Server case question

[pc-guy]

Looking for a tower server case that has at least 8 LFF hotswap bays.

Anyone know any particular brand etc?

Hotswap needs back mobo panel for sas/SATA connectivity.

Been looking at some old dells and hp servers but concerned about compatibility with generic mobo etc

 

[Caged]

Supermicro is pretty much it

 

[BlizzardX]

Yep Supermicro for heavily built and robust chassis' including rails and high quality power supplies or Chenbro for an alternative... Not sure on their quality, have never used them... but they do some interesting chassis such as a 48 bay top load LFF chassis.

 

[BongoHunter]

You could probably pickup an older coolermaster stacker (or similar) and then get 5.25 bay converters/racks unless you want to spend big money on a supermicro chassis. You might also want to consider bay converters that will put 5x3.5" drives into 3x5.25 bays or similar - may open up some more options.

Chenbro / chieftec stuff might be worth searching for, they did have a reasonable selection of stuff in Tower format at one point.

It's worth noting if you go supermicro that cases listed as "Enhanced Extended ATX" will not mount standard motherboards in an acceptable way unless they also list E-ATX support as well.

What PSU(s) are you using?

 

[pc-guy]

I actually picked up a decent t610 for half the money of a new supermicro case It comes with 8 bay hotswap although the perc h700 is not 6gbps but nor will any of the SATA drives I use be capping 3gbps. So happy with that.

Installed full bank of new ram (72gb) and the server is telling me to upgrade psu so now it is going to be 870w. I find it staggering that having 8 7200 sata drives and a couple of SSDs will push the system over the current 570w rated psu. I calculated the power requirement based on 90% TDP and system will draw 450w at best. But guess dell likes to be conservative.

CPUs are 2 lots of hexacore westmere with HT. So plenty scope for my VM home projects.