Icy Dock MB699VP-B - 4x NVMe U.2 SSD in 5.25" - $185
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Yes, it makes a interesting sound when you move it and it should not be done while its on.
Its not like 8 nvme drives on a build based on consumer platform/mobo is out of the question tho.
But the card used to connect them would not be considered consumer hardware.
haha!
Yes, agreed. Hard enough to do well mid-grade enterprise gear, little mind cheaper options. To do it well, it's using oculink or mcio connectors. Definitely not inexpensive at that point. That's where going with a Dell/HP/Lenovo bare chassis is probably easier than a consumer machine. The Icydock is simpler if you want to avoid that. A Dell 7820 with the NVME kit I believe can do 4 drives. Not the fastest, but, you'll get move PCIe lanes for home use. I have one and used it for that purpose for a while. Moved on to the Threadripper machines and u2 and m2 carriers to get to the 10 drive limit. I had some inexpensive Dell quad m2 carriers that worked ok, but where pcie 3.0 only. Moved on to Asus hyper cards for PCIe 4.0 and they work pretty good for m2 drives, but are more expensive than the icydock.
I have four U.2 drives in a printed cage in my desktop and the cables are still a huge problem, they're relatively stiff and aren't positively retained in each drive so it took me probably three hours carefully adjusting and zip tying things together before I could get all of them all installed in the case without disconnecting one or more drives during the process. A bigger case would have made things less difficult, but the real solution is a proper backplane, even with no intention of hot swapping.
From my perspective the only real market for these things is people trying to turn desktops into servers, and the only good reason to do that is for noise or space constraints.
I’ve got a 16-bay 2.5” SATA cage from IcyDock because I don’t want to deal with the noise/size of a DL380 or R730, but as pointed out above I can buy a whole DL380 for less than the price of the IcyDock cage alone and have 8 more drive bays to boot…
the economics aren’t there. But for folks who want an ATX form factor and quiet enough to sit on one’s desk it makes sense.
I’ve got a 16-bay 2.5” SATA cage from IcyDock because I don’t want to deal with the noise/size of a DL380 or R730, but as pointed out above I can buy a whole DL380 for less than the price of the IcyDock cage alone and have 8 more drive bays to boot…
the economics aren’t there. But for folks who want an ATX form factor and quiet enough to sit on one’s desk it makes sense.
There are rack chassis with 5.25 bays also. These can make sense but not at $200+
That's been my gripe with icydock for some time - way too expensive for the target market!
If going with rack anyway it would be cheaper to just grab the dl380/r730 and address the fan noise tho.
But i agree they are way too expensive overall, i got a few of these olmaster 6x 2.5" that ive bought in the 30-40$ range.
When i looked at getting the icydock equivalents they were almost 5x that in stores here.
You can do a decent amount of drives without backplanes if you plan the cables a bit tho.
20+ drives does not have to be a mess if buying the right cables.
In any case, the answer to U.2 isn't icydock, it's the Intel 8 slot hybrid cages, backplanes are cheap: Intel 8-Bay PCIe SAS/SATA Backplane Board P/N: H88386-251 Tested Working | eBay and there are some deals on full cages with trays (even with shipping to the US this is pretty good): Intel RR2000 2.5" 8 Bay SAS SATA Hard Drive Backplane Cage and Caddy H88386-250 | eBay
They take a standard 4 pin 12V power connector and I've read that they fit in a 2x5.25 bay without much work. Cooling is going to require some creativity, especially for hotter drives, but you have to address that with direct wiring too.
They take a standard 4 pin 12V power connector and I've read that they fit in a 2x5.25 bay without much work. Cooling is going to require some creativity, especially for hotter drives, but you have to address that with direct wiring too.
How do you know this particular cage works with NVMe? In the seller's listing it says SAS/SATA
Its sas/sata/nvme and probably just taken from a server just using it as sas/sata.How do you know this particular cage works with NVMe? In the seller's listing it says SAS/SATA
Fairly standard to use the same cage in multiple models without using all functionality in all.
See the same for the gigabyte sas/sata/nvme backplanes that i got also, alot of them listed as just sas/sata since out of servers that did not connect the nvme.
The positive thing about this is that they get priced as they do.
Eight OcULink ports is a giveaway, the non-NVMe versions don't have those populated, or at least I assume that version exists because the previous generation that supports four NVMe slots out of eight total is commonly found with empty pads for the four extra SFF8643 ports.How do you know this particular cage works with NVMe? In the seller's listing it says SAS/SATA
As far as I know they only shipped with LGA3647 boards, so I would assume they're only PCIe 3.0, but I don't have any 4.0 gear so I haven't looked into it further.
Just a heads-up here: I bought two of those mid-Dec'24 (same UK seller) and the listing's Condition: of "Used: Fully Tested & Working" (apparently) didn't include the (even basic) functioning of the [green] bay status lights. One unit had 2/8 DOA; the other 6/8. Also, the shipping (to US), also then listed as International Priority, was, in fact, via UPS' slowest/cheapest Economy service, with final delivery by UPS Mail Innovations/USPS.
Regardless, still a good value.
I just briefly tested mine (from that seller also) and I don't think I would have even noticed if the one slot I tried had a working status light... naturally now that I found an ATX case that I like with no front bays I can't find any that I like with 2 5.25", so mine is sitting on a shelf until I do something silly with a thunderbolt dock or an angle grinder.
I have a case with 11x 5¼" front bays, with no separators (like extra flanges for support). Right now I use it for storage of a couple of 5-in-3 3½" bays and a variety of 2½" bay pods (6-in-1 and 4-in-1).
I've been thinking about using it for something like these kinds of bays, but the cooling isn't really good enough. There's no built-in fan wall, and even dropping one in probably wouldn't get enough air through a bunch of drives.
these are definitely very interesting but the “gotta figure out cooling” bit is an understatement. I’m not sure I see a world in which that is installed inside of an ATX case and the drives don’t melt unless it sounds like a 747 taking off…in a big enough case I guess you could dremel out the top/sides/bottom and then put a 120mm fan across the top but I dunno if you’d get enough static pressure out of that to keep drives cool when they’re all so close together.