An adventure in NAS Cabling or: how I learned to stop worrying and love DIY

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. HDD prices have never been higher and the cost of maintaining a NAS has never been more as a result. Of course that means I'm re-evaluating both my NAS devices and working to make sure drives have as much cooling and airflow as possible to maximize lifespan.

As a part of that, I'm moving/re-cabling everything, and needed to minimize cabling that would impede airflow. Here's my notes based on my measurements.

NAS 1 - Node 804 w/ Corsair SF750 SFX PSU and ASRock B550M STEEL LEGEND

All cables made by: DreamBigByRayMOD Etsy Store and are his 16awg embossed cables.

Getting the SATA connector spacing was trial an error. I tried:

• 50mm spacing between sata cables (both too long to fit exactly, and too short to curl up nicely without additional strain)
  • The Design 7XL custom cables from Kareon Cables seem to be 50mm spaced apart, but the cables are somehow... pre-bent into 'U' shapes so the connectors aren't strained. The cabling seems to be stiffer than what I ended up with on my DreamBigByRayMOD cables, and that may actually be a bit better for this use case.
• 35mm spacing between sata cables (short enough to fit, but just a bit too much to put strain on the connectors)
• 30mm is apparently the sweet spot with no slack in this case. That is, 30mm as measured by DreamBigByRayMOD - my measurements put the 'true' distance at exactly 35mm connector-to-connector on each drive.

If you want a more 'standard' length between right angle connectors, 100mm between right angles works fine, it just results in a 32mm 'tall' tail beyond the height of the connector itself where the cable is bunched up between connectors.

NAS 2 - Define 7 XL w/ Corsair RMx Series RM1000x PSU and ASUS ROG Strix B650E-F

SATA cables from: Kareon Kables Store Other cables are from DreamBigByRayMOD Etsy Store again.