SFF and 8x2.5" hot swap bays - SilverStone CS280

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Ozymand

New Member
Oct 17, 2014
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For the life of me I don't know how I missed this. With the announcement on the 5TB 2.5" drives from Seagate I restarted my search for a small chassis that supported 2.5" hot swap drives. After some searching (and potentially resigning myself to doing a custom chassis since there weren't very many "good" options) and returning to look at one of my original choices (the SilverStone CS01-HS) I noticed this:

SilverStone CS280

I can't find it for sale yet, but holy Christmas Batman did someone at SilverStone read these message boards here and decided that they would give upon us a chassis most blessed? If those hot swap trays take 15mm drives I may have found a solution to my storage needs!
 

wiretap

Active Member
Jul 14, 2015
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That Silverstone case is pretty neat. It's always good to see companies start realizing the wants/needs of niche consumers.

Another option would be using the Icy Dock MB994SP-4S in a case that has available 5.25" bay(s). There are some short depth 1U rackmount cases that you could fit 2 of these into.
 

fractal

Active Member
Jun 7, 2016
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Would you consider an iStarUSA S35 plus a supermicro m28 an acceptable solution?
 

Ozymand

New Member
Oct 17, 2014
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It comes down to one thing that seems to be an issue with most if not all SFF chassis: poor airflow across the motherboard. If you look at the SuperMicro SuperServer or the S-35 chassis there is little to no airflow across the motherboard. Depending on configuration (read - Xeon-D in this case) this is a non-ideal situation. Patrick has added 40mm fans to the front of his SuperServer chassis as well as adding a fan directly ontop of the CPU heatsink to increase direct airflow across the motherboard. The S-35 chassis has the 1U power supply in-front of the case an no provision to add fans there. In the case of the CS280 there are 2-80mm fans right in-front of the motherboard. As for the CS-01HS it has a non-standard orientation (vertical) with a 120mm fan feeding air upwards past the motherboad and into the hot-swap bay.

The CS280 design mimics something I was conceptually looking at building, though I did invert the motherboard such that the motherboard mounts to the plate that separates the power supply + hot swap bays and the motherboard area to provide distinct and isolated air paths. Also, it'd widen the chassis a bit such that the Flex-ATX motherboards from SuperMicro (with the built-in LSI controllers) could be used as well.
 

Ozymand

New Member
Oct 17, 2014
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I've attached some rough concepts of a case that I've been working on intermittently but modified with some insight from cesmith9999. The case itself is 10 inches on a side, uses a TFX power supply (my reference supply was a FSP FSP400-60FGGBA), has 3x5.25" bays (for a total of twelve 15mm 2.5" drives using common 4x2.5" carriers), has a separate volume for the flexATX motherboard with two 80mm fans providing airflow (what isn't visible is the internal walls within the case), and a 120mm fan providing airflow for the upper drive bay and power supply. The motherboard is mounted upside down to facilitate installation and maintenance within the case. The motherboard volume is 4" tall (from bottom of motherboard-up) so it should allow for sufficient space for a 2U cooler (such as the Cooljag BUF-E for the Xeon-Ds).

The main concerns I have with this design are as follows:
  • The primary pass-through for cables (should only be power going from ps -> motherboard and SATA/SAS cables from motherboard -> drive bays) is in-front of the power supply in a 2x2" area and I am hoping that will be adequately large to do so.
  • The FSP supply only has 4 SATA and 2 Molex connectors. I am hoping this will suffice otherwise it'll require adapters/etc.
  • With the power supply having a fixed harness, is there adequate enough space within the case to properly service loop the various cables that will be running throughout without significantly impacting airflow?
  • Installation of the 5.25" devices. This is a riddle that I am working on... cludgely way would be to mount one side flush with the case (use flatheads on that side side, thumbscrews to an internal wall on the inside)
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