Icy Box's

SMN · 16 Apr 2010 at 21:20

Howdy all,

Got like 3-4 HDD's I want to mount but I'm maxing out my available case 5.25" slots. I've got 3 SATA slots left, so I'm looking for an Icy Box and possibly a SATA Expansion card.

Anyone recommend an Icy Box and which did you choose? Also any CHEAP sata expansion cards recommended? Most of the ones I can see are like £100+ - bit too much!

shahpor · 16 Apr 2010 at 23:02

Perhaps a silly suggestion, but maybe a bigger case is in order?

rocketman · 16 Apr 2010 at 23:29

I was in the same position as you, so I bought an Icy Dock MB561US-4S. It can be found for around £180, but it holds 4 SATA drives, and features an eSATA port multiplier, so it will only use up 1 SATA port. It also comes with a PCI slot bracket, which turns an internal SATA connection to eSATA. No SATA expansion card required

SMN · 17 Apr 2010 at 10:33

Shahpor - I have considered that

I've got a HAF 932 at the moment which i bought at the end of August last year; So bit hesitant to change cases after 9-10 months - especially when its great for everything else air-cooling wise. I was looking at the Antec 1200 which apparently has 12 slots, but then again i'd be back to needing an expensive SATA card for my board to fully utilise all of them

Rocketman's suggestion sounds great - I will have to look into that one

How is the performance on that system as presumably its connecting over a single SATA 3Gbps channel? Also from what I can see, this box is "free-standing" i.e. not taking up any 5.25" drive boys correcto?

Also - FYI of anyone looking at this thread, when you see some IcyBox devices which have 5 slots and have 10 (for example) SATA Connectors on the back, this doesnt mean you need to have 10 SATA slots on your motherboard to utilise them. This functionality is for SAS Drives which require dual-channel - and TBFH if you have 5 SAS Drives you shouldnt be bloody using an Icy Box anyway

shahpor · 17 Apr 2010 at 19:30

SMN said:
Shahpor - I have considered that I've got a HAF 932 at the moment which i bought at the end of August last year; So bit hesitant to change cases after 9-10 months - especially when its great for everything else air-cooling wise. I was looking at the Antec 1200 which apparently has 12 slots, but then again i'd be back to needing an expensive SATA card for my board to fully utilise all of them

Fair enough.

And it is a good point about needing a SATA card anyway.