several mistakes that I made, but like with most of these projects, it's more about the process, and I really hope you found something useful in it. I'm planning on keeping this as a redundant backup and to test few self-hosted services. If you're interested in the performance of this kind of setup, there are a lot of cool HomeLab channels that cover this extensively. I'll link some of them down below. And if you're planning to build something similar, I highly recommend you upgrade the power supply or keep in check your total power requirements. As always, all the files and build instructions will be linked down below. Thanks again to NodeVPN for making this video possible, and thank you for watching. I will see you in the next one. [Music]

🌏 Get exclusive NordVPN deal here ➵ https://NordVPN.com/salim It’s risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!✌ I was juggling too many small SSDs for backups, so I set out to build something more permanent. In this video, I walk you through the design and build of a custom NAS powered by the ZimaBoard — complete with a custom power adapter PCB and tool less drive trays. 👋 Follow me: https://linktr.ee/salimbenbouz ⚡️ Project links: Github: https://github.com/sb-ocr/3d-printed-nas Instructables: https://bit.ly/4jV0ovS 🔗 Channels mentioned https://www.youtube.com/c/HardwareHaven https://www.youtube.com/@TechnoTim _______________________ ⚙️ Bambu Lab 3D Printers: Bambu Lab A1 https://bit.ly/4gwNFhK Bambu Lab P1S-Combo https://bit.ly/3VW4QBg Bambu Lab X1-Carbon https://bit.ly/3VTKfxx Bambu Filaments https://bit.ly/41RpVRe 🖥️ Desk gear: Grovemade Premium Desk Accessories 🍃 Get 10% off using code SALIM10 → https://bit.ly/grovemade-accessories 🛠 Tools: Autodesk Fusion 360: https://bit.ly/49dQyQN Soldering station: https://geni.us/16zcw5 iFixit Driver Kit: https://geni.us/pE8dvKd Magnetic Helping Hand: https://geni.us/qmbA3W Digital Microscope: https://geni.us/OvfXE Oscilloscope: https://geni.us/rHzAS8 🎬Video gear: Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC Art Lens: https://geni.us/43RyE 90cm Octagonal Softbox: https://geni.us/tXzLg2U Motorized Camera Slider: https://geni.us/CKpHVYp Aputure Amaran 100D Light: https://geni.us/DitmF6 Aputure Amaran PT1C Tube Light: https://geni.us/zcYT Heavy Duty Light Stand with Casters: https://geni.us/W3aZy4Z RØDE VideoMic GO II Microphone: https://geni.us/3gEQb4 RØDE Wireless GO II Microphones: https://geni.us/HTWPS 🎧 Music: Epidemic Sound https://share.epidemicsound.com/cp32b6 _______________________ 00:00 Intro 00:30 Design Goals and Features 02:55 Enclosure Design 04:45 Power Adapter PCB 07:50 3D printing 09:30 Electronics 11:50 Assembly 15:18 Outro Affiliate links may be included in this page. I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. #diy #homelab #3dprinting #nas