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What (good but cheap?) cases have 6 or more 3 1/2 bays?

Y

you2

Diamond Member
What are some good cases that have room for 6 or more hard drives? I see a lot of folks like the cm staker but that only has room for 3 hard drives nad a floppy (most of the bays are 5 1/4).

I currently use a antec 1080 and I can probably extend the life a bit if I rip out the 10 year old scsi drives (cooling is probably non optimal but probably ok ).

If I remember correctly yankee liked the Akasa Eclipse-62 case which supports 9 3 1/2 drives but no one sells in usa.

[I probably won't actually buy a new case for 9 months but as long as I'm shopping for components might as well get an early start - and cases don't seem to change every 6 weeks like cpu/ram/mb]
 
my super lanboy has six 3.5 inch bays i think.

serves my purpose well, although it may be a bit small. my x1900 nearly runs into the hard drives. i dont consider it cheap.. i dont get how people can shell out for things like a p180.

meh, my lanboy cost 15 bucks after a 50MIR (which i surprisingly got back). from fry's
 
Lian Li has model 23, 3-in-2 cage that would work even better and saves $10. or so over the 34 model. Then you could use one of the Rosewill cases from my thread. Both series already have 5 HDD bays so really all you need is one HDD to 5" bay adapter for 6 - only costs a couple of bucks. You might even have one in your parts box if you ever bought a retail HDD. But the 23 is nice to allow for further expansion later...

Or you could get an Enermax CS-10182 which already has 6 HDD bays and totals out to right near $100.

The Stackers have at least ten 5" bays with one 4-in-3 cage already installed in three of them to hold up to 4 HDDs or one FDD type drive and 3 HDDs. You can add two more cages for up to 12 HDDs. The same applies to the Aerocool Masstige (Bay Dream) or CoolView.

I'm also a fan of the Silverstone Temjin 5 (SST-TJ05) - it holds 5 HDDs in the HDD rack plus two more on the side bar plus 1 more at the bottom of the FDD bays. It is a big roomy case.

Or you could just get an HDD cage and keep your current case. See my review of the Stacker cage here: http://www.techimo.com/reviews/ it also has an overview of the other cages I'm aware of.

As others mentioned, we don't know your budget so what we consider cheap may not be the same as what you do. Newegg comes back with 83 cases that hold exactly 6 HDDs - they need to adjust their search methodology so you can easily get cases with 6 or more HDD bays. Anyway, go there and maybe directron, zipzoomfly, mwave and SVC (as they have the Blue stacker on sale for $80. after rebate and carve out a short list of 4 or 5 - then let us nitpick the short list. You are the one that has to live with the thing, not us.

.bh.
 
It seems like if i go with 4 in 3 solution i should just stick with the antec case. The antec has 4 5 1/4 and I only need one optical. I guess only real reason to consider a new case is if it would also improve cooling. Not sure a p965 system will get that hot if i use the voodoo3 and don't overclock.

Hum do you think the rosewill cases cool any better than the antec will? I think that would be the only reason to go the rosewill route would be if it had better cooling. Btw I'm not over joyed with the antec build but at purchase time I didn't know much 🙂 Of course I still don't know much 🙂 or 🙁 depending on how you look at it.
 
My selected Rosewill cases have 120mm fan mounts front and rear and some (the R560x series for sure) come with both fans. I think your case has 80mm f/r. So you could get better air flow with lower noise depending on your choice of fans.

.bh.
 
Yea I noticed that the rosewill case has 120mm fans. THe antec has 4 fans - all 80mm (one front two rear and one side). I have to say the lian case I use in the game system is >>> antec case and it cost less. However, i already own the antec case so I think it is only worth the upgrade to the rosewill if the antec case can't be used. To be honest I'm not sure I would ever buy another antec case. I liked the kingwin 424 case I have (though I think it lacks adequate cooling for a 'modern' game system) and the Lian case is not bad (though i'm unhappy with the disk shelf - fine for a game system with one or two drive - but i wouldn't want to use it for this application).

It is tempting to go with the rosewill and then sell or give away the antec. Not sure anyone would want it.
 
the Kingwin 424 (along with its twin, the Beantech Igloo) was a GREAT case. Here is a way to improve the cooling on that without doing any major modding (you may want to cut out the rear grill if it is restrictive): Outside the Box. You will just need an 80 to 120mm fan adapter and the 120 mm fan of your choice. The fan lead feed in right thru the throat of the adapter - you may have to notch out the lead hole in the fan frame a bit to prevent crimping of the leads. This method can be used on the exhausts of both of your cases with 80 mm fans now.

.bh.
 
pitty they stopped selling the 424 (or an improved version). It was also rather inexpensive. Hum well not that inexpensive. paid 79 - I think at the very end you could get the igloo version for under 50. Now alas - all gone. Poof. Guess it didn't sell very well.
 
I'm really amazed that more companies don't make cases that hold more than 5 drives all actively cooled. Some can hold more than 5 but not all are cooled properly, if at all.
I see lots of cases with 4 or more 5 1/4" slots which to me is such a waste. I don't know anyone who uses more than 2 optical drives. Sure there are other uses for a 5 1/4" bay but that's not very common.

I want a case that holds 7 - 8 hd's all cooled with 120MM fans. Each fan should cool 3 to 4 drives.

I've considered some of those drive bay conversions as well but I'd like to see a case where this feature came standard at a good price.
 
The market for more than 2 or 3 HDD bays is much smaller than the market for room for 5" bay devices. If you need more HDD space, well that's what the passive cages are for - what kind of bays do they use???

.bh.
 
Zepper - what is the basis for that comment with regards to market demand? With advant of 'cheap' raid I would naively think that is no longer the case.
 
With the low cost of large drives, who really needs more than two or three? I went from 5 to 3 HDDs recently and sold my CM drive cage. Most of the people on this forum are not representative - the great majority are using only one HDD. More bays are wasted on them.

.bh.
 
Personally I prefer to spread my data across more than 2 or 3 drives. If for some reason I lose a drive, I won't lose that much data.
 
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