Question 5U Rackmount Case

[CyclicUser]

Considering building a new workstation in a rackmount case. Thinking a 5U case would accommodate one of the 120mm cpu coolers.
I found a 5U case that that had a front right side cage to accommodate 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 drives and memory chip readers.
However, the left front of the case was set up for dual PSU's.
What I'm looking for is a case that has the PSU at the right rear and the left front has provision for an intake fan and filter.
Seems like you could accommodate a 200mm fan at the left front.
Has anyone seen such a case?

 

[Tech Junky]

There are a few options that come to mind for storage setups that are big enough to rig a fan In the front using two of the bays for disks. They're more of a cube shape though than a pizza box. Rosewill makes some pizza cases though that might be a workable solution. Typically though these cases rely on small 80mm fans at full tilt which is why they're loud. It might be easier to get something like a node 804 and mount a shelf in the rack and sit it on that. They're pretty compact at somewhere around 18" cubed. Fits 8 HDDs and isolates them from the computer side I sperate chambers for better cooling. And you can fit 8 regular sized fans inside.

 

[CyclicUser]

I have 2 older California PC products 4U cases that I am using. They have a bay on the right front with 3 5 1/4 bays and one 3 1/2 bay. I use these for Blu Ray recorders, a hard drive docking station, and a memory card reader. On the left front of the case is a removable filter with two 80mm fans behind it. Behind that is a drive cage for hard drives. I took that out as I am using the on board PCIE SSD's. This gives a direct line from the front fans across the motherboard as the PSU is on the right rear. The 4U case accommodates a Noctua NH-U9S CPU cooler but it will not accommodate a Noctua NH-U12A CPU cooler.
What I was searching for was a 5U case set up the same way.

 

[Tech Junky]

Ahh, so height is the issue for the cooler going from 90mm to 120mm.

Any particular reason for switching the cooler?

Have you considered LC? Low profile and then just find a spot for the radiator.

 

[CyclicUser]

I didn't want to go to LC.
I wanted to go with as large an air cooler that would fit and with as potent a CPU as the cooler would cool.
I have a 36U rack with room to add a 5U chassis.

 

[CyclicUser]

SilverStone has a 5U rackmount case (RM51) that has a backend set up the way I would want it. However, the rest of the case is not.
I guess no one uses a 5U case for a workstation.
The cases I see are tower cases at least 5U wide and set up for water cooling.

 

[Micrornd]

For my Plex Server I went with a Rosewill RSV-L4500U 4u Case, 6x120mm and 2x80mm fans are included and quiet, foam filter on the front door, and it can accommodate 15x3.5" HDDs (or with adapters 30x2.5" SSDs)
One of my Lepa 1600w PSUs fits easily in the right rear of the case.
The case takes up to a 12"x13" EATX board.
I used a 590 series board and the only limitation was overall height of the HS/fan cooler.
I went with a AK120-Black Thermalright Heatsink that's 154mm high (which has room to spare) and that series is available with either 1 or 2 120mm fans.
Cheapest ($230) at Amazon or Newegg on Ebay, but YMMV.

 

[Ajay]

Noctua NH-D12L is a low profile (145mm) 120mm tower cooler.

 

[aigomorla]

5U are suitcases for audio eq no?

The largest server case i know of is 4U.
Anything larger and its usually meant for DJ's to lug around like luggage or its a UPS.

 

[Micrornd]

5U are suitcases for audio eq no?

Actually, no.
Dell, HP, IBM and Cisco (there may be others) all package some of their servers in 5u cases, I've even had (long gone now) some old gateway servers in a 6u case.
You can still find some new generic (non-OEM)/industrial cases in 5u. - i.e. https://www.ebay.com/itm/204204803582

 

[gdansk]

If it's just about cooler compatibility I have used various 4U rackmount cases which fit 120mm CPU coolers. E.g. I have a Noctua U12A in Sliger CX4170a, Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE in the aforementioned Rosewill RSV-L4500U.

Would something like the Sliger CX4200e meet your requirements?

 

[aigomorla]

U4 shouldn't have problems with a heatsink that uses 120mm fans.
Your gonna have problems with ones that use 140mm fans tho like the noctua D14.

But man, i thought 4U's were big enough.
One of my 4U's even have 36 HDD bays.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Actually, no.
Dell, HP, IBM and Cisco (there may be others) all package some of their servers in 5u cases, I've even had (long gone now) some old gateway servers in a 6u case.
You can still find some new generic (non-OEM)/industrial cases in 5u. - i.e. https://www.ebay.com/itm/204204803582

Yeah, dealt with plenty of 8U, 12U, and 24U systems in my time. Had a few even that were 36U. 5U is a bit of the oddball though. There are plenty of 4U, but very few 5U. I went with a 4U for my home storage server (a supermicro SC846), and just live with the fact that I can't fit 120mm tower coolers on the CPUs and am fine with the 92mm ones I have (both CPUs have Noctua 92mm tower coolers setup in push/pull). Internally the case still supports 120mm fans (3x behind the disk drive hot-swap backplane) for dealing with the air intake over the disks (with a very slight modification). System is pretty quiet all things considered, with the dual power supplies being the loudest part.

 

[aigomorla]

Had a few even that were 36U

were those the boxes which used those movie reel looking things to collect store data, that we see in old TV shows where they try to portray some kind of command center?

 

[Fallen Kell]

were those the boxes which used those movie reel looking things to collect store data, that we see in old TV shows where they try to portray some kind of command center?

No. These were normal modern servers (at the time in ~2000 ish). These were SPARC based servers, and I am mistaken they were 35U not 36U with I believe 16 CPU sockets and riser boards for all those CPUs and RAM chips, as well as space for hard drives+DVD+tape drives. You could even get them free-standing as opposed to rack mount, which would come with essentially a mini-rack sans rail kit that had 4 wheels on the bottom so you could roll it into a rack location in a datacenter or possibly fit next to a desk in a lab environment.