Jonsbo N3 vs Fractal Design Node 804 NAS Case - Which Should You Buy?

Jonsbo vs Fractal Design Node NAS Case - nascompares.com/guide/jonsbo-...
Jonsbo N2 vs N3 NAS Case - Get It Right First Time! nascompares.com/guide/jonsbo-...
Jonsbo N2 Case ￡74.04 (Ali) - amzn.to/3Z3f3Mu
Fractal Design Node 304 (Amz) - amzn.to/4756gN0
Jonsbo N2 - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DD9...
Recommended Jonsbo N3 NAS Builds For $300 - $500 - $1000+ nascompares.com/guide/recomme...
nascompares.com/2023/09/08/to...
I Built the Jonsbo N2 NAS - • I Built the Jonsbo N2 ...
Jonsbo N2 NAS Build Complete Guide UnRAID/TrueNAS - nascompares.com/2023/09/01/jo...
Jonsbo N2 NAS Case Review - Still The Best? nascompares.com/review/jonsbo...
Amazon:
Jonsbo N2 Build for Under/Around £250
Jonsbo N2 + TopTon Intel n5105 Celeron / Pentium n6005 Build (+$35)
Jonsbo N2 Case ￡74.04 (Ali) - amzn.to/3Z3f3Mu
Topton N5105 + 128GB NVMe + 4GB RAM ￡193.48 - amzn.to/47ZibNw
SATA 6 Connector ￡4.19 - amzn.to/3ZbYGNJ
400W SFX PSU ￡24.36 - amzn.to/3qQRzxG
￡264.64 (128GB M.2 NVMe + 4GB RAM + 400W PSU)
Aliexpress links
Jonsbo N2 - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DD9...
Topton N5105/N6005+4GB - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DCl...
SATA x6 Cable - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DeD...
400W SFX PSU - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Dk3...
300W PSU - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Dmu...
--
Jonsbo N2 Build for Under £500
Jonsbo N2 + Intel Core i5 12th Gen + 16GB RAM + 10GbE Build
Jonsbo N2 Case ￡74.04 (Ali) - amzn.to/3Z3f3Mu
SATA 6 Connector ￡4.19 - amzn.to/3ZbYGNJ
400W SFX PSU ￡24.36 - amzn.to/3qQRzxG
B660M ITX Motherboard £235.79 + Intel Core i5 12490F CPU + 16GB RAM - amzn.to/3LatkS2
ARGB CPU Radiator Fan (LGA1700) ￡13.38 - amzn.to/3sLPy6c
(better option for CPU Fan) Noctua NH-L9x65 CPU Cooler £49 - amzn.to/3EqsLjd
X540-T2 Intel Chipset PCIe x8 Dual Copper RJ45 10Gbps ￡39.34 - amzn.to/3Z3GSUU
Tbkoly Controller Card Motherboard Expansion Card 1 To 5 Port SATA £20.45 - amzn.to/3P8F3RV
(Optional) 2x M.2 NVMe PCIe 4 X 8 Card GLOTRENDS Dual M.2 PCIe 4.0 - amzn.to/3ZaeEbk
Total 390.44 (i5 CPU + 16GB RAM + 2x10GbE + 400W PSU + Case + Cables)
Aliexpress Links
Jonsbo N2 - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DD9...
SATA x6 Cable - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DeD...
400W SFX PSU - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Dk3...
Mobo+Intel i5-12490F+16GB - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DCM...
Cheaper CPU Fan - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Dd9...
Better CPU Fan - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Dk1...
2x M.2 NVMe Card - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DmF...
---
Best Jonsbo N2 Build for £750-1000
Jonsbo N2 + Gen4/5 MoBo + Intel Core i5 12th Gen with Int Gfx + 32GB RAM + 10GbE Build
Jonsbo N2 Case ￡74.04 (Ali) - amzn.to/3Z3f3Mu
SATA 6 Connector ￡4.19 - amzn.to/3ZbYGNJ
600W SFX PSU ￡43.78 - amzn.to/3sMaf1P
Asrock Z690M-ITX/AX gEN 4/5 Motherboard £171.20 - amzn.to/3EMpjQ9
Intel Core i5-12600K 12th Gen £239 - amzn.to/45UtNiQ
Corsair VENGEANCE LPX DDR4 RAM 32GB (2x16GB) £59.99 - amzn.to/45CB2fV
ARGB CPU Radiator Fan (LGA1700) ￡13.38 - amzn.to/3sLPy6c
(better option for CPU Fan) Noctua NH-L9x65 CPU Cooler £49 - amzn.to/3EqsLjd
X540-T2 Intel Chipset PCIe x8 Dual Copper RJ45 10Gbps ￡39.34 - amzn.to/3Z3GSUU
Tbkoly Controller Card Motherboard Expansion Card 1 To 5 Port SATA £20.45 - amzn.to/3P8F3RV
(Optional) 2x M.2 NVMe PCIe 4 X 8 Card GLOTRENDS Dual M.2 PCIe 4.0 - amzn.to/3ZaeEbk
Total £586.63 (Amazon) + ￡123.51 (Aliexpress)
AliExpress Links
Jonsbo N2 - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DD9...
SATA x6 Cable - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DeD...
Cheaper CPU Fan - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Dd9...
Better CPU Fan - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Dk1...
2x M.2 NVMe Card - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DmF...
600W SFX PSU - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DFm...
H610 mini itx Motherboard - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DlX...
i5-12600K CPU - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DkQ...
Corsair 16GB Memory - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DlY...
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Video Chapters
00:00 - The Start
01:30 - The N2 vs N3 Price and Availability
02:13 - 8 vs 5
04:07 - LEDs
05:12 - Vibration and Specific Case Design
06:53 - Fans and Ventilation
10:46 - THAT PSU placement
13:47 - Bigger and Better CPU Possibilities
16:02 - Bigger and Better PCIe Cards
Thinking of buying a product mentioned in today's video? If this video has helped you make that decision, you can use the links and we will get a small % profit of whatever you buy.

[@ApxuBbI]

Curious if Fractal is cooking something new for NAS case. Would be great.

[@enrimich64]

Honestly, M-ATX support made the choice obvious for me, plenty of space to turn it in a different direction at a later time.

[@hatti.mueller]

Exactly the comparison I was looking for and I got all the information I needed. Thank you for this video.

[@Doogin21]

I was just looking into this! Thanks for posting

[@vollhorst140]

Nice video! Thank you. A small corrections here on the node 804. technically it has 10 mounting options for 3,5" drives and additional 2 for 2,5" drives. Personally, i would judge these cases similar. If you want convenience and 8 3,5" is want you need, the N3 is the better choice. Its a really neat case! If you need more Storage, more network, more compute power the 804 is the better choice. You can stuff in the 804 10x3,5", 2x2,5" drives and stuff at least additional 5x2,5" sata ssd in the space under the first HDD carrier (its a mess inside but possible ). Furthermore 4 pcie slots to play with and massice cpu coolers. Its case for more hands on people.

[@DougCuthbertson]

Thanks. That was a great review. I subscribed. You nailed the use cases when you said the Node 804 is more of a sandbox environment, while the N3 is focused on storage. I can really see the appeal of having a backplane for hot swapping drives. Nevertheless, my priority is learning how to use TrueNAS as a backup storage server and hopefully a media server. I recently completed a NAS build in my 804. I'm glad it supports mATX motherboards. It didn't take long to discover that TrueNAS Core didn't recognize/support the built-in Realtek NIC, so I had to add an Intel 82575/82576 ethernet adapter. I also added an LSI Logic SAS 9207-8i adapter with a couple of SAS-to-SATA breakout cables to make wiring a little simpler. I'm also probably overly concerned with cooling. I added a couple of Artic BioniX 120 mm fans just to be sure enough air is pumped into the case. The 804 and the mATX motherboard made these changes easy.

[@lamar9525]

NICE! Great comparison!

[@diablobarcelona]

Thank you for (again) for an amazing quality review. Ordered my N3 this evening and it will arrive in 3 years and 5 months ... PMSL... seriously it's arriving in May IIRC... fingers crossed it'll be here well before that.. 119€ from China.

[@RichardHamblen]

I have the 804 and have the N3 on order... they serve different uses. The N3 replaces my HP microservers Gen8 which supported 4 drives. Similar footprint and I support 8 drives and I can run a few docker apps to support home automation. The 804 is my workhorse app server, so it has a data centre card and a high end graphics card, so it is a child for syncing storage, but the parent for high end apps such as facial recognition and ANPR for security cameras, Need more space and more cooling for different use. love them both but recognise they are for different uses.

[@sashag1547]

This is helpful thanks. These are the 2 I landed on for my upgrade from the n1. While the n1 was great, 5 hdd's just didn't go as far as I was expecting. Pretty ready to add a few more. It's either upgrade case or add external via hba card. Sadly that seems to cost 2x for 8 bays and a psu.

[@KayJay01]

I would love to see a Jonsbo N4 that's just slightly larger with support for m-atx motherboards and ATX PSUs. Would be the perfect NAS case IMO.

[@ericli8534]

N4 doesn't support 8 3.5 HDD, only 6 3.5 plus 2 2.5HDD.

[@KayJay01]

@@ericli8534 Well that’s a pretty big step back. Wtf are they doing? Let’s hope they do an N5 that doesn’t take steps backwards..

[@greatwavefan397]

That Fractal Design case is big!

[@blackcoffee3323]

Hi, also you could check Thermaltake Core v1, it is cheaper but has good 200m fan and same shape as fractal node (more mini atx PC than NAS)

[@isrnick]

If you are going to use a Fractal Design case for a NAS I prefer the Define line of cases over the Node line, you can use cases like the Define R5, R6, 7, or 7 XL, and all of them have individual drive trays, though there isn't a backplate, but at least you can hot swap individual drives relatively easily.

[@kleash]

Node looks hella sexy though.

[@esunisen3862]

One big difference is that the 804 can fit a 240mm AND a 280mm radiators at the same time, but only if you remove the 3.5" drive cages. And you still keep the possibility to have 4x120mm fans at the front at the same time. Watercooling the N3 may be possible but not without modding the case.

[@patrickcennon5617]

Thanks!

[@nascompares]

You sir, are a gentleman! Currently fighting a losing battle vs black Friday (making videos and articles for the channel) and feeling pretty wiped out...but seeing a notification that you went out your way to donate and support a content creator is MASSIVELY appreciated!!!!! You have yourself a fantastic weekend mate!

[@markwoll]

My build in the N3 has been going for about a month. I have a similar cpu cooler to what you show. I added two 80mm fans to the back of the case( they are external PWM fans ). Cooling has not been an issue. Drive and cpu temps have been very reasonable ( Ryzen 5800x ). Noise wise, the 8 enterprise 16tb drives are louder than the fans. I'm pretty happy with the size of the case, which was one of the decisions drivers.

[@Nick85]

What was your solution for attaching 8 drives to an ITX board?

[@markwoll]

@@Nick85 The MB is an AsRock rack x570d4i-2t. 2 Oculink connectors. The OCulink cables are 4 drives per. One came with the MB and I had to order the other. For spinning drives it works well enough in Truenas scale.

[@Nick85]

@@markwoll I've yet to learn about OCulink connectors. Thanks for the reply! I've got something new to figure out now :)

[@thestreamreader]

i was gonna get that MB but only supports 1 m.2 so cant do dual nvme. i currently have asrock z690m. i have also been trying to have dual nvme cache drives, 10 gb nice, and load 8 drives and a sata boot drive for proxmox. I have been a month as well trying to figure this out. I just reached out to a company in California that makes custom risers for pcie to take x16 to 2 - x8. I am waiting to hear back from them. I am so disappointed in this case overall anyone wanting to really fill the 8 bays has to do some real study and possibly overspend on MB. Its hard when trying to get 10 gbit and trying to fully populate this fully. I wish he would cover how to populate this with 8 drives and 10 gbE.

[@xiingli]

Are there any upcoming cases to wait for? Both of these have really crappy compromises that makes me want to get a synology.

[@Levelupeachday]

are there any 3d printed solutions for the front pannel drive bay? If not that might be a good project.

[@danagoyette7932]

If you want to really show just how big those cases are, I'd suggest including a few common objects such as soda cans in the shot. You could even show it in terms of N soda cans stacked in a given dimension.

[@Oracleman1]

I think you should have a look at the Kolink Sattelite Cube Mini-ITX case, It's a very cheap and really nice case with good ventilation. It can hold 3 HD's by default but with a couple of Phantek PH-HDDKT_03 you can easily fit 5 HDD's. And of course 2 NVME's on the ITX motherboard ;-)

[@turkeyphant]

You need to compare these to the 9-bay aliexpress case!

[@patrickcennon5617]

Node 804 also has a couple of mounts for ssd’s inside the front cover Had for 6 years now use as my main PC as I have purchased a ts-453Be, ts-1277 and a tvs-h1688x since You can never have too many backups‼️

[@Gamer_1745]

When will we get a Jonsbo N3 build video?

[@YTBossSC]

I don't want to seem like a hater, I enjoy your videos. That being said, I have to pause to read when you post any text. The white text the size and just HARD TO READ as the video is playing

[@IatFaiLeong]

I would pick Silverstone CS381 with 8-bay hot swap HDD. It may be bigger than the N3, but it supports micro-ATX and SAS hard drive.

[@marcosv8426]

@jpk6916 Silverstone CS382 costs $250 on Amazon; only $106 more than the Node 804.

[@rainerzufahl]

Could you please confirm the type of backplate on the jonsbo? The official website and every listing displays it as SAS only, but you said SATA in this video. Which is it?

[@brianhecimovich4488]

As far as I know, SAS is backwards comparable with SATA, but SATA ports cannot handle SAS drives…

[@TheLevitatingChin]

N3 with 4x 8tb ssd and i5 13500 is working like a charm for plex and nas duties. I plan to get pfsense and pihole vm's running at some point too. I went this route as I wanted a near silent machine and the ssds are the only way to do that. As a bonus it barely draws 20w idle. And that saving does add up on a 24/7 machine.

[@ParkerTyler]

What mobo did you go with?

[@frankwong9486]

Wish jonsbo make a bigger one which support matx , they are way cheaper then overpriced itx board and also provide more pcie slot

[@blakeparry1983]

the jonsbo clearly makes a better just NAS storage build option I weighed up both for my build and was leaning towards the fractal as i wanted better motherboard/cpu options and pcie expansion space that the m-atx form factor allows. In the end buggered off both options and went for the Antec P101 Silent. 8 3.5" bays that are easy to access/replace and nicely cooled good fans and sound deadening Full ATX motherboard and expansion options full atx power supply support I got mine quite cheap new Only downside is that its big and its heavy - but these were minimal on my list of requirements Is clearly designed as home server/NAS case - worth a review!

[@kevinintheusa8984]

I did the same for my first NAS and now I want another one for my office storage and I am leaning towards the 804 since I want to repurpose an older ITX MB but have a larger 1070 GPU for transcoding. I love the Antec and I almost got another one but it is huge and my closets are getting full.

[@blakeparry1983]

@@kevinintheusa8984 Yeah its huge and heavy! lots of nice smaller ITX format cases coming out these days for NAS use too

[@idiocracy9530]

Problem with N3, is that the backplane does not accommodate 3.5 to 2.5 adapters like the icy dock. In the 804, you can install 24x2.5 ssd's in 8 icy docks. You can't do that in the N3. Not having a backplane is a good thing. In the N3 you can only install 8 drives. If you only ever need 8 drives, it's fine. 304 & 804 could do with an update, albait a small one as the cases don't really lack much.

[@zuzupa4o4e99]

In N3 is easier to change disks BUT ... If you plan to use server grade 16TB+ disks you should really pay attention on vibration and temperature. 804 offers better spacing, better cooling and way better anti vibration system ... and believe me these go a long way. Now calculate the very low 1-2% failure rate of these disks and the massive 60 months warranty. Build the system right and you probably won't need to change anything in the next 5-7 years. IMHO if you are building your first NAS and you want to play with storage Jonsbo N3 will do. But If you need a really stable storage solution with tens of terabytes secure real estate FD 804 is very hard to beat as a compact DIY case.

[@iamrage4753]

flexibility is important in a case

[@drpainjourney]

You forgot one big minus with the Fractal case ... there is Hard drive where you can ONLY 2 screws to secure the hard drive! The holes don't match up Seagate HDD ... That's why I literally throw out my case for like 1 month ago.

[@davedenis]

So it would be possible to get an RTX 3060 and a SATA expansion in the N3?? That would make for a pretty capable home server build with dual purpose gaming.

[@kiki_de]

I bought the N3 and what really is f-ing me up is that this case has no proper power switch because it is hidden inside.

[@rc01010101]

Honestly here, you're comparing apples and oranges. An NAS does not typically have high performance high heat producing CPUs. The backplane and hotswapping is what an NAS is all about. The old ass Node 804 needs an update with a backplane and then, only then, is it a true NAS case. Time, past time, to get on it Fractal. Storage. Storage. To use your emphasis, is what an NAS is about and the Jonsbo has it all over the Fractal in that respect. Oh yeah, you claim the Jonsbo N3 is nearly twice the price as the Node 804, I have no idea where you're shopping (AliExpress?), the N3 is typically about $170 and the Node 804 is about $130 on Amazon, I don't shop ever at AliExpress for some very sound reasons. Maybe in the UK that's not an issue. I'm not sure how your math works or the price in ￡. The bottom line, unless the case has a hard drive backplane it is not an NAS case no matter what the manufacturer labels it. Without one it is simply a small case that holds a lot of 3.5" hard drives. Personally that's about useless for an NAS.