Cases that have 16 drive bays?

[J. Michael Henry]

I was thinking about building a rack system in my home but I just don't think I have the room...

So, are there any cases out there that can house 12-16 drives?

Yeah it's a tall order but I'm just curious

 

[Marsh]

LIAN LI PC-A75 Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Newegg.com
Lian Li PC-A75 case
12 x 3.5" drives + 2 x 5.25" drives , 1 x 3.5" drives on the bottom of the case ( next to power supply)

 

[5teve]

I have a fractal designs tower - Define R2xl that holds 8x drives, and has 4x 5.25 bays - you can get 5 into 4 cages although i went 4 into 3x 5.25 with a lian li cage. The 4in3 cage also has a 2 ssd mounts, and i fixed a 3.5 to 2x ssd bracket to the bottom of the case too. so all up installed is 1x 5.25 12x 3.5 and 4x 2.5 ssd (there is heaps of room to install more ssds elsewhere with some mods) i'll try and post some pictures soon..

edit - picture..

Steve

 

[J. Michael Henry]

Thanks for the pic Steve!

Can you point me in the right direction on what to look for in a board that can handle those 12+ drives?

 

[5teve]

I'll certainly try!

I'm not sure there are any motherboards out there that will handle that many disks.. the one I have (asrock rack c226ws) has 10 ports but 4 are the dreaded Marvel chipset, so only 6 on the intel chipset. Fine for boot ssd's and the optical drive.

Options for the 12x drives (and other ssd's) are an 8 port HBA or raid card (depending on your usage) and a sas expander card or a 16+ port card. - i'll be going the 16+ port card to keep things less busy however the card i'll be using has 8 internal and 16 external. I have a small 8088 to 8084 pci bracket to bring some external ports back inside the case using some short 8088 cables. Mini SAS 26F/SFF 8088 to Mini SAS 36F/SFF 8087 Adapter Card - Dual Port - Free Shipping - DealExtreme

No Pictures yet as i'm waiting on things to turn up from various suppliers.

My biggest headache so far is the wiring, I have ordered some molex sata power connectors to modify the power supply to have more sata connectors as there isnt room to be using splitters really. This is where backplanes excel

Steve

 

[Patrick]

Thanks for the pic Steve!

Can you point me in the right direction on what to look for in a board that can handle those 12+ drives?

You actually have a lot of options if you can use a mATX or larger. This is my go-to board if I do not need much in terms of CPU power/ RAM: http://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-x10sl7-f-motherboard-review-haswell-intel-xeon-e3-1200-v3/ which is under $250 (see Amazon as an example).

 

[5teve]

Nice board Patrick!

I may have chose that if I had known.. except it is over $400aud here! still not bad when you consider the cost of an add on card... it would be nice to have as good a selection and pricing as you guys get over the pond.. it took a couple of months for my asrock board to arrive!

Steve

 

[Deci]

if you are willing to pay the freight you can get all the US stuff here.

 

[5teve]

I do.. but sometimes it works out more cost wise than waiting.. Some ebay sellers charge well above the usps rates for postage, which makes it quite unattractive...

most of the stuff for my latest build (cost wise) has been sourced from the states, but then I lose the GST advantage (for a business)

Steve

 

[J. Michael Henry]

'scuse the ignorance guys...

I built my current setup which consists of a modest board and chip, 16GB of RAM, a RAID card and 8 harddrives...

With the exception of the harddrives, the entire system was less than $200...

Patrick, why the heck is that board a good deal at under $250!?

I know it's probably a difference in class of hardware so if you can school me a bit I would be forever grateful...

 

[5teve]

I'll let patrick answer.. but I cannot buy 16gb of ram for less than $200... so how are you getting a system for that price

I was originally going to buy the hard disks for close to $200 each!.. then I found goharddrive..

Steve

 

[J. Michael Henry]

ehhh $200 total MIGHT have been a stretch but RAM shouldn't be that expensive...from what I remember (the hazy fog may have lifted a bit) maybe it was $60 a stick...

Anyways...look forward to some education from Patrick...

 

[swerff]

I took a Dremel and cut a hole in top of one and bottom of another, fired up the mig and spot welded 2 cases together.

2 $20 cases with 9 5.25 bays.

Using those with 4 of those 3bay to 4 3.5" converter thingys, 16 HDDs with a fan in front of them., and 2 5.25" ports open for more crazy ideas.

There's 3 things I hate spending money on, 2 are guaranteed money pits, and none are investments....

Technology, vehicles, and taxes.

 

[Patrick]

RAM prices were a lot less expensive 18 months ago. Now things are quite expensive. I got 16GB sticks of DDR4 for $155/ ea and was feeling good about it.

 

[J. Michael Henry]

Hey Patrick!

Can you respond to my question above?

 

[Patrick]

Hey Patrick!

Can you respond to my question above?

Ah sorry, skimming on phone. I think a lot of this is in the review.

The the X10SL7-F has an onboard LSI SAS2308. That is a ~$200 on ebay card. That gives 6x onboard SATA ports and 8x SAS/ SATA 6gbps ports. The motherboard is somewhat comparable to the X10SLH-F which runs just over $200 itself. So you are basically getting a $200 controller onboard for an additional $50 or so. You also get a bit of flexibility since if you were to put this in a 1U one day, you could do so an still use a 1U riser and have an expansion slot open.

This is only a 14 drive solution but it fits in the middle of your range, is a lower power platform and is much cheaper than buying the pieces.

You also get things like IPMI remote management which makes remote administration significantly easier.

 

[J. Michael Henry]

Excellent thanks for the info...make sense...

 

[J. Michael Henry]

Would you recommend something like the for an unraid solution that boots with a USB device?

 

[Patrick]

Would you recommend something like the for an unraid solution that boots with a USB device?

I have not used unraid in some time because I prefer alternatives, but staying on topic, this would be fine and you could get by with a lower-end CPU such as a Core i3 and lower amounts of RAM to keep costs down.

 

[cheezehead]

You could always pick up a used DL180 (12-bay in a 2U form, optional 14-bay version) for around $300ish

HP Proliant DL180SE G6 2X Quad Core L5520 2 26GHz 8GB Single PSU P410 | eBay