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Looking for ATX storage server case

M

Micah

Senior member
Hi,

I'm getting ready to move into my new house. I had the house wired with Cat6 all the way through, and I even had them put an Ethernet port in one of the closets. Well, the guy looked at me like I was crazy, but I'll have the last laugh with my brand new storage server!

Anyways, I'm looking for an ATX case that has lots of internal drive bays. Moreover, since it will be in a closet, external airflow will be pretty stagnant. So, I need a case that is big and has good airflow. Luckily, since it's going in the closet, it doesn't have to be ultra-quiet, so lots of fans are OK. I'd prefer 120mm, as they move the most air with the least noise.

Most of all, I want it to be cheap. No one is going to be looking at it so even the ugliest, most generic beige tower would be fine.

Toss out your suggestions, please!
Micah
 
Codegen 8000 or 9000 series cases. Or the Silverstone Berserker or the Enermax 10182 if you want a bit fancier. I recomend using the Coolermaster 4X3 drive box ($20 from jab-tech.com et al.) for HD expansion into the 5" bays. The fan that comes with the CM box is sleeve-bearing junk - get better for them (bgmicro.com has some excellent 120mm fans for cheap but you may have to mod the connections).
. Hope you plan to use SCSI (that can stagger start the drives naturally)... Otherwise a stump-pulling (or dual) PSU(s) will be in the cards unless you can rig a stagger-start system of your own for SATA/PATA drives. Check the 12V startup current rating in your drives' spec sheets and add them up to see what you will need to have on the +12 rail on top of everything else that is also running off +12V (plus at least a 15% safety cushion).
. What ventilation are you providing for your "server closet"? I recommend a filtered "intake" grille at the bottom of the door and an exhaust fan (AC) in the wall above the door.

.bh.
 
Antec SLK-3000B is $46 shipped at Amazon.com at the moment, and can take 5 HDD's in the lower rack (and you can put a 120 x 25mm fan in to cool them). It comes with a 3-speed 120mm exhaust fan that is very quiet on Low. You could use the 5.25" bays for more drives if you wanted.
 
I think 5 drives in the bottom of the 3000B spaces them too close together (makes it hard to force air in between) I would put only 3 there - so that would allow for a total of 6 or seven (using an exposed bay) and a CM 4/3 box, leaving one 5" bay for an optical. But that's just my POV.

.bh.
 
You don't need to force much air over the drives to keep them cool. The Antec case will probably work nicely. If you want to go all-out though, go for a Coolermaster Stacker.
 
If you don't have a power supply already, I recommend the Antec TX1050B, which includes a very nice 500 watt psu for 125 dollars. The psu runds around 80, so your getting the case for 45 dollars. The case is large, has lots of spots for fans to go, and has a good amount of bays.
 
That SLK3000B was looking pretty nice.

Also, thanks for the notes about staggering the drive starts. I didn't really think about that.

I'll probably go with one or two IDE drives using LVM and XFS under Linux. That should be reasonably cheap and allow me to grow and add drives as I need to. So, in the beginning, I will only need probably 2 IDE drives which shouldn't be a huge problem for a PSU.
 
Yup. only a couple of drives are nothing - I thought you were talking about 7 or 8 like I used to have. SCSI is wunnerful for a slew of drives...

.bh.
 
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