looking for 4U rack case: E-ATX, GPU, ATX PSU, 140mm fans

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NateD

Weaksauce
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Mar 27, 2010
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I am looking for a rack case with enough room for an E-ATX motherboard, GPU, standard ATX PSU, at least 4U, and ideally 140mm fans (120mm could also work).

Does this case exist? I've looked hard for this but can't find something that checks all these boxes. As a last resort I could have Protocase make one, but it's going to cost ~2k. I'll do that if I have to, but I'd rather not.

3x 140mm fans can fit across a rack mounted chassis, this guy did it.

This video shows an Inwin 400. It fits E-ATX but it's all 80mm fans and I'd have to majorly hack up the case. I don't actually need HDD bays.
 
Thanks! It's very close. That's the same case I linked above, Rosewill RSV-L4500U 4U, where the guy installed 140mm fans. He found that an ATX PSU doesn't fit with an E-ATX motherboard. He had to relocate his motherboard to the front of the case, which isn't great.

Seems there's not any desktop oriented cases that are rack mountable. Kind of a bummer. It's definitely a niche, but it would be cool if just one manufacturer could fill it.
 
Maybe just go with a shelf and an "open frame" concept with a motherboard tray and fascia to mount your fans? Guiding airflow may be a trick but I can't imagine shrouds would be too difficult.

edit: Come to think of it you could use any rack mount case as the base and leave the top off. Would take some work but should be fairly simple to just expand the enclosure vertically with flat panels.
 
Ooooh that's good to know, thanks! He wrote "eATX" in his post, but now that I looked it up I see you are right: "Enhanced Extended ATX"

I'm not sure an open case would make for great airflow, though I've never had an open setup. I'd need at least a front plate for the rack to look nice. I guess it could be mesh and 140mm fans to move air through the non-case, but I'm not sure how fans would be mounted. It might be workable, but not pretty.

Protocase is a pain to deal with. Have to talk to a manager who talks to the "designer", takes a while. There's a $1400 design fee if I don't do all the design work, which is beyond me. That's on top of a $2700 price for the case. Black anodized faceplate is +$500. Maybe I could YOLO a $3k case, but $5k is probably too much.
 
NateD said:
Ooooh that's good to know, thanks! He wrote "eATX" in his post, but now that I looked it up I see you are right: "Enhanced Extended ATX"

I'm not sure an open case would make for great airflow, though I've never had an open setup. I'd need at least a front plate for the rack to look nice. I guess it could be mesh and 140mm fans to move air through the non-case, but I'm not sure how fans would be mounted. It might be workable, but not pretty.

Protocase is a pain to deal with. Have to talk to a manager who talks to the "designer", takes a while. There's a $1400 design fee if I don't do all the design work, which is beyond me. That's on top of a $2700 price for the case. Black anodized faceplate is +$500. Maybe I could YOLO a $3k case, but $5k is probably too much.
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I got a bracket made for my case for $132 (22ga 304 stainless, designed it myself, almost got it right the first time lol). Must've had a lot of bends and holes, eh?
 
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Nah, mine is a very simple case design! I mocked it up:
Rve5q8v.png

5U case with 3x 140mm fans and 1x 120mm in the back. It fits an E-ATX motherboard and ATX PSU. Green areas in the back are vents. Power button is on the front panel.

I don't know why this needs to be designed from scratch, for $1400. Likely they have tons of designs they can modify.

Maybe I can get Protocase to modify the Storinator Q30 so it can fit E-ATX. That gives a lot more for my thousands of dollars than a 5U case with 140mm fans. They've been slow to figure it out and get me a quote though.
 
NateD said:
Nah, mine is a very simple case design! I mocked it up:
View attachment 466574
5U case with 3x 140mm fans and 1x 120mm in the back. It fits an E-ATX motherboard and ATX PSU. Green areas in the back are vents. Power button is on the front panel.

I don't know why this needs to be designed from scratch, for $1400. Likely they have tons of designs they can modify.

Maybe I can get Protocase to modify the Storinator Q30 so it can fit E-ATX. That gives a lot more for my thousands of dollars than a 5U case with 140mm fans. They've been slow to figure it out and get me a quote though.
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If I knew the exact dimensions and screw hole locations I could draw it up in a couple, two or three days, without the motherboard/expansion slots, anyway. But you could buy that elsewhere cheap and add it yourself with some rivets or standoffs/screws if you wanted. Just need the hole in the back to accomidate it.

For my bracket, it took a bit longer, but I didn't know any of the dimensions. So I had to measure my case with a ruler and caliper, guess the angles, and find the hole size and spacing for 140mm fans set adjacent to each other. Also had to learn two drawing programs from scratch. One was easy to use and fairly complete, but didn't export to the right format. The other had every feature under the sun, but was a bit buggy, harder to figure out, and only exported to one of the supported formats (afaict), .step.

Edit: I was quoted $120 for their design services fee, but my bracket was much simpler -- Two bends and two large holes, plus all the various screw holes. Yours is a bit more complicated to design, will probably involve at least two pieces, or will be involve much more complicated bends and folds if you do it in one piece, especially if you want it sturdy. My sketch was also more detailed -- had three sides with rough dimensions, although it wasn't to scale.
 
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$132 for your bracket is pretty OK. Even $120 to design it isn't too bad, assuming they could actually do it, since they would need to get all the dimensions and other details from you.

I probably could come up with all the dimensions. I used dimensions the SSI-EEB spec ("board volumetric keep-out", EEB case 1) for motherboard clearances. The standoff locations are also there.

I know SketchUp. I could probably learn some other software, though I'm not sure I'm up for that. I tried Protocase Designer, it's pretty complex and not terribly user friendly for someone who's never modeled things that need to be fabricated. I'm sure there's better software. Any suggestions?

Protocase has a rack mount case template, but it seems very basic. Also their docs say:
LIMITATIONS AND WORK AROUND
If using Protocase Designer, please note that it will not accept PCI card tab slots, as they fall on a bend radius. Also, the templates do not include the flange for fastening the top of PCI card brackets. These limitations will be addressed in future releases. For now you'll need to work around this limitation as described below:
At the present time, if you require PCI card tab slots, simply design without them, and inform Protocase technical staff at the time of order so they can add these details for you, for a design fee.
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If I'm going to the trouble of designing the case myself, I don't want to still pay a design fee!

All in all, an entire case seems too complex for me to tackle. I am confident I could come close, but I could also very easily miss important details that ruin the case. Eg, maybe I get the IO panel slightly the wrong size, or in the wrong position, or any of a thousand little things that would require me to hack up my extremely expensive case to make it usable. I don't mind hacking things up, but I shouldn't need to after paying so much. Plus, I'm assuming there's a number of details that would make the case nicer that are only learned after having designed and built a number of cases.

I'm liking the modified Storinator Q30 plan more and more. They already have the stupid case designed, they just need to stretch the motherboard area to fit E-ATX. Then I'd have 30 drives, direct wired backplane, etc which would make a pretty badass server. The 4U and 120mm fans aren't as good as 5U and 140mm, but passable. Maybe they could make it 5U and 140mm fans, but given the back and forth I've had with their support so far, I doubt it. This doesn't solve my original needs for a gaming rack mounted computer, but it seems the Rosewill would work for that.
 
openscad is what I used first, although I had to drop it because it didn't export a supported format. If you're familiar with software programming, it's fairly easy to learn and use. Because you can directly code in lengths and modify them in real time, it's nice for mocking up and checking your numbers.

solvespace is the second one I used. It takes a bit more effort to learn, and it can bug out if you feed it a parameter it doesn't like. But it supports export to .step (sort-of), which is what I needed.
 
I agree, the Rosewill looks good for the problem I originally set out to solve: gaming machine, 120mm+ fans, E-ATX, GPU.

The Storinator Q30 idea is a different project, for an app server and NAS. I like the 120mm fans, backplanes, and everything else about it -- except that it doesn't fit E-ATX. Protocase has gone dark about customizing the Q30. Do you guys know of similar E-ATX rack case? (~30 drives, 120mm+ fans)
 
Thanks! Dang, 7x80mm. :eek: As I understand, larger fans are better for airflow (and quieter) while smaller fans are better for static pressure. 120mm+ fans get used on radiators, so I imagine it'd be OK for a rack case. I understand the pickings are slim, since data centers don't have the need to sacrifice static pressure to reduce noise.

This one goes in a rack in a small closet. The closet has an AC Infinity fan exhausting outside and the closet is vented to a hallway for intake. Noise isn't super crucial for this rack, but I'd rather not hear the BRRRRR of fans in the hallway if possible. I'm wary of rack cases, as I know loud can mean really damned loud!
 
NateD said:
Thanks! Dang, 7x80mm. :eek: As I understand, larger fans are better for airflow (and quieter) while smaller fans are better for static pressure. 120mm+ fans get used on radiators, so I imagine it'd be OK for a rack case. I understand the pickings are slim, since data centers don't have the need to sacrifice static pressure to reduce noise.

This one goes in a rack in a small closet. The closet has an AC Infinity fan exhausting outside and the closet is vented to a hallway for intake. Noise isn't super crucial for this rack, but I'd rather not hear the BRRRRR of fans in the hallway if possible. I'm wary of rack cases, as I know loud can mean really damned loud!
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Well 120mm fans have a larger profile, so they move more air by default (under optimum conditions). You can make up the difference with smaller fans, but you need more of them and sometimes they need to spin faster.

Edit: Oh hey, it supports even more fans inside, behind the rear drives...yeah, it has drives front and back).
 
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That many drives are already going to be pretty loud anyway, unless they're all SSDs. In which case, I salute you, sir.
 
Haha, no SSD NAS! It'd be awesome (and expensive), but I prefer long lasting for my data with speed secondary. I wonder how loud 30 HDDs are compared to an 80mm fan. One HDD is ~16dB max. In comparison, a Noctua NF-F12 is 22.4dB (though there aren't 30 of them).

Sliger looks cool, good find! Their whole line of rack cases is close to what I was thinking should exist. It's so nice they give specs like max cooler height in mm. They have 25" long 4U cases, one with 10x HDD bays. Even that one has only 3 120mm fans, while the Rosewill has 6 (and 15 HDD bays). I had my sights set on more bays for future expandability, but 15 or maybe 10 would do for now. Given the air cooling, I'm leaning toward the Rosewill.

This seems pretty odd:
5.jpg

That's going to blow hot radiator air across the motherboard. I don't to plan to watercool these, but that can't be ideal. Those 3 fans need to pull air into the whole case, through the radiator, and out the back.
 
NateD said:
One HDD is ~16dB max. In comparison, a Noctua NF-F12 is 22.4dB (though there aren't 30 of them).
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A 10dB difference makes for 10x the sound level, but note that the dB scale is not linear -- 20dB would be 100x the sound level. So the noctua would be a little less than 10x as loud. Of course, it's only really comparable if measured under the same conditions, which is why dBA, etc, exist as units.

So, I guess, 36 HDDs could probably drown out a few noctuas, depending on the noise profiles of the fans and drives, especially if the drives aren't idle. Resonance could make it louder, but that'd probably happen with any fan/HDD combo when you have that many. 7+ Sunons would probably be louder, unless you run them below max speed.
 
I got one Seagate Skyhawk 16TB for something else and it is (unsurprisingly) pretty loud when active, but quiet when not.

I came across this monster:
https://grando.ai/choose-a-gpu-machine-for-ai-deep-learning/
It's got 3x PSUs separated from the rest and 3x 140mm fans. It's watercooled which I was trying to avoid, but it is pretty neat. It's geared toward GPU acceleration so not a perfect fit for a gaming machine. So far the Rosewill case is still the top choice for that. This is a long term project (house it'll go in isn't finished), so there's no rush.

For my NAS/server I'll go the Protocase route: Storinator Q30 modified for E-ATX with a custom faceplate to hide all those fan holes. I'll Cerakote the faceplate (Protocase doesn't do it, I'll send it off to another shop) so it matches my silver Ubiquiti gear. Cerakote H-151 Satin Aluminum is a very close match.
 
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