Recommend me a 1U or 2U rack chassis and cpu fan

[Lil'John]

Title states it but to expand a bit.

I have the following equipment that will be used as a file server running OpenElec:
CPU: i5-4570S (65W TDP)
MB: ASRock B85M-ITX (mini ITX form factor)
HDs: four HGST Travelstar 2.5-Inch 1 TB 5400RPM Hard drives
OS : OpenElec on flash drive

From my reading, the cpu is overkill for OpenElec but it is what I have.

I'm looking for a recommendation for a 1U or 2U rack chassis that would hold the above hardware. Mini-itx seems to be the easiest to resolve. It also appears that if the chassis will support two 3.5" drives, I'm good for four 2.5" drives.

I have no interest in hot swappable drives or tons of front facing USB ports.

Also, I'm looking for a cpu cooler that will fit in the recommended chassis.

I am limited to a 1U or 2U sized rack chassis. Ideal would be a 1U but my quick search showed almost no 1U compatible cpu fans

 

[XavierMace]

Go Supermicro or go home. LOL. Everytime I have to work with a Norco, Rosewill, or whatever case I just want to shoot myself.

 

[ClockHound]

Noctua NH-L9i at 37mm will fit in a 2U case. Or a 1U with a little case modding. ;-)

 

[heymrdj]

You can use a Micro-ATX chassis for mini-itx as the mini-itx mounting holes are backwards compatible with micro-atx holes. I'd recommend a Supermicro 111 series.

 

[Lil'John]

Go Supermicro or go home. LOL. Everytime I have to work with a Norco, Rosewill, or whatever case I just want to shoot myself.

What is it about the other case manufactures that makes them bad?

 

[XavierMace]

Quality of finish, lack of features, overall design.

Just a couple of examples:

Rosewill RSV-R3000. It's a 3U case. However the handles are not. To actually rackmount the case, you have to take a grinder to the handles to grind them down to 3U height. The removable drive bays are ill designed, overall construction is very meh.

Norco RPC-4020. If there's a way to mount it on the rail kit in a rack without ending up with at least two bleeding wounds in the process, I haven't found it. The stock cooling fan setup is lackluster, they sell an optional wall to use larger fans, but that should have been incorporated as part of the base design. Plugs on backplane are nearly impossible to plug in without removing the fan wall.

This should fit your needs well, but you will need to order the optional 2.5" drive mounts by the look of it: SC504-203B.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Go Supermicro or go home. LOL. Everytime I have to work with a Norco, Rosewill, or whatever case I just want to shoot myself.

I was going to suggest that too but the cheapest I could find was like 800 bucks probably way out of the OP's budget LOL. But personally that's what I do. The issue with the cheaper ones is not so much the quality, it's the fact that they don't come with anything. No PSU (sometimes it's not even a standard one, good luck) and no rails (again, good luck trying to find some that fit). So by the time you run around and try to get all the stuff that's not included you may as well just have bought a Supermicro. Also for some reason the cheap ones never line up properly, so you can't bolt them in.

Hot swap bays are a must too, you don't want to interrupt your whole work for a drive that fails. I've had drives fail on me while in the middle of coding or doing something else where I have all sorts of files open and what not, the last thing I want to do is turn off the server or risk having it turn off by trying to carefully change a drive that's internal. Hot swap bays or bust. Pull out bad drive pop new drive in, initiate any commands to start a rebuild depending on what type of raid solution you're using, and then go on with your work.

The last two cases I bought were cheap Norcos but that's really all I needed since it was for my two workstations, and I had some L channel rails from an old SAN. Otherwise I would not have been able to actually rack mount it. I don't understand why they can't come with rails at very least. Even if it was just cheap L channel ones.

 

[Lil'John]

Awesome feedback. Thank you very much

XavierMace, the case you linked looks like it fits the bill exactly. Do you know of a 1U compatible CPU cooler?

Red Squirrel, I am a firm believer of buy once, cry once:biggrin: My "toy" budget is well stocked

For the hot swap drives, for this machine, I'm not too worried about them. It is going to be purely for file storage. Specifically, movies, music, etc.

On the next rack system, I may be more worried about them(2x Xeon)

 

[XavierMace]

I realize it's a late reply, but any 1U Supermicro heatsink for your socket should work. Be aware that any active ones (meaning ones with fans) will be quite loud. I'd stick with a passive one.

 

[Lil'John]

I thought I would follow up on this.

I got the SC504-203B case. Very nice looking case. However, it had a couple of "problems":

1. Doesn't appear to support standard mini-ITX back panel. The "audio" out on my existing board prevented it from being used
2. The PSU was 20 pin. My board required 24 pin
3. The front panel wiring appears to be proprietary SuperMicro setup. It used a ribbon cable and had no obvious tells for power switch, reset switch, etc.

After trying a couple of power supplies on my existing MB, I'm fairly certain it is hosed(ASRock).

I'm replacing the MB with SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SLV-Q-O. A couple of things that are "different" on this board:

1. Uses laptop memory... had to buy.
2. Has four 6GB Sata ports
3. Has two GB ports (wonder if FreeNas or Nas4Free supports LAN teaming)

For the CPU fan, I ordered up a SilverStone NT07-115x. I don't have the new MB in hand but it appears to fit the bill. It is good for 65W CPU.

 

[XavierMace]

Somehow I completely glazed over the fact that it wasn't a standard removable rear I/O faceplate. Unfortunately, yes, a lot of Supermicro cases are designed specifically for Supermicro boards. I also forgot about the ribbon cable as I've been sticking to Supermicro for the boards as well. Sorry about that.

I'm quite surprised by the 20 pin power connector though. I haven't seen a case with only a 20 pin in a very long time.

Yes, FreeNAS supports teaming, or rather Link Aggregation.

 

[Lil'John]

Somehow I completely glazed over the fact that it wasn't a standard removable rear I/O faceplate. Unfortunately, yes, a lot of Supermicro cases are designed specifically for Supermicro boards. I also forgot about the ribbon cable as I've been sticking to Supermicro for the boards as well. Sorry about that.

I'm quite surprised by the 20 pin power connector though. I haven't seen a case with only a 20 pin in a very long time.

Yes, FreeNAS supports teaming, or rather Link Aggregation.

No worries. On most things I do, I expect the unexpected

The 20 pin issue shocked me too. I find it more entertaining that most(all) of the PSUs I've bought lately have a four pin "addition" to make up the main power.

The other thing that is kind of interesting on the MB I have on the way is it appears to support an mSata drive. The pictures don't make it real clear how. And some of the documentation I've read made it sound like if you use the mSata connection the regular Sata connections don't work

And thank you on the terminology correction. It is probably why my google foo failed :whiste:

 

[XavierMace]

I don't know if I'd say it was a correction. Teaming is what it's typically called on the Windows side. But on the FreeBSD side, it's listed as Link Aggregation. It's pretty easy to set that up on FreeNAS.

If you look at the Supermicro page for that board, the mini-PCIe port is just to the right of the regular PCI-e slot, just above the chipset. Looking at the manual, yes you can either use the 4x SATA3 ports or the one mSATA.