Norco RPC-4224 backplane, or alterative Chassis

[snowmirage]

After years of having my home lab in a hand built crazy chassis I finally moved into a new home where I had room for the 6ft tall server Rack I've had in storage since college.

If you're curious check out the tail end of this post.

An Introduction to Project EGOR the never ending story.

*Incoming log winded post showcasing a bunch of tech gear I hope I do the Linus Tech Tips community proud!* (Skip to the end for the "good stuff") I stumbled across the Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel a few months back and I've been hooked ever since! I've been far to busy the last few months to ...

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I bit the bullet and bought a Norco RPC-4224 off amazon to house the 24 3.5" drives.

I've recently had a number of drives seem to fail (running Unraid) after testing those drives after replacing them, I'm not sure the drives really failed. I think the Norco backplane is just kinda trash and dropping power or such (I've seen a number of other threads discussing similar issues).

Searching around for a replacement backplane it seems thats pretty much unobtainium...

Can anyone recommend a chassis I could truly rely on? I need something that...

1) Is "affordable" for a home lab.
less than $1k, ideally less than $600/700

2) at least 24x 3.5" Hot SATA swap bays. I'd take more...
I have no intention of truly hot swapping drives I just want to be able to replace a failing drive without taking the thing out of the rack and/or having to open up the case.

3) Support standard ATX motherboard (I'm running a Ryzen 3950x at the moment)

4) Supports a standard ATX power supply
I already have a Corsair AX1200i

5) Supports full height PCI slots

 

[i386]

A supermicro 836 or 846 could be great for almost all the points you listed. The only "problem" is #4 as supermicro rackmount chassis use "non atx" form factor + power distribution boards...

Searching around for a replacement backplane it seems thats pretty much unobtainium...

That's the problem with many cheap rackmount chassis, once they go "end of life" the manufacturer replace them with newer version with incompatible parts or the products/spare parts disappear forever...

 

[snowmirage]

A supermicro 836 or 846 could be great for almost all the points you listed. The only "problem" is #4 as supermicro rackmount chassis use "non atx" form factor + power distribution boards...


That's the problem with many cheap rackmount chassis, once they go "end of life" the manufacturer replace them with newer version with incompatible parts or the products/spare parts disappear forever...

I've never actually had hands on one of those super micro chassis. The main reason I've stuck with a standard ATX power supply is I need PCI-E power for several video cards, is there a good way to do that with those server PSUs? If they can support that and the power connections for standard ATX Motherboards I could make that work.

 

[twf85]

Hello, first time poster here! Apologies for resurrecting this thread, but it seems to be the most recent one I could find re: the Norco backplane issue.

I bit the bullet and bought a Norco RPC-4224 off amazon to house the 24 3.5" drives.

I've recently had a number of drives seem to fail (running Unraid) after testing those drives after replacing them, I'm not sure the drives really failed. I think the Norco backplane is just kinda trash and dropping power or such (I've seen a number of other threads discussing similar issues).

I am in the same boat, except I purchased my case in 2019 and I am running FreeNAS. The (seemingly) false positives for failures are irritating.

If you haven't already, I would recommend that you check your drive temps. I recently discovered mine were way too high (with some approaching 60), so I am going to add more airflow to see if I can get them into the 40ish range. I have a floor fan blasting the front of my case now, and I am only seeing a couple drives in the 50s.

Frustratingly I did this to myself. I didn't like how loud the original fans were, so I replaced them with "Noctua NF-F12" fans without thinking it through (or doing any post-installation drive temp testing). The Noctuas are certainly quiet, but they top out at 1500 RPM.

To troubleshoot, I ordered "be quiet! Silent Wings 4 Pro" fans that can spin up to 3000 RPM that should be arriving soon. I know they are much louder than the Noctuas at full speed because I have them in my current desktop, but I would welcome the noise if the increased airflow improves reliability and reduces error rates.

I would also recommend installing a power supply with enough Molex connectors to directly connect only one or two backplanes per cable. I installed a Platinum rated 1500W PSU from Corsair that seemed to reduce the frequency of the failures compared to the 850W PSU (likely less efficiency and made by Seasonic) I had previously.

Searching around for a replacement backplane it seems thats pretty much unobtainium...

There is a site ("sg dash norco dot com") that purportedly still offers the backplanes, but I have never reached out to request an order. And given the reports of failures, I am unlikely to jump through any hoops or pay the ~$100+ per backplane they are asking.

Can anyone recommend a chassis I could truly rely on? I need something that...

1) Is "affordable" for a home lab.
less than $1k, ideally less than $600/700

2) at least 24x 3.5" Hot SATA swap bays. I'd take more...
I have no intention of truly hot swapping drives I just want to be able to replace a failing drive without taking the thing out of the rack and/or having to open up the case.

3) Support standard ATX motherboard (I'm running a Ryzen 3950x at the moment)

4) Supports a standard ATX power supply
I already have a Corsair AX1200i

5) Supports full height PCI slots

As @i386 recommended, something from Supermicro is likely where you should look. I am currently trying to get an 800 series myself, though the pickings are as slim right now as the costs are high. While I wait for an affordable case to pop-up, I am contemplating modifying the Norco case to accept the 846 backplane and drive caddies.

To that end, it appears there are three modifications required to allow the Norco case to accept the Supermicro components:

1. Remove the Norco backplanes and then trim the rear of the drive cage housing back an inch or two.
2. Add mounting points (top) and holes (top and bottom) for the Supermicro backplane.
3. Cut new holes in the bottom left of each drive bay for the Supermicro drive caddies.

#3 could be skipped if there was a dive caddy out there with a top-left lock and mid-right LEDs (or if you didn't care about the status LEDs), but the closest I came to sourcing substitutes that would be compatible with the Norco drive bays and the Supermicro LEDs was the "Cisco 800-37836-01/800-37836-02" caddies. Unfortunately, for those to be functional, I believe you would need to trim off some of the plastic from the locking nubs and the LEDs would be altered (due to the the LEDs tapering down at the end instead of continuing straight, you would lose the bottom/"activity" LED on the drive cage and your top LED for the drive cage would most likely connect with the "connection status" LED (instead of the expected "activity" LEDs in the Supermicro backplane)).

Alternatively, if you had the design for the housing for the Supermicro drive bays and access to a machine shop (which is everyone, now that we have sites like pcbway), you should be able to assemble your own housing for the drive bays that you could slot in. This would be ideal, because it would allow you to restore the Norco housing if there was an issue with the Supermicro backplane. (I may have just talked myself into this.)

If I end up attempting to modify or replace the housing for the drive bays to use the Supermicro backplane, I will show my work so others may benefit.

But I'm curious: What did you end up doing to solve your problem?