Spec me a fileserver case

The Belgain

The Belgain

The Belgain

Associate
Joined
24 Jan 2003
Posts
637
Location
London
Hi folks, I'm after an upgrade to the current cheapo £20 case which currently houses my fileserver. The main reason being that it's pretty horrible to work with as would be expected, and has become very cluttered with the number of drives in it.

I've currently got 6 SATA hard drives in RAID5, plus one OS drive in my current case. I'm expecting to swap drives out for larger ones rather than adding too many more when expanding storage, but I'd like to be able to comfortably go to 8 SATA drives plus one storage drive in future if need be.

So requirements are:
-- Must take standard ATX motherboard and PSU.
-- Must take standard full-height PCI / PCI-E cards.
-- Room for 8 easily accessible 3.5" hard drives, plus another hard drive (which won't be swapped much).
-- Decent cooling for 9 hard drives.

I'd quite like something with 8 SATA hot swap bays if possible, as that makes swapping drives out a breeze. It's looking like that's likely to be rather pricey though - I can't seem to find 4-in-3 SATA hot swap bays for much under £80 from a quick google. If not then I'd settle for a well designed case where hard drives are easy to remove without needing to remove PCI cards, and disonnect / reconnect half my kit as in the current case. I've also had a look at rackmount cases - they mostly seem to be pretty pricey. I haven't found a 3U rackmount with 8+ SATA hot swap for under £300.

Would like to spend under £100 if possible (without PSU).

Any suggestions?
 
does it have to be rack mount?

the NZXt tempest is within your budget (or was) and its got 2x4 in 3 caddys internaly on sliding rails which are easy to remove unless you have two or three gfx's depending on your mobo its also got 2 120mm fans in the front to provide cooling so they will be cool too.
 
I have a Coolermaster S4000 sat in a box in storage. Never used and in almost perfect condition! It's a 4U tower or rackmount case, has mountains of room for up to EATX. Theyre a pretty rare case and quite sought after now by some enthusiasts because of their size and ease for fitting complete WC systems in. I'd part with it for 150 delivered, but couldnt go as low as 100 Im afraid :/

There are some images of the same case on this thread http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=124403&highlight=s4000.
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I'm not looking for something rack-mountable - it's just that I wasn't finding much that was appropriate in terms of normal cases, since they tend not to cater to large numbers of drives.

The NZXT looks pretty much like what I'm looking for. I also spotted the Silverstone KL01 with an extra drive cage. Comes to around the same price - I'll google some reviews.

indigo_prime: thanks, but that's far bigger than what I'm looking for (and over budget).
 
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