NV+ Motherboard upgrade?

PapaBear wrote:
If you want a GP motherboard to experiment with it will have to also have a much larger case.

Sorry, I thought that was obvious. I'm asking about small form factor boards like the micro-itx or pico-itx.

PapaBear wrote:
If you like the features of the NV+ but want a faster CPU and more memory, check out the Ultra line. I doubt that you can build one much cheaper

Amazon's price for the NVX is currently ~$750. PassMark rates the Pentium M @1GHz at 244 (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup. ... +M+1000MHz - closest thing I could find to a Tolapai). Yet an Atom 525 is rated at 714 (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup. ... 40+1.80GHz) an you can pick it up w/t the ITX motherboard for $80 on Amazon. Add $40 for 4g of memory...

Assuming I'm just replacing the motherboard, CPU & memory on an existing NV+ chassis, I think there's no question you could get better raw performance than a NVX for less than $750. Whether you could build something with better NAS performance than the NVX with FreeNAS is another question, but I suspect you could beat the pants off the NV+.

PapaBear wrote:
and you would have no real support

Really!?! OK. Now I suspect you're just paid by Netgear to discourage anyone from reusing old hardware vs. buying new. :D

To be more specific, does anyone know if any off-the-shelf mini or pico ITX motherboards will fit in the NV+ case. Second question is whether the SATA connector from the drive bays will plug into a standard SATA motherboard, or did they go through the pain to make sure no-one could re-use the hardware?