Last year, Michael Klements made a nice-looking DIY Raspberry Pi 4 mini server with an OLED information display and a 52Pi UPS Plus module with 18650 batteries. It also included the company’s Ice Tower module for cooling, but if you wanted one you had to make your own with a 3D printer and a laser cutter.
52Pi appears to have noticed and liked the design, as they created something similar with the Raspberry Pi Mini Tower NAS kit taking one M.2 SATA SSD instead of using the UPS module. There are also a few tweaks to the mechanical design with the OLED display at an angle for easier reading.
52Pi Raspberry Pi Mini Tower NAS kit features and content:
- Designed for Raspberry Pi 4 SBC (not included)
- 3D printed case plus acrylic covers for each side
- 52Pi Ice Tower for cooling
- 2x 0.96-inch 128×64 I2C OLED displays (but only one is used)
- X862 SATA SSD shield v2.0 with UASP support, compatible with M.2 Key-B 2280 SSDs only
- 90-degree 40-pin GPIO header adapter
- Wires and tools necessary to assemble the kit
- Optional 5V/3A power supply (not always included in the kit)
There’s also a user manual, but some people complained it’s not detailed enough. You’ll also find installation instructions on the Wiki, where we also learn that 2.4GHz WiFi may not work that well with the kit, so using 5GHz is recommended (But it looks to be a copy/paste from another section of the Wiki for a metal case…).
It’s also possible to connect Raspberry Pi HAT through the 90-degree adapter plus a ribbon cable. I’d assume it might also be possible to connect a HAT internally if you don’t connect the Ice Tower for cooling, and only rely on low-profile heatsinks plus the included black fan.
Everything should work immediately after assembly and installing Raspberry Pi OS, except for the OLED display for which you’ll find some demo code on Github.
52Pi/GeeekPi sells the Raspberry Pi Mini Tower NAS kit on Amazon for $60 (without power supply), but you’ll find more options on Aliexpress with the enclosure only ($26.99) up to a full kit with a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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