SuperMicro 24bay vs 36bay 4U Chassis

[ViciousXUSMC]

Curious about any pro's/con's I should be aware of between these two Chassis.

The obvious difference is the back of the 36 bay holds more drives (probably more than I would need) and as a result it looks like it cuts the inside of the case in half as far as workable space.

If I go for a used server chassis instead of building my own server with desktop parts, noise is a big concern. I was reading the 4U Chassis give you room to upgrade the fans to bigger and quieter versions, so I may lose some of that flexibility in the 36bay version, however many of the 36bay Chassis come with the SQ power supplies and so far the listing I have been seeing better hardware.

Between the two I have on my watch list right now here is a 24bay: 4U Supermicro 24 Bay SAS2 6Gbs FREENAS JBOD HBA Storage Server 2x Hex Core 96GB | eBay

And here is a 36 Bay: Supermicro 4U 36 Bay Storage Server SAS2 FREENAS 2x E5-2660 8 Core SATA-Dom 64GB

I am heavily leaning to the 36bay right now for the better CPU's and the SQ power supplies, however if the 24 bay chassis is the better to build from, maybe I should keep looking until I find one with hardware I like more.

 

[cheezehead]

It really depends on what you need. How many drives are you planning on using? Are you planning on using any PCIe cards?

 

[Fritz]

The 36 bay includes SQ PSU's. It also contains a newer MB/CPU.

 

[Patrick]

Just as a FYI I have started to use the 36 and 45 bay units for DemoEval storage. Overall, I think they are easier to service than top loads. The trick is that sometimes ZeroU PDUs can get in the way of the rear drive bays so I generally use SSDs there just to limit the number of times I might need to open them up.

On the 36/45 bays the other consideration is backplanes. For the 45 bay you want dual SAS2 or SAS3 which is easy to find. For the 36 bay there are also straight through backplanes. These are really nice if you want maximum performance however you need to source 36/4= 9 internal SFF-8087 or SFF-8643 ports. That can be troublesome since using 8 port controllers you need 5 controllers to make everything light up.

The 36 bays also have dual fans in their inner fan banks. That is good for redundancy but is not ideal if you want to swap them out.

 

[StammesOpfer]

The 24 vs 36 does not affect modding the fanwall. The split happens right behind the fanwall. As for space working in a 36 is not more difficult only consideration would be if you wanted to use tall CPU coolers or full height add on cards. The 36 is essentially 4u in the front and 2x 2u in the back so the cpu coolers and add on cards are all exactly the same as if it was a 2u case. I have a 36-bay that I modded a 120mm fanwall into and swapped the rear 12x 3.5" bay for 24 2.5" bays. If you have any specific questions just ask.

That 36-bay looks nice only knock is that it is maxed out on 4GB sticks of ram. If you ever need more you are starting from scratch.

P.S. Make sure you use that best offer button. You can lowball they have a number in mind already they will counter.

 

[pricklypunter]

That 36-bay chassis is nice, also comes with a pretty good configuration for the money. Between those two, I would have the 36-bay one

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

Thanks guys, this is probably the #1 pick for me right now: 3U Supermicro 16 Bay SAS2 LSI FREENAS Storage Server 2x Xeon Sandy Bridge 2x PS | eBay

I think 3u should be able to fit everything I need in it, asked the seller what model PS it comes with they are gold so probably not the SQ ones.

The number of drives is great, cpu is good, ram is good, leaves me room to upgrade as needed and wont hurt the pocket book quite as much up front. I'll still keep an eye out for the "perfect" setup or atleast one that will require very little upgrading for a good cost.