Scaling back NAS budget: Looking for a $100 case for storage

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Alfa147x

Active Member
Feb 7, 2014
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Since my previous thread I've had to re-evaluate my NAS budget so I need a cheaper case.
Requirements:
  • ATX (Supermicro X8ST3-F)
  • Tons of 3.5" slots!

What I would like:
  • Easy cable management
  • Simplified drive swap process
    • Hot swap?
  • Comfortable installation of a Noctua NH-U12DX i4

I spent ages looking for a medium depth case with lots of hot swap bays but can't find anything around $100. Looking for suggestions!

Options:
  • Rackmount:
    • NORCO RPC-431
      • 9 drives
      • $82
    • RSV-L4000
      • 12 drives
      • $130
    • Rosewill RSV-R4000
      • 11 drives
      • $85
    • NORCO RPC-430
      • 8 drives
      • $70
    • ARK 4U406
      • 11
      • $54
  • Desktop:
    • NZXT Source 210
      • 11 drives
      • $30
    • Rosewill WolfAlloy
      • 10 drives
      • $80
    • Fractal Design Define R4
      • 10 drives
      • $90

Old thread: Looking for budget friendly 3U or 4U server chassis for storage
 

pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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Would this help/ interest you?

This is the seller of the Chenbro 12 bay 6Gbps chassis that I am planning to use for my new build: Chenbro Micom 2U Rackmount Server Case ATX 12 X3.5 SAS / SATA RM23212 NO PSU

He accepted a reasonable offer for it, but I thought it was already sitting at a fair asking price. I only really put in the offer as I needed a little help with the shipping cost. They are a real bricks and mortar outfit, most likely just disposing of some excess stock or cancelled orders.
It's maybe at the higher end of your budget, but looks like reasonable quality for the money and it's all hot-swap ready. If asthetics mean anything to you, it's not bad looking either :)

I know that there were some reports of odd behaviour and random drive drop outs with some of the earlier Chenbro chassis, but having seen some of that first hand from various friends and a few sme builds that I have dealt with in the past, in my experience it was mainly down to either using the wrong screws on the drive caddies, causing skew as they went in, or bad/ poor quality cables and misconfiguration. I have seen one or two dodgy power supply issues as well. I don't think I have actually witnessed an actual faulty backplane from Chenbro, but obviously I would encourage you to read up on them before buying and make your own mind up if it's worth taking the plunge with.

The trade forums here also have a load of members selling on some chassis plus all sorts of gear that will make you drool, maybe post a wanted ad in there too, perhaps one of the kind members there would do you a wee deal?
Be warned though, if you don't hit the back button within a half hour of browsing the ads, your wallet will run for cover on its own :p
 

shhyguuy

New Member
Jul 10, 2015
21
2
3
+1 on the chenbro. Good quality per dollar. I have a very similar case, just rebranded by a different chinese manufacturer, with a slightly different fan wall and different buttona. Works great for my uses
 

Alfa147x

Active Member
Feb 7, 2014
189
39
28
Would this help/ interest you?

This is the seller of the Chenbro 12 bay 6Gbps chassis that I am planning to use for my new build: Chenbro Micom 2U Rackmount Server Case ATX 12 X3.5 SAS / SATA RM23212 NO PSU

He accepted a reasonable offer for it, but I thought it was already sitting at a fair asking price. I only really put in the offer as I needed a little help with the shipping cost. They are a real bricks and mortar outfit, most likely just disposing of some excess stock or cancelled orders.
It's maybe at the higher end of your budget, but looks like reasonable quality for the money and it's all hot-swap ready. If asthetics mean anything to you, it's not bad looking either :)

I know that there were some reports of odd behaviour and random drive drop outs with some of the earlier Chenbro chassis, but having seen some of that first hand from various friends and a few sme builds that I have dealt with in the past, in my experience it was mainly down to either using the wrong screws on the drive caddies, causing skew as they went in, or bad/ poor quality cables and misconfiguration. I have seen one or two dodgy power supply issues as well. I don't think I have actually witnessed an actual faulty backplane from Chenbro, but obviously I would encourage you to read up on them before buying and make your own mind up if it's worth taking the plunge with.

The trade forums here also have a load of members selling on some chassis plus all sorts of gear that will make you drool, maybe post a wanted ad in there too, perhaps one of the kind members there would do you a wee deal?
Be warned though, if you don't hit the back button within a half hour of browsing the ads, your wallet will run for cover on its own :p
+1 on the chenbro. Good quality per dollar. I have a very similar case, just rebranded by a different chinese manufacturer, with a slightly different fan wall and different buttona. Works great for my uses
Thanks folks, I haven't come across that Chenbro system
I like that it comes with 6Gb/s SATA backplane but I'm a bit concerned about noise with that form factor. We're getting ready to downsize from 1200 square feet to about 800 square feet and consolidating rooms.

Any idea how loud this box is?

Another concern is a place to mount it since it's a full depth rack mount chassis. I'll do some measuring tonight
 

pricklypunter

Well-Known Member
Nov 10, 2015
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I can't say exactly how loud my box will be in the end, but I'm not expecting it to be too bad. It's certainly not going to be on the supermicro scale of deafening noise :)

That being said, a server/ storage shelf isn't a desktop. When it's stuffed full of 7k2 magnetics going at it full throttle, it's going to bring with it some noise. It only gets louder the faster the spindle speeds. Fan noise generally speaking is rarely an issue in a chassis unless you have poor or restricted airflow in your box and things start heating. At that point any fan control setup you have, will ramp up the fan speeds accordingly, to try and cool things down. So ambient air temperature will also play a large part. If you are bringing in hot air, and pushing it through your chassis at high speed, your cooling is much less effective. Slow, steady cool airflow is what you want to give it, so that the cool air has just enough contact time to carry the heat away. Sensible routing of cable forms etc also goes a long way, don't obviously have large items like brackets, batteries or bundles of cables in your airflow. Another source of noise is coupled noise, so any vibration in your chassis will be induced to it's surroundings. Mount your chassis in such a way that you decouple or dampen that transmission otherwise you'll turn everything it touches into a large soundbox, just like strings vibrating on a guitar is amplified by the soundbox because they are coupled to it at the bridge. Obviously stuffing the box under a table over the top of a floor register is not the way to go either :)

If all else fails, headphones are cheap :p
 

Alfa147x

Active Member
Feb 7, 2014
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I can't say exactly how loud my box will be in the end, but I'm not expecting it to be too bad. It's certainly not going to be on the supermicro scale of deafening noise :)

That being said, a server/ storage shelf isn't a desktop. When it's stuffed full of 7k2 magnetics going at it full throttle, it's going to bring with it some noise. It only gets louder the faster the spindle speeds. Fan noise generally speaking is rarely an issue in a chassis unless you have poor or restricted airflow in your box and things start heating. At that point any fan control setup you have, will ramp up the fan speeds accordingly, to try and cool things down. So ambient air temperature will also play a large part. If you are bringing in hot air, and pushing it through your chassis at high speed, your cooling is much less effective. Slow, steady cool airflow is what you want to give it, so that the cool air has just enough contact time to carry the heat away. Sensible routing of cable forms etc also goes a long way, don't obviously have large items like brackets, batteries or bundles of cables in your airflow. Another source of noise is coupled noise, so any vibration in your chassis will be induced to it's surroundings. Mount your chassis in such a way that you decouple or dampen that transmission otherwise you'll turn everything it touches into a large soundbox, just like strings vibrating on a guitar is amplified by the soundbox because they are coupled to it at the bridge. Obviously stuffing the box under a table over the top of a floor register is not the way to go either :)

If all else fails, headphones are cheap :p

Thanks for the info! So a bit new to this, how do I know what riser card to order?
Thoughts on the SeaSonic SS-400L2U as the PSU?
 

shhyguuy

New Member
Jul 10, 2015
21
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Thanks for the info! So a bit new to this, how do I know what riser card to order?
Thoughts on the SeaSonic SS-400L2U as the PSU?
Just fyi. I have mine running in my room. Its not too loud, you can change out the fanwall to noctuas and it is really quiet. Im only running 5400rpm drives to keep the noise and heat down


In regards to the seasonic, it should work fine. I had trouble deciding which to get as well, i ultimately decided on the athena power 800w, only because it was on sale. Athena Power AP-RRP4ATX6808 20+4Pin 2 x 800W Redundant 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATLAS 800 PLUS Server Power Supply with PM Bus - Newegg.com
 
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pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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That seasonic power supply is ok and for the price will do you to get started with, however, its fan is well known to be sub-par and noisy and the supply generally isn't as reliable as it could be. For the money though, it's not the worst choice. The seller I listed for the case also does a cheap ACBEL FS9030 400w 1U supply, why not get them to stick one in the case for you at the same time, it also should be good enough to get started with, and is half the price of the seasonic. Save up your pennies for a decent gold rated redundant supply and add it later, maybe one of the Zippy's or something along those lines :)

The riser card would depend on what mainboard you are using, but for the board you mentioned in your op, either of these depending on your use case:

RSC-RR1U-E16 - PCI-E x16 1U
RSC-RR1U-E8 - PCI-E x8 Riser Card
 

pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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That's a good price on that Rosewill case and I agree, it should be easier to make the fans quieter with that setup, because the chassis fans would be 80/ 120mm and can rotate a little slower . You would still have spindle noise and vibration to deal with. The chassis may be a little less stout though as the drive cages are then modular and have a lot more room for flex and movement in them. About my only concern with those 3x cages is the single fan on the end of a sealed box. If for any reason the fan doesn't pull its weight, your cooking up to 4 disks before fan fail or overtemp kicks in. These things might not be an issue, but something to consider in practise :)

For the money though, that wouldn't be a bad way to go either. The bonus of having a half depth cab also means easier mounting options, plus you can add a much larger chip cooler giving you more fan options than you would have in a 2U format chassis. I wouldn't go the standard ATX power supply route though for anything other than setup, config and testing. Just about any decent server rated supply will happily outstrip it in terms of cleanliness of supply rails, peak current handling capability and of course reliability.

Whatever you do, specify your supply requirements to handle all your drives starting up at the same time plus whatever you expect the mainboard and expansion cards to pull and add 50%. On idle most supplies will not have a lot to choose between them in terms of power draw, but on demand you are looking for both efficiency and a very conservative safe margin of headroom. The less hard your supply has to try in order to give clean power to everything, the less heat needs to be generated and the lower your fan speeds need to be to keep things cool. Just because a supply is rated at a gazillion watts doesn't mean that it will necessarily be supplying that, only what the components require will be drawn, plus a little for conversion wastage.

I must admit, I was tempted to go a very similar route for much the same reasons as has already been mentioned, but there's no getting away from enterprise level equipment for robustness and build quality. There's not a lot in it moneywise at this level of the game, with either approach, so that's less of a deciding factor, well for me anyway.
 

pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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Here is an unboxing of the RSV-R4000 for a better look of what you would be getting:

This isn't me btw, just something I tripped over tonight :)
 

canta

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Nov 26, 2014
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if you insist to use Rosewill, get RSV-L4500...
I know that I bought years back when they released the firstime on newegg was $70 including shipping,
oh btw, RSV-L4500 fans are sucks!!! sleeve bearing and not last long.
you need to get "good" 3 fronts fans and 2 back fans, and Make sure to put in you cost estimation.

The aluminum bar in the middle can be easy to hack for attaching any board. you just need drill and L shape size metal or abs...

oops:
try to get ball bearing rails:D.
As I remember, the new version was using non-ball bearing, that was cheap!!
finding this rails is hard since you plan to put in the rack...
good luck!!!
 

canta

Well-Known Member
Nov 26, 2014
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Please let us know how the Rosewell case work out for the EATX borads.
the case can accommodates EATX :p...
I have 4500 and 4000 (new),
not used 4500 anymore since move to SM...
 

whitey

Moderator
Jun 30, 2014
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My vote for super cheap chassis w/ decent hot-swap setup take the Chenbro route and see if you can get it for a $100 offer, looks like a more 'solid build' to me. Hell if I had seen that when getting my norco 2212 I would have probably bit and had a real 'frankenzombie' setup here (1 SM, 1 norco, 1 chenbro) hah
 

pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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I would actually go as far as saying if you had a dremel and a sharpie handy...that Chenbro chassis would make a nice compact storage shelf :)
 

pyro_

Active Member
Oct 4, 2013
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I am looking at the Norco 340 for my next case for my storage server. 3u and roughly 17" deep fits 9x3.5" drives and has 3x5.25" which I am going to mount icy dock hot swap racks into for 2.5" drives