Cages and un-backplanes?

[vr.]

I've been looking at SATA and SAS cages and backplanes for a while. The lack of SAS2/SATA3 on the specs of most products has me concerned about throwing money away as these drives become more affordable over the next year and I really haven't needed hotswap in the past 5 years in my home setup but I do want the most density per bay. I've got eight 5 1/4 bays to work with in my existing case so I'd like to find something that's 5 into three 5 1/4's or 3 into two 5 1/4's without any fancy electronics to hinder multi TB drives.

I've seen Cooler Masters four 3.5 drives into three 5 1/4 bays but nothing denser. I just want to make sure I'm not overlooking some slick cage that someone else might have come across. What have mounting cages have you stumbled upon?

 

[Mindflux]

I have that Cooler Master 4 in 3. It's "OK". It was a royal pain in the arse to actually mount and it's a bit flimsy so mounting hard drives in it took some patience since the holes didn't always line right up.

It works ok for what it is, it'd be nice to have a backplane though. Just saying.

 

[vr.]

I have several backplanes already so I know what I'd be giving up. For close to 10 years I've had those steel but brass colored 3.5" to 5 1/4" brackets on various drives and the simplicity is incredibly versatile and have been great at being compatible, not burning out, fans not dying, etc., through drive model changes over those years so that's kind of what prompted me to look away from backplanes.

 

[Blue Fox]

If the backplane has no logic then it's going to be no different than a cable and will support any speed even if it isn't listed.

 

[vr.]

My thinking is, if there's a circuit board between the drive and the controller, then there is opportunity for me to hone my troubleshooting skills further. Joking aside, some posts I've read describe some backplanes cauing them issues with large drives. Other posts have said the backplane caused their disks to drop out of arrays.

I appreciate the replies so far, and I'm a backplane user today so this is not a thread to convince me to get a backplane, please. I would just like to avoid the incompatibilities down the road where possible.