NAS Optimizations for RockPro64

[MNtinkerer]

Thank you for the picture! You could easily build a case that will suite your needs much better than a Pine64 NAS case modification, and for cheaper with some basic hand tools using common hand tools. The NAS case has been powdercoated so any modification other than drilling or cutting out will ruin the finish and cannot be easily replicated. Thus one would end up building an upper shell (it is a 2-piece clam shell design) anyways which would require a $20-30 piece of sheetmetal (from Home Depot, Lowes, etc). The tricky portions would be the cutouts around the jacks but there are a few options to work around that.
1) cutout around them and leave naked
2) use the premium case front and end panel
3) use the PVC case front panel and manually cut out rear panel
4) some variation of the above like a rabbit-like cutout (look up "woodworking rabbit dado grove") and add a door or whatever
The only tools necessary would be:
-Drill
-Drillbits
-Rough and fine file set
-Smooth face hammer
-straight edge/square
-Exacto knife or scratch awl
-hand snips (pliers type) or jigsaw with fine bits
-WD40 (as a lubricant for the jigsaw)
-2 Clamps or quickclamps
-3 (or more) pieces of 1x2 oak wood whose individual length exceed the max lengths of case + 1" (to allow for 1/2" tabs) to be used as a manual brake to bend metal
-Assortment of sandpaper or foam sanding wedges, 60grit, 120grit, 220grit for slightly profiling wood
-steel wool (optional) for putting a grain-like scratch pattern on sheetmetal, or to polish depending on pattern and paint finish.
Sheetmetal can be steel or aluminum, thin as possible. To fasten everything it would be helpful to have rivets or PC case screws. On properly cleaned metal with a rough scratch one can use an epoxy or other industrial glue to fasten bolts to the sheetmetal. Spend some time J-B Kwik (JB Weld brand yellow and black) epoxy works great for steel to steel, otherwise buy an epoxy appropriate for the material like aluminum to brass, brass to steel, etc. To add rigidity rolling over the edges (steel) or 90 degrees bends on aluminum edges, with dimples helps. With steel a hollowed out piece of flat wood and a rounded punch will make dimples. For aluminum use a blunted chisel as wide as the dimple length and hallowed out piece of wood. The wood would have a trench-like cut out portion a 1/4" wide and 3x sheetmetal thickness deep.

If you would like a tutorial, I might have time to do one by the end of August. One thing about making custom cases; if a person only wants one, often times cannibalizing from old cases works well for things like the fine mesh air intakes, or drive bay holders (like you've done) in order to save money. If one knows they will be making several custom cases, then it may be worth buying the fine mesh in sheets from a wholesaler or online supplier, since somethings are easier to make from new when considering quantity. Another thing to consider is that Aluminum can be cut with an Exacto knife, straightedge, and folding.

I am about to evaluate NetBSD and OpenZFS for my Quartz, if I am happy about performance, I will build a custom case using common tools and make a tutorial for it. If I am not happy with OpenZFS on the Quartz I will abandon any projects with more than 2 3.5" HDDs, or 8 2.5" SDDs. My multi-drive setups that do not fit into the NAS case are in a separate drive bay using longer SATA cables routed into the NAS case.