Looking for a NAS case - specific requirements

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sphinx99

[H]ard|Gawd
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Dec 23, 2006
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I am building a PC-based NAS and looking for a case. Specific requirements:

Must be a desktop class case - tower/mini-tower preferred. This will be in a visible area of our home so aesthetics matter. Rack mount not an option; Norco-like cases not up for consideration. Hot-swap bays are a very nice to have but not mandatory.

First priority: I've purchased 8x HGST He 8TB drives - they run fairly hot. This will be my storage pool; I'd like a case that has good ventilation options for the drive bays and preferably some level of dampening of the drive cage area as well since these drives aren't quiet. I don't need more than 8 3.5" bays, however a place to stash a 2.5" SSD boot drive is a must.

Second priority: coming off a desktop mega-tower with a stack of 15 3.5" drives up front, and realizing how front heavy and a pain in the neck the thing is to move, I'd prefer a case that spreads the 3.5" drives into a couple of stacks. Not a must-have but definitely a nice tohave.

Third priority: flexible mobo form factor. No larger than ATX, but could go as smell as one of the ITX variants. I'm looking for midrange compute in this NAS... i3 to mid-range i5 class and eventually I may throw a "GTX 1060-class" GPU and make this a HTPC platform as well.

Any recommendations?
 
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Fractal Design Refine R5. I currently use this for my NAS with 7x3TB WD Red NAS drives plus a 2.5" boot drive. The case is super quiet. I can't even hear it running and since it's at the heart of my living room setup I removed all the LEDs so I have no idea if it's on or not unless I look behind the case and see the fans spinning.

The weight doesn't seem too bad to me. Though I don't move it very often. I had to move it once when I replaced the motherboard. Didn't seem that difficult.

It has 2x2.5" drive slots behind the motherboard tray. Plus it has 8x3.5" drive bays under the 2x5.25" bays. I even bought a 2x5.25 to 3x3.5" adapter for those bays as I intend to fill them up, soon.

I currently have an EVGA 980 running F@H 24/7 in the case as well. Plenty of room.

It's also cheap in price at $90 currently at newegg. Not cheap on quality. Not by any means. I was so impressed by Fractal that I even bought their HTPC case to replace a Silverstone GD series HTPC case. Best decision ever.

Fractal Design Define R5 Black Silent ATX Midtower Computer Case - Newegg.com
 
I been looking at NAS cases lately. I recently bought a Fractal R5 for my main workstation and it's such a great case. Everything is well thought out. All the other companies( Lian-Li, cooler master) which I have had cases in the past are "ok". I think fractal is just simply a more intelligent case with design in mind.

I am probably going to get the Fractal XL for my NAS, as it fits ten hard drives plus 2 ssd's although it's a little big, but whatever. I would rather have the room, than buy too small and regret it later.

Also I looked at the Fractal Node 804 if you have a MATX board, this can fit 8 harddrives and is smaller and looks great in a living room.
 
The Fractal XL is probably too big for the OP. He specifically states nothing larger than what can accommodate an ATX board. The Fractal XL can house up to an E-ATX board. So it might be a little too big.

The Node 804 can only hold up to a Micro-ATX board, so it can't even hold a full sized ATX motherboard. However, it does seem to have the HDD layout so they're not all in the front. So there's that.
 
Thanks for the suggestions!

Yes, I'm aiming to downsize the case somewhat, I've been using a full-size-and-then-some tower, completely loaded with drives, that is massive and difficult to move. Compact, quiet and dressy is the order of the day. A flexible case like the R5 does sound good however since historically my storage server HW typically is a hand-me-down from one of our desktops. Since I'm upgrading to a stack of 8TB units, I don't feel the pressure to maintain "expandability" this time around. The drives however are faster and hotter, so drive cooling is important.

As to the suggestions I fortunately have arrived at many of the same options.

The PC-Q26A/B is perfect sans GPU and the DS380 may not be the right case for my particular drives due to cooling. I also noted a dearth of reviews and experience with the Lian Li - no one seems to use it? Still it's near the top of my list. The Node 804 also is a great option although again as Micro-ATX it may not benefit from the "hand-me-down" benefit of repurposing desktop ATX boards for storage servers. The Define R5 indeed looks like a great option - my wife's desktop is built in a R4 and the case is superb. In fact the only thing I wish the R5 had was some flexibility to move a drive cage back or something so I could spread the weight... and maybe some handles or other mechanism to grip the thing. Still that's probably where I'm headed.
 
This YY-0221 would work, just have to find one used since I think they no longer make it.
case6.jpg


8-drives-2.jpg


gtx285.jpg
 
i5 3330, Asus B75 mobo, budget SATA II RAID Card, 750 W Corsair Gold Rated Modular PSU

1x 500 GB OS Drive ; 1x 500 GB Shadow Copy Drive; 4x 1 TB Enterprise (RAID5) Array for Network BackUps ; 4x 3TB drives in a DriveSpace Parity Array for Media & Downloads
in an Antec Sonata II... Hand fab'd 5x 3.5" HDD cage (w/ modded bay cooler) + stock HDD cage
switched out the LEDs to Blues & added a CCFL bar to make it go faster

it all fits less the 5 1/4" drive bay covers... gonna need to modders mesh that

BlackDragon
 
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