A simple question really: People who have built in one or both, what are the pros and cons?
My build is mATX w/ 6 to 8 HDDs, no GPU, and stock cooler. Trying to have the smallest case I can without significantly compromising on thermals or frustration.
I’ve got one of those. 9 HDDs, with 5 running off addin cards as my motherboard only has 4 sata. One of the discs is attached to the floor on the mb side. It’s been solid for me, had it about 6 years have a fan controller, 6 fans, all on low revs. Only thing to watch out for is the sata cables. Choosing left or right handed 90 degree on one side is important. Bad news, I can’t remember which is needed. More important for the caddy over the PSU as space is tight. It runs Ubuntu, docker, greyhole and not much else. Used as media server.
Either i remember it wrong, or meshify 2 don’t have space for 6 or 8 HDDs…
For NAS 804 is a good choice.
No GPU means the side vent is free so you won’t have thermal issues.
The biggest frustration with 804 is the HDD brackets. They are mounted with some tinsy winsy screws to the frame, but once you mount your HDDs you will rarely have to deal with that.
Hi! I had a Node 804 a couple of years ago and it’s been ok-ish for the most part but it’s showing his age when it comes to cable management and material choice. Especially for the price i would not recommend it. I switched to a define 7 (which also exist in mini,compact and XL) and its bigger but the node is not that small either. Its just not that tall but has a big footprint and the acrylic side panel scratches the moment you take the peel of.
The Node 804, is a great box, perfect for a NAS project but it could do with a refresh (Type-C front panel) from Fractal… The side panels can swap sides so I bought a spare steel side panel so mine is Windowless. You are on the right track though, My case choices these days are not whether I want a Fractal but which one .
Really enjoy the Node 804 I got a while back (really need to get that system up and running again). It’s definitely an older design, with no builtin USB-C of that matters. For new builds, I know a lot of people have been going with the Johnsbo cases. I think a lot will come down to personal preferences and space availability. One perk (for some) on the 804 tho, it has a spot to mount laptop disc drive, so if you wanted to use it to rip disc media, you wouldn’t have to use something external. The price can vary on the 804, haven’t looked in a while, but it was possible to get them for ~$100.
I can 2nd the being careful with the sata cables. I didn’t have right angle cables and was able to just get the drives in, but when I slid the drive cage back out, one of my cables ripped the plastic part of the connector off of one of the hard drives. I also am not a fan of the disc drive location being right in front of the hard drives where it could reduce airflow on the first bracket of drives.
I also have a Define R5 which also has some cable spacing issues. I have the ketchup cables to discontent the pin that can cause some hard drives to power cycle and be unusable. While they work passably on the Node 804, there is not a lot of space for the cables in the R5. I can cram them against the drives, but have side panel bulge from the cables. This can be corrected by using the tape option people use or the modifying of cables, but I chose to go the simple route.
It depends where you are locating the NAS, but having a more enclosed case like the 804 instead of the meshify should reduce hard disk noise. I know gamers nexus pushes mesh since the improved airflow allows for reduced fan speed and it turns out a lower overall noise level for many gaming setups, but since you have a bunch of drives, you would be better served by the 804 (plus it comes with a bunch of drive mounts already). Hard drives are loud.
Two in the cage, nine on trays up front, with Fractal claiming another three on multibrackets for the non-XL. Case is supposed to come with six trays and one multibracket, so should do 8-9 3.5s without buying additional mounting hardware.
Multibrackets are hard to get (at least here), though, and have well known thread pullout issues Fractal’s apparently done nothing about for years. The ones I was eventually able to get had additional defects out of the box that Fractal refused to warranty and, since the hardware all seems to be non-standard dimensions, there’s not much to be done unless you’re going to start rolling your own screws.
Realistically, I’d call it an 11 drive case. Technically 12 if you get lucky with the included multibracket or are willing to DIY a 120 to 3.5 adapter, though the airflow’ll be limited by the drive upwind of the bottom fan mount.
Wouldn’t expect much difference between eight drives racked up behind a Meshify’s front intake fans and eight drives racked up below an 804’s top intake fans. Don’t know of any comparative data but the optimal pick between noise up front versus noise up top seems likely to be a fairly slight function of case positioning and surroundings. I’d guess ~1-2 dB(A), perhaps less.
If you want quiet-ish, use 20 dB(A) drives. FWIW I’ve found IronWolf Pro and Mach.2 pretty liveable.
Oh, meshify will give you much better cooling then…
You can also pack it full of fans on ultralow speed and never hear the machine running. Other than the hard drives. Those will be noisy…
I would bet on Meshify on a purely noise-normalized basis, yeah, but some pretty decent fan spin fits under eight 20 dB(A) drives’s noise floor. Likely enough to overcome the 804’s higher flow resistance and right angle, or at least get pretty well into diminishing returns.
Might be more dust with the 804, though, and maybe questions about spinning down fans when drives spin down.
Depends on the workload and the drives. At least, my experience with large sequential on 20 dB(A) is there’s little additional noise when read and write ordering are well matched. Versus, say, 30-32 dB(A) specs for seek. Also been my experience most any drive’ll put up some pretty pure harmonics on certain workloads but Exos and Red Pro tend to do it more than IronWolf Pro. Good bit of variation among drives of the same model, though.
If seeing a quiet file server/NAS, maybe worth thinking about speed-noise tradeoffs when setting up vdevs or such. If you do an eight drive RAID you get eight actuators’ worth of noise but also eight heads’ performance. Mach.2 LUN/LBA JBOD at the opposite extreme is half an actuator’s noise for one head’s performance.
I Got Meshify 2 since wanted server ATX motherboard and space for SAS adapter, GPU, NICs etc.
I think in storage layout it can fit 10 3.5" HDD and 3 more if you are willing to sacrifice bottom and top fan slots. Finding trays was bit difficult but managed to find someone who was willing to sell all of his trays. I got 10 2.5" SSD:s and it got bit tight with sata-sas adapters and back wall but just barely everything fits, otherwise cabling was breeze.
