Case Recommendations? Lots of 3.5 / 2.5 bays

[RaidPirate2020]

Hi,

Posting here because my own personal research hasn't produced much fruit, and I just had a funny experience with a rackmount Logic Case... You can skip to the end to read that story, if you are interested.

I am looking for case recommendations. I would like something that can store a large number of 3.5 inch drives, but which doesn't take up a crazy amount of space. Exact number isn't that important, and I will explain in more detail later...

It can be either a tower style case or rack mount. I am intending on putting this system in a cupboard, and so I cannot fit a full length rack mount server. In other words, if it is to be a rack mount chassis, it has to be at least a shorter depth form factor.

It can be either ATX or m-ATX, but must support at least m-ATX as I already have the motherboard to go in it.

Finally, it cannot be crazy expensive. I can't afford enterprise grade gear. I looked at some Logic Case alternatives to the failure of a case that I recently bought, but all the ones with hot-swap bays were starting at £250, which is too much. (About 300 USD for our friends in the US - yes I am in the UK btw.)

Regarding number of drives, obviously the more the better. I am looking to build a system which can fit around 12-15 drives. I currently have a case which can sort of do this, but not quite. It can fit 5x 3.5 inch drives on sledge rails at the bottom and has 3x 5.25 inch spaces above, which with the correct converter I believe I could convert into a further 5x 3.5 inch slots. This is a total of 10, which is 2 short of 12. The reason for having 12 drives is that this fits 2x 6 drive RAID 6 arrays. At the moment I can have 2x 5 disk RAID 6 arrays, but this leaves no space for boot drives. The reason for having 2 separate RAID 6 devices is so that I can leave on in my current residence, and take another to a new location with me in the future. But this is becoming a bit TLDR-y, so I won't elaborate further.

Because of the price of other rack mount stuff, I started looking at tower cases, but most modern "gaming oriented" towers contain only a few spaces for a few SSD's, and maybe 2x 3.5inch HDDs if you are lucky. Gone are the days where gamers stuffed their rigs with many 100 GB drives in order to get enough space for boot drives, raid arrays for games to stay on, plus extra drives for testing Linux systems, or whatever else...

So far I have only found the Antec NSK4100 and Antec NSK-4000B. The former claims to fit 6x 3.5 inch HDD + 3x 5.25 inch, which with a converter becomes 11x 3.5 inch HDD in total.

This isn't actually an improvement over an old CoolerMaster Storm Scout case which I have here currently holding my NAS system. This fits 5x 3.5 inch on sledges, and then a further 5x 5.25 inch bays... which means I can convert 3 of those 5.25s into 5x 3.5 inch HDD slots, plus put some other adapter in the remaining 5.25 inch bays. For your interest, the current NAS houses 4x 2.5 inch SSDs in 2x 3.5 inch spaces for 2x 1TB Raid 1 SSD arrays. These store things which are critical to my work, plus a load of music / important personal files. There are then a further 3x 1TB HDDs which I use as scratch space. None of the scratch drives are full, and I don't care that much if they fail, but it would be better if the data was on a Raid 6 array.



--- The Logic Case Story ---

The case I bought was a Logic Case SC-34390 which claimed to fit 8x 3.5 inch drives. Short version: It doesn't. Not unless you have a very low profile CPU cooler and don't want to plug anything into the motherboard. The mounts for the drives overhang the motherboard area when a drive is inserted by about 5cm. They are arranged as 2 racks of 4 drives. With the low profile-ish passive cooler I have in there now I can get 1 drive in the top slot of each rack, and that's all. Drives in lower slots closer to the motherboard interfere with the cooler. With an even smaller cooler I might get 4 drives in, but any more start to interfere with the top of the RAM on the left side.

TLDR; don't buy this case, it may be cheap-ish but it doesn't fit the drives in which it claims to. Perhaps it would work with an ITX board but I doubt it.



--- TL;DR ---

Looking for NAS case, should be

> cheap-ish (under £100 / $150)
> store lots of 3.5 inch drives
> m-ATX compatible
> rack or tower (don't care) but not 650 mm long because it won't fit in my cupboard (550mm is probably about the max length I can fit leaving space for cables)

 

[JesperA]

When it comes to towers you have the Define 7: Define 7 — Fractal Design "Convert to Storage Layout and install up to 14 HDDs alongside four dedicated SSDs mounts"

Unfortunately, that case is probably either marginally or out of your budget depending on exchange rate, taxes etc, maybe within your budget if you ever find a good sale on it, maybe second hand or if your able to stretch your budget a tad. They also makes an XL version with even more storage options but that one is way out of your budget

 

[alex_stief]

A somewhat compact alternative could be Fractal Design Node 804. It fits up to 10 3.5" drives, and a microATX board.

Node 804

www.fractal-design.com

Since the drives are in a separate compartment, adding a lot of them should not limit other hardware choices. It is available at just below 100€.

 

[RaidPirate2020]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I was aware of the Node 804. It could be an option with 10 drives, but it's just more expensive than the cheap cases I already found. Plus I'm not a fan of the clear side pannel, not that it really matters. The Define 7 is a good option I had not yet considered. The problem is it's expensive. I would also have to buy some additional drive mounts, as it only comes with 6. I imagine they are not cheap to buy even if I can find them. Also being E-ATX compatiable I imagine it's a very large case, which again is not ideal.

 

[Spartacus]

If you can find an old Antec twelve hundred v3 it'll have 12 bay slots but its a pretty large full tower case.
Thats what I'm using combined with 5.25" to 3.5" bay converters (I opted for the hotswap option for an extra drive but it comes with three 3x5.25 to 4x 3.5" hdd adapter with fan).
Theres the smaller antec 900 version as well but it only has 9x 5.25" slots, availability for both is pretty low so you might have to look more used.

http://imgur.com/aK8dkEh

 

[Stephan]

Fractal Design Define 7/7 XL caveat: Good case, but expensive at close to 200 EUR these days (7 XL) AND comes only with HDD trays for 6 drives (4 installed, 2 in box). Been hunting for a measly 2-pack for ages (like half a year; they say Corona but in the end, who cares!). Found one in Czech Republic. They had exactly two, one black, one white version. In whole Europe. For months. So beware. Whenever the trays go on sale on NewEgg in USA they are sold out within the same day.

The XL will go as high as 18 3.5" drives if you really push it. 12 drives in "storage configuration" in the place in front where you would install a water cooling pump and reservoir. Really needs some slow 500-1000rpm fans to cool the drives because they will heat up. Four drives can go below that level on the bottom, behind the PSU, in two separate cages. And finally you can mount 2 drives on supplied "universal brackets" head first above the mainboard in the ceiling. For 2.5" I am counting additional four, two behind motherboard and two right in front of motherboard above the PSU (will require two extra SSD mounting brackets, case only comes with two mounted behind motherboard). With some creativity I would say 6 2.5" SSDs is the max. No optical disk drive then though, also no water cooling.

For fan regulation I replaced the installed crappy fan multiplier with an Aquaero 6 LT, so through direct temperature sensing I can drive all fans with the least amount of noise possible while keeping very good temps everywhere. Why crappy, mine had all its SMD components soldered off point (cheap manufacturing). Also couldn't get it to report PWM signal on Aquaero. Just used a 4-pin splitter for the last two fans then.

Make sure to get an adequate PSU for this many drives. Two amps per drive on 12V rail minimum because that's how much juice they will need during the first 5-8 seconds of spinup. I also recommend ZFS as filesystem if you dare dive into that, because its copy-on-write eliminates the write hole you'd incur with traditional MD RAID5/6. Some data corruption is also increasingly likely with that many disks (cable, controller, disk, etc. can be anything), ZFS checksums everything instead of only metadata like ext4. RAIDZ2 could be a good choice. Leave space for a 10-20 GB SLOG device (super fast NVMe or Optane, must have power loss protection i.e. buffer capacitors) to achieve great sync write performance with those disks. I am currently using parts of an Intel P3700 400 GB NVMe, zpool is a greased weasel.

 

[Kei-0070]

The Corsair Obsidian 750D can fit 18x 3.5 drives with the additional cages leaving 4x 2.5" sleds and 3x 5.25" bays available. Fitting the additional drive bays beyond 12 drives does depend on your motherboard and expansion card configuration. I went this route to avoid using backplanes after having one slot fail on one of my icydock units. (after nearly 6 years) It's still a bit over budget still

I can't run the 6th drive cage due to the cables coming out of my particular RAID controller.


With more careful routing of the breakout cables, I could probably get the 4th SSD bracket to fit back in. (but I don't need it so didn't see the point)

 

[RaidPirate2020]

That is some impressive case! I don't know about you, perhaps you feel the same way - frustrating that there is so much "wasted" space. Hence why I prefered a rackmount solution - but it's just way too expensive. I guess the stacking drive solution only works if you don't put any long cards in - as you point out your HBA cables prevent installation of another one.

How sturdy are those drive mounts? If you stack them up high like that is there any possibility of them breaking?

 

[Spartacus]

The Corsair Obsidian 750D can fit 18x 3.5 drives with the additional cages leaving 4x 2.5" sleds and 3x 5.25" bays available. Fitting the additional drive bays beyond 12 drives does depend on your motherboard and expansion card configuration. I went this route to avoid using backplanes after having one slot fail on one of my icydock units. (after nearly 6 years) It's still a bit over budget still

I can't run the 6th drive cage due to the cables coming out of my particular RAID controller.

With more careful routing of the breakout cables, I could probably get the 4th SSD bracket to fit back in. (but I don't need it so didn't see the point)

Ha I had that case and config just before I moved to the antec (but used SAS to SATA so the cables were tiny, I fit 4 evo 860s on the back, the arflow was a bit sporatic for platter drive cooling though, higher rpm drives might get too hot without good pressure fans. It is really tough to get extra drive cages from corsair, they restock about once a quarter.

http://imgur.com/a/kQoULfK

 

[Kei-0070]

That is some impressive case! I don't know about you, perhaps you feel the same way - frustrating that there is so much "wasted" space. Hence why I prefered a rackmount solution - but it's just way too expensive. I guess the stacking drive solution only works if you don't put any long cards in - as you point out your HBA cables prevent installation of another one.

How sturdy are those drive mounts? If you stack them up high like that is there any possibility of them breaking?

I originally wanted a server case like a Norco but backplane failures are what put me off more than cost.

The drive cages for the 750D seem to mount in quite well on the right side as they anchor both at the top and bottom. The ones on the left don't have any anchor at the top so there is some give to the cage with the flex in the metal. If you were using the case in any orientation other than vertical, I'd be a bit concerned as the mounts in the base of the case are plastic. I'm thinking of making a thin bar that braces the left stack to the right stack using the bolt holes on the fronts to make sure it's fully sturdy. @Spartacus is right about the drive cages being a challenge to find. I got lucky. I was originally looking at the Fractal cases and found the drive cages were even harder to get your mitts on.

Ha I had that case and config just before I moved to the antec (but used SAS to SATA so the cables were tiny, I fit 4 evo 860s on the back, the arflow was a bit sporatic for platter drive cooling though, higher rpm drives might get too hot without good pressure fans. It is really tough to get extra drive cages from corsair, they restock about once a quarter.

http://imgur.com/a/kQoULfK

Mine is decked out with 7.2K WD Se and ultrastars but I have the "airflow edition" which does seem to have a decent grille at the front. I was planning on buying a second solid side panel and adding some "ventilation" to it so I can have some cooler air blowing over the cards. Then the side panel sold out and will probably became unobtainium. I may be sticking the window panel on the cable side instead.

 

[Spartacus]

I just left the front off and it had the same effect as the high airflow edition, i picked it up off clist for like $25 with no fans, it was perfect since i wanted to silence it anyway with noctua fans

 

[ari2asem]

Sharkoon Rebel12 Economy (Zwart) - Kenmerken - Tweakers

tweakers.net

Sharkoon T9 Value Black edition - Kenmerken - Tweakers

tweakers.net

Cooler Master Centurion 590 - Kenmerken - Tweakers

tweakers.net

Aerocool VS-92 White Window Edition - Kenmerken - Tweakers

tweakers.net

and the best of the best (or the beast)

Lian Li PC-343B - Kenmerken - Tweakers

tweakers.net

18* external 5.25 inch

 

[Magic8Ball]

I've been looking for something similar. Have you looked at this 4U rack case for £72?

It comes with 10 x 3.5" + 1 x 2.5" + 3 x 5.25" bays which you can convert into an extra (i) 5 x 3.5" or (ii) 2 x 3.5" + 4 x 2.5".

That gets you at least 12 bays, with some flexibiliy to either mix in some SSDs or max out the 3.5" slots. Just avoid the expensive hot-swap drive cages to stay in budget.

My NAS has a large cold storage array of HDs that spin down to save power and stay cool (for media and backups etc), and a small hot-storage array of SSDs (for fast network shares and file transfers etc), so a case with 12 x 3.5" and 4 x 2.5" is just perfect in my opinion. I can't see ever needing more than 12 HDs because by the time I fill the array I'll just drop in higher capacity drives (eg 4TB -> 16TB) rather than add more disks.

 

[Spartacus]

Its not bad its a cheap'ish case options for quiet fans, but has no hotswap is the tradeoff.
If you can manage to find a used supermicro 2u or 4u 12/24 bay chassis I would recommend that for better build quality for an extra hundred £ or so (not 100% the price there, but here they can be had for about $200 usd ~ £150) again theres a noise trade off though.

 

[RaidPirate2020]

I've been looking for something similar. Have you looked at this 4U rack case for £72?

It comes with 10 x 3.5" + 1 x 2.5" + 3 x 5.25" bays which you can convert into an extra (i) 5 x 3.5" or (ii) 2 x 3.5" + 4 x 2.5".

That gets you at least 12 bays, with some flexibiliy to either mix in some SSDs or max out the 3.5" slots. Just avoid the expensive hot-swap drive cages to stay in budget.

My NAS has a large cold storage array of HDs that spin down to save power and stay cool (for media and backups etc), and a small hot-storage array of SSDs (for fast network shares and file transfers etc), so a case with 12 x 3.5" and 4 x 2.5" is just perfect in my opinion. I can't see ever needing more than 12 HDs because by the time I fill the array I'll just drop in higher capacity drives (eg 4TB -> 16TB) rather than add more disks.

I already tried buying a case from the same brand/manufactuer. I really wouldn't recommend it. I bought a 3U version, which claimed to fit up to 10x 3.5 inch HDD. This is the Logic Case "story" I detailed in my OP. I really wouldn't recommend it.

That thing would fit a maximum of (if I remember correctly) 5 drives, not 8. (EDIT: 10) Even with a low profile heatsink, it would only fit 6 drives, because any more would interfere with the RAM and motherboard connectors.

The only way it *might* work is with short expansion cards and an ITX form factor.

I don't like dishonest advertizing, and it was a pain for me to have to return this.

I wouldn't advise you buy from them.

The 4U case you link to I believe would fit 10x 3.5 inch drives, in those front cages. That's all very well but considering their other product advertising I don't believe there's space in there for an additional 3 drives, plus an SSD. Maybe if you hot glue them to the side of the case or something.

Finally I'm aware they "sell" an additional 5x 3.5 inch holder thing, to go in that other front slot. But good luck trying to actually find any stock. Yeah, they "sell" them in "theory" but if none are actually manufactured, then you're not getting one.

 

[dreamsin]

You can get the 5x3.5 from ebay for 10£

 

[Magic8Ball]

I already tried buying a case from the same brand/manufactuer. I really wouldn't recommend it.

Fair enough. Perhaps you could look at Xcase instead, they have a few different 4U cases some of which hold 12+ HDs at similar price points. I've never used them so can't recommned them either way, but thought I'd at least offer another option. [PS - their Minestation cases look awesome, but that's a different use case entirely].

 

[chinesestunna]

Hi,

Posting here because my own personal research hasn't produced much fruit, and I just had a funny experience with a rackmount Logic Case... You can skip to the end to read that story, if you are interested.

I am looking for case recommendations. I would like something that can store a large number of 3.5 inch drives, but which doesn't take up a crazy amount of space. Exact number isn't that important, and I will explain in more detail later...

It can be either a tower style case or rack mount. I am intending on putting this system in a cupboard, and so I cannot fit a full length rack mount server. In other words, if it is to be a rack mount chassis, it has to be at least a shorter depth form factor.

It can be either ATX or m-ATX, but must support at least m-ATX as I already have the motherboard to go in it.

Finally, it cannot be crazy expensive. I can't afford enterprise grade gear. I looked at some Logic Case alternatives to the failure of a case that I recently bought, but all the ones with hot-swap bays were starting at £250, which is too much. (About 300 USD for our friends in the US - yes I am in the UK btw.)

Regarding number of drives, obviously the more the better. I am looking to build a system which can fit around 12-15 drives. I currently have a case which can sort of do this, but not quite. It can fit 5x 3.5 inch drives on sledge rails at the bottom and has 3x 5.25 inch spaces above, which with the correct converter I believe I could convert into a further 5x 3.5 inch slots. This is a total of 10, which is 2 short of 12. The reason for having 12 drives is that this fits 2x 6 drive RAID 6 arrays. At the moment I can have 2x 5 disk RAID 6 arrays, but this leaves no space for boot drives. The reason for having 2 separate RAID 6 devices is so that I can leave on in my current residence, and take another to a new location with me in the future. But this is becoming a bit TLDR-y, so I won't elaborate further.

Because of the price of other rack mount stuff, I started looking at tower cases, but most modern "gaming oriented" towers contain only a few spaces for a few SSD's, and maybe 2x 3.5inch HDDs if you are lucky. Gone are the days where gamers stuffed their rigs with many 100 GB drives in order to get enough space for boot drives, raid arrays for games to stay on, plus extra drives for testing Linux systems, or whatever else...

So far I have only found the Antec NSK4100 and Antec NSK-4000B. The former claims to fit 6x 3.5 inch HDD + 3x 5.25 inch, which with a converter becomes 11x 3.5 inch HDD in total.

This isn't actually an improvement over an old CoolerMaster Storm Scout case which I have here currently holding my NAS system. This fits 5x 3.5 inch on sledges, and then a further 5x 5.25 inch bays... which means I can convert 3 of those 5.25s into 5x 3.5 inch HDD slots, plus put some other adapter in the remaining 5.25 inch bays. For your interest, the current NAS houses 4x 2.5 inch SSDs in 2x 3.5 inch spaces for 2x 1TB Raid 1 SSD arrays. These store things which are critical to my work, plus a load of music / important personal files. There are then a further 3x 1TB HDDs which I use as scratch space. None of the scratch drives are full, and I don't care that much if they fail, but it would be better if the data was on a Raid 6 array.



--- The Logic Case Story ---

The case I bought was a Logic Case SC-34390 which claimed to fit 8x 3.5 inch drives. Short version: It doesn't. Not unless you have a very low profile CPU cooler and don't want to plug anything into the motherboard. The mounts for the drives overhang the motherboard area when a drive is inserted by about 5cm. They are arranged as 2 racks of 4 drives. With the low profile-ish passive cooler I have in there now I can get 1 drive in the top slot of each rack, and that's all. Drives in lower slots closer to the motherboard interfere with the cooler. With an even smaller cooler I might get 4 drives in, but any more start to interfere with the top of the RAM on the left side.

TLDR; don't buy this case, it may be cheap-ish but it doesn't fit the drives in which it claims to. Perhaps it would work with an ITX board but I doubt it.



--- TL;DR ---

Looking for NAS case, should be

> cheap-ish (under £100 / $150)
> store lots of 3.5 inch drives
> m-ATX compatible
> rack or tower (don't care) but not 650 mm long because it won't fit in my cupboard (550mm is probably about the max length I can fit leaving space for cables)

I was in similar situation before as well and did a lot of research on this topic, one thing that isn't clear to me is what is your definition of "lots of 3.5 in drives"? As others have posted, ANTEC 900s and 1200s will hold 9-12 drives without modification. non-hotswap 5x3.5 bays are cheap on eBay so you can easily get up to 20 drives in a 1200 case and be under budget depending on how much you can get the case for

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

I know you've already said that £200 is too much... but seriously, if you want a case with lots of bays and as little extra trouble as possible, hot-swap bays are where it's at since they save so many other headaches further down the line. I really would consider saving up the cash to get a "proper" case that supports the number of drives you need than hobbling yourself by cheaping out - speaking from experience because I did the same thing myself for years before biting the bullet and forking out for proper cases. £100 is already at the low end of the price scale for a desktop-style case with the space for a lot of drive bays.

FWIW I use the Logic Case hot-swap rackmounts at home and at work; IMHO they're cheap and cheerful and easy enough to mod for low noise if that's your thing. They come in ATX PSU versions as well IIRC so you can save money there if you've already got a spare desktop PSU. From a look at Server Case, they say the slightly more up-market In-Win RS212-02SC seemingly still available as PTO for £245.

If 8 bays is all you need, then I'm very happy with running my main home server out of one of these for £180.

On the used market there'll be many more similar things, but probably not as much s/h Supermicro stuff as the US seems to have. For leftpondian readers, Supermicro rackmount cases are generally pretty rare here in the UK. As others have mentioned, there's loads of old cases knocking around that can have loads of drives put in them, but again only if you're happy to deal with airflow and lack-of-backplane issues.

 

[chinesestunna]

I know you've already said that £200 is too much... but seriously, if you want a case with lots of bays and as little extra trouble as possible, hot-swap bays are where it's at since they save so many other headaches further down the line. I really would consider saving up the cash to get a "proper" case that supports the number of drives you need than hobbling yourself by cheaping out - speaking from experience because I did the same thing myself for years before biting the bullet and forking out for proper cases. £100 is already at the low end of the price scale for a desktop-style case with the space for a lot of drive bays.

FWIW I use the Logic Case hot-swap rackmounts at home and at work; IMHO they're cheap and cheerful and easy enough to mod for low noise if that's your thing. They come in ATX PSU versions as well IIRC so you can save money there if you've already got a spare desktop PSU. From a look at Server Case, they say the slightly more up-market In-Win RS212-02SC seemingly still available as PTO for £245.

If 8 bays is all you need, then I'm very happy with running my main home server out of one of these for £180.

On the used market there'll be many more similar things, but probably not as much s/h Supermicro stuff as the US seems to have. For leftpondian readers, Supermicro rackmount cases are generally pretty rare here in the UK. As others have mentioned, there's loads of old cases knocking around that can have loads of drives put in them, but again only if you're happy to deal with airflow and lack-of-backplane issues.

well said, I think I went down that rabbit hole initially with some case choices because they "offered" expandability but buying cages etc for them ended up evening out vs. a 24 bay Norco/SM case used here in US. Anyways, I realized I don't have enough content to require more than a 8-10 drive array, beyond that point I really just need to get higher density drives. Electricity costs money man TCO becomes a real thing