Home server chassis?

Hardware Build a PC
1

Hi gang, need some help from the hive mind.

Thinking about upgrading the chassis for my home server to something more spacious inside.

The caveat is I also would like vertical GPU capability with 3 or 4 “slots” … as I would like to mount a pcie splitter to it, for additional add on cards. Oh, and throw in liquid cooling support too, for a 360mm AIO.

So looking for recommends on a chassis with these specs;

  • EATX motherboard support
  • Vertical GPU support, 3-4 slots, no case-mod required
  • Room for 8x internal 3.5" drives or
  • 7x 5.25" external bays, without any sort of guide / rails that block installation of raid cages (this seems really hard)
  • Room for 360mm rad without losing drive bays

The motherboard is a Gigabyte x399, cpu cooled by a 360mm AIO. I’d like the eatx clearance mainly for all the sata cables coming off the thing.

Ideas?

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These 2 are my recommendation. You can mount a 360 Rad in the midplane if you use just the 4 screw holes in the middle of the radiator. I’m unsure about tube length for AIOs, which could still be an issue

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What do you mean 7x 5.25 external bays

4

I have one of those! I didn’t think there’d be enough room but I will measure more closely.

Nowhere to mount the riser card / pcie splitter without modifying the case that I can see. That’s not a major issue though, once I put the lid on, I won’t see whatever ugly solution I come up with :slight_smile:

5

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Cases/Obsidian-Series™-750D-Airflow-Edition-Full-Tower-ATX-Case/p/CC-9011078-WW

I’m a fan of this one… Hearkens back to the old IBM P Series for us major nerds, lol. :slight_smile:

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Referring to the old tower servers that used to be a solid front of 5.25" bays, they don’t seem to make many of these any more.

7

I think they stopped that completely 5 years ago what do you need 7 5.25 bays for?

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RAID cages, four drives per three bays.

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Does it nedd to be 5.25" bays to fit/re-use existing carriers / converters/ bays?

Or do you desire like 4 x 3.5" and 4x 2.5" or a set icydock 5x3.5" box?

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the rosewill ones work fine. I used them on my freenas setup. you can get the ones like @2bitmarksman linked above with the cages.

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as in a cage with integrated backplane?

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I have basic non-swap cages already, and also SuperMicro ones with the backplane, but without a fast high static pressure fan, they’re hard to cool.

I also have some old full tower chassis that would work, if I took a dremel tool to the bays to remove supports that interfere with the sides of the cages.

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I have my Lian-Li PC-6077. I wouldn’t change it for the world. So much storage space in a mid-tower ATX case. I don’t I think it supports EATX. EATX wasn’t a formalized spec when it came out.

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For a desktop I use a 500D with 3 Icy dock 3.5+2.5 cages in the 5.25 slots in the front, as they are trayless hot-stappable sata cages, and it is handy haveing the extra drives available.

My next case will probably be a tray based 16- or 24 bay rack style chassis.

I use a 24 bad Norco knock off as a nas, and it works well.
The only thing it lacks is front I/O, but I can work around that.

Also the knock off nas I have only has 3x 120mm fans in the center, but I would fit a baffle, and run 6 PWM fans in a trio of push+pull pairs

I would probably go 4U again for next desktop case, but a longer/deeper case, because short depths don;t allow me enough room to rouse all cables etc…

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