Favorite Pedestal/Tower Enclosures: What's yours and why?

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chinesestunna

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Jan 23, 2015
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Are there any tower cases that are totally sealed up for the purpose of further noise reduction but with perhaps a lot of fins or something to radiate heat using heat pipes or other means? I did see one small HTPC case that was rigged that way, but it wasn't a tower case.
Zalman did make one back in the day, designed to be completely passive, add fanless PSU and SSDs and system has no moving parts: TNN 500AF Totally No Noise Computer Case
 

NeverDie

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Jan 28, 2015
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Zalman did make one back in the day, designed to be completely passive, add fanless PSU and SSDs and system has no moving parts: TNN 500AF Totally No Noise Computer Case
Wow, something like that connected by heatpipes to the harddrives would be the ultimate home server chassis. The biggest challenges in the home environment seem to be heat and noise and, to some degree, space.
 
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TType85

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Dec 22, 2014
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My current favorite for desktop/tower is the Nanoxia Deep Silence 5. I picked one up for my workstation and it is QUIET.

I am running a i7-5820K, Noctua NH-D15 cooler, MSI X99 motherboard, 32GB DDR4 ram, 2x 480GB Sandisk SSD, PNY GTX 970 and a Corsair power supply. The fans that come with the case are quiet, the Noctua cooler is quiet and the power supply fan only kicks on under heavy load. The GTX 970 makes a bit of noise under load but the sound dampering in the case helps a lot. The side panels are lined, there is foam in the front doors.

It's big and heavy but I don't hear it over ambient noise unless I am gaming and have the sound off.

I don't know how well it would cool if you loaded it up with drives, but that's what my Norco 4220 is for sitting in a rack in another room.
 

NeverDie

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I don't know how well it would cool if you loaded it up with drives....
What I found included in the DS6 was an optional fan/radiator bracket that could be mounted against the drives on the inside of the case, making a total of four 140mm fans primarily devoted to cooling the drives.

Does the DS5 come with a mounting bracket like that? When configured that way, I found I could turn down the drive speed to Nanoxia's minimum setting and still get adequate drive cooling. At that point, the noise from the nine hard drives starts to become the dominant noise source, but I'm not sure what more, if anything, can be done to reduce that other than possibly setting the drive firmware to WD's so-called "accoustic mode".
 
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TType85

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Dec 22, 2014
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What I found included in the DS6 was an optional fan/radiator bracket that could be mounted against the drives on the inside of the case, making a total of four 140mm fans primarily devoted to cooling the drives.

Does the DS5 come with a mounting bracket like that? When configured that way, I found I could turn down the drive speed to Nanoxia's minimum setting and still get adequate drive cooling. At that point, the noise from the nine hard drives starts to become the dominant noise source, but I'm not sure what more, if anything, can be done to reduce that other than possibly setting the drive firmware to WD's so-called "accoustic mode".
I don't think the DS5 can do that. I will have to open the case and look. Running all SSD is sure quiet ;)
 

chinesestunna

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I don't think the DS5 can do that. I will have to open the case and look. Running all SSD is sure quiet ;)
You guys must have more sensitive ears than me, HDDs have seldom bothered me, only exception are older 10K/15K SCSIs from way back when... but what you heard was the speed :D

@Patrick @britinpdx Holy crap I just looked up price for that SM SC747 chassis, even with redundant 1400W 80+Gold PSU, $1000 really puts things in perspective in terms of "professional" grade gear I guess. Stick shock!
 
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Patrick

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@Patrick @britinpdx Holy crap I just looked up price for that SM SC747 chassis, even with redundant 1400W 80+Gold PSU, $1000 really puts things in perspective in terms of "professional" grade gear I guess. Stick shock!
Yea and the CSE-747BTQ-R2K04B in the lab is around ~$1800 with a motherboard and redundant 2kw titanium PSUs.

The trick there though is that you get 8x hot swap bays, nice power supplies and something built for multi-GPU. If you are running 4x dual slot Xeon Phi or Tesla cards, a few hundred more on a proper chassis/ motherboard seems worth it.
 
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chinesestunna

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Yea and the CSE-747BTQ-R2K04B in the lab is around ~$1800 with a motherboard and redundant 2kw titanium PSUs.

The trick there though is that you get 8x hot swap bays, nice power supplies and something built for multi-GPU. If you are running 4x dual slot Xeon Phi or Tesla cards, a few hundred more on a proper chassis/ motherboard seems worth it.
And here we thought the 2K Superflower Platinum was excessive. They also claimed its the first 2kw unit. SM just smacked that down, twice :D
Edit: they did say "first consumer" unit
 

RobertFontaine

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Speaking of Supermicro and 747's. I've got the X9DRG-QF in the basement. It is sticking out the side of my brand new TT Core X9 about 2". I was planning on an Asus Z9PE (EATX) when this fell into my lap and I couldn't say no as it is perfect for a compute node.

Accepting the fact that I may have to move/drill standoffs. What cases/enclosures are usable for a poverty build? Are there supermicro enclosures that I should be watching on fleabay other than the 747? Are there any stock enclosures Norco/Startech etc that work? Which of the HPTX / 10 or 11 slot retail cases might work. I am going to watercool the PHI's but I can mount the rad externally.

I will be watching for a 747 but it's going to be a while before it gets to the top of my list.
 

pgh5278

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Speaking of Supermicro and 747's. I've got the X9DRG-QF in the basement. It is sticking out the side of my brand new TT Core X9 about 2". I was planning on an Asus Z9PE (EATX) when this fell into my lap and I couldn't say no as it is perfect for a compute node.

Accepting the fact that I may have to move/drill standoffs. What cases/enclosures are usable for a poverty build? Are there supermicro enclosures that I should be watching on fleabay other than the 747? Are there any stock enclosures Norco/Startech etc that work? Which of the HPTX / 10 or 11 slot retail cases might work. I am going to watercool the PHI's but I can mount the rad externally.

I will be watching for a 747 but it's going to be a while before it gets to the top of my list.
Liquid8technology has a bundle of these at 2 price points 349 and 399 depending on processor, similar price to 732 case which is very hard to go past, these 747 cases need the newer / quieter PS..
SuperMicro 4U Server X8DTG-QF 2x Quad-Core Xeon E5530 2.4GHz 48GB
 
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