The cubesale pi box mini 2 is an exciting new Raspberry Pi NAS enclosure that allows you to easily create a DIY NAS with up to 16TB of storage. I recently got my hands on a prototype unit loaded with cubesale’s software to take a closer look at the hardware and test it out.
Hardware Overview
The pi box mini 2 has some great hardware features:
- Dual 2.5 inch SATA drive bays for up to 16TB total storage
- Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 built in with 32GB eMMC, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 4GB RAM
- Real 5V PWM fan for quiet, adjustable cooling
- OLED display on the front panel showing system stats
- Multiple LEDs that can be controlled via GPIO
- USB-C power delivery input
- Gigabit ethernet, HDMI, and USB ports
The overall design is compact while still fitting two laptop-sized SSDs inside. The 3D printed enclosure has a nice finish but was a bit tricky to open up.
Hands-on Experience
I loaded the pi box up with two 8TB Samsung SSDs and powered it on. After booting, the OLED screen came on showing CPU, memory, and IP address info. The onboard fan started off loud at full speed but then slowed down thanks to its PWM control.After some troubleshooting, I found that the top SATA port on my prototype unit wasn’t working, likely due to a soldering issue. The team quickly sent me an updated backplane that resolved this. I configured one of the SSDs for use as a Kubernetes volume. Performance was solid reaching speeds up to 398MB/sec sequential and 6934 IOPS random 4K reads.
CubeSale Software
The pi box comes preloaded with CubeSale’s software including Kubernetes and their management platform. This allows you to easily add applications like Plex, Minecraft servers, databases, and more to your NAS with a few clicks. You can monitor and control everything through their online dashboard.
Final Thoughts
Overall, the cubesale pi box mini 2 is an awesome little DIY NAS kit. The hardware design is compact and capable, and having a preconfigured OS is a huge help for beginners. Pricing starts at $100 for the boards only and goes up depending on what accessories you include. I’m excited to see the final production version launch soon! Check out the Kubesail PiBox mini 2 site for more details.You can also check out other CM4 boards if you want to build your own enclosure. The CM4 is perfect for DIY NAS builds!
