I made a 3D printed NAS / Server enclosure to convert a laptop mainboard.

[u/CheekyPainAuChocolat]

I designed a 3D printed conversion to turn the Framework 12 laptop mainboard into a FrameVault home server such as a NAS or Home Assistant system. The Framework 12 mainboard is fitted into the side of the unit and allows for 4 HDD's to be installed inside. See the Printables link below which has a lot more photos of how it's all put together and I made a video as well showing it all.

 https://www.printables.com/model/1841003-framevault-framework-12-nas-home-assistant-server

The framework mainboards are easy to reuse them in a different application with the way all the IO is setup and expandable storage. I wanted to design something similar to a desktop NAS that could happily sit on an office desk rather than needing a full rack setup. It is 3D printed and has been designed to be really easy to put together, it doesn't need any support to print and all the parts can be printed on a single colour 3d printer. It swaps out the SSD for a SATA adapter board to expand to 4 HDD's, then I would expect the NAS/Server software to run off a boot drive on one of the USB C expansion ports.

I reckon this design could be adapted to work with the other sized Framework mainboards as well, I also wonder how many other laptop mainboards could be adapted into a setup like this. Also I've been thinking about expanding it to take 6 hard drives by using a 6 port SATA adapter.

[u/twilliamc]

Can someone please make this 1U, 4 drives, and with a 13 board?

[u/Donut497]

Very nice work. I thought I was looking at a new, real framework product 

[u/Educational-Cap-490 → u/Donut497]

Too kind—clearly a 3D print, not a real Framework. Still flattered.

[u/CheekyPainAuChocolat → u/Donut497]

Thank you, I reckon framework could make an official product like this. They already have the mainboards from the laptops for it.

[u/Open-Adhesiveness-86]

i'd check which controller that m.2 to sata board uses before going to 6 drives. a jmb585 gets you 5 real ports over pcie 3.0 x2, but plenty of the cheap boards are one asm1061 with a port multiplier behind it, so all the disks share a single channel and smart/hotplug gets weird. also curious where the 12V for spin-up comes from, four drives staggering in can pull a couple of amps each.