Short depth chassis for E-ATX (Asus Z9PED8-WS) and SSI CEB (Supermicro X8DTL-iF and co)

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anomaly

Active Member
Jan 8, 2018
235
48
28
Hi!

I'm located in SW Europe right now and I have to rebuild my homelab. Currently I have a Asus Z9PED8-WS motherboard housed in a massive Lian Li case with two E5-2600 v2 CPUs and 64GB ECC. I want to move it to my new 60cm rack cabinet, in a proper enclosure that maximizes storage options for combined SSD and HDD (purpose is VM host + compilation farm and other functions).

I also have a X8DTL-iF from SM, with two 5600s Westmere CPUs. Currently no ECC ram for that one, and I would like to also maximize storage options, since I'm not sure what final purpose I will give to this one. Perhaps secondary NAS or research for assorted stuff.

I'm quite stuck with case selection, since I measured the distance between posts (I moved the posts to bring the front closer to the door, which works but means I have to watch out for clearance with accessories like cable management covers, since the rings sticking out past 6cm will hit the door and I don't have my 3d printer ready to make my own rings to fit).

So far I looked into these ones:

One thing that is frustrating is that not all vendors provide drawings to actually see how much of that total depth is brackets/front/handles+case, like these:

  1. https://www.inter-tech.de/en/support/downloads/misc/871-technical-drawing-3u-30248/file
  2. (I can add some more later)
So far, the Inter-Tech 4408 seems decent, if I can somehow put SSDs in there, and not have issues with the different controllers of the Z9PED8-WS. For the CEB MBs, like the X8DTL-iF, I would like to use a nicer looking case, maybe Chenbro, and rely on IcyDock or their own caddys and bay converters.

  • Is this sensible or I could save money/future proof the design by selling the Z9PED8-WS and getting, say, a Supermicro board that supports the E5-2600 v2 CPU series and has a smaller form factor?
  • Would it make sense to use the Westmere platform since I have the CPUs and MB (which I paid for locally... that was not cheap). I have a EVGA SR-2 Classified too that I intended to sell, to cover up some costs, since it fits nowhere beyond the Lian Li case, and I would not use it any more.
  • Space is limited, otherwise I would perhaps get a new case for my Ryzen desktop build, and then just use the Lian Li case to house the Z9PED8-WS and have a tower chassis server, but this defeats the point of buying the cabinet (which I will use for SDR and RF r&d too, so there will be other rackmounted homemade devices connected there).
Thanks in advance!
 

rb666

New Member
Feb 14, 2019
1
0
1
I also have a 60cm rack. Curious what you ended up with. I currently am using a Inter-Tech IPC 4U-4408, but plan to upgrade to a Inter-Tech IPC 3U-30248 as it has a superior disk layout (using Mediasonic HT31-304 HDD cages).