Do fanless NAS devices exist? If not, can I build one myself?

I'm interested in finding a fanless NAS with at least two drives for silence and reliable storage (RAID 1), but I haven't been able to find anything.

Do these exist? Or does having a CPU in the NAS necessitate a fan so the device doesn't fry?

I'd be interested in a DIY solution (maybe something with an ITX board?) if there's no off-the-shelf one. How could I build this myself? What would I need to consider?

Solution 1:

I don't recommend considering a fanless NAS. It can build up enough heat so that either the drives or the actual circuit board will burn out. I have the D-Link DNS-323. It has a fan and it's quite quiet if you're concerned about fan noise.

Solution 2:

As of 2018, several NAS manufacturers offer fanless NASs:

QNAP: HS-251, HS-251+, HS-453DX

Synology: EDS14 (I just spoke with Synology support: this item is discontinued.)

Western Digital: My Cloud, My Cloud Home, My Cloud Mirror, etc. (Read up on My Cloud security issues first.)

Alternatively you could build one yourself by, for example, installing DSM (Synology's open source OS) on a fanless mini PC with XPEnology's bootloader.