I plan to rackmount some of my PCs in my office. For this reason, I am searching for good “server” case options to put my office PCs in. Can you recommend any good brands for this purpose?
To be clear, I am just looking for the chassis without any tech inside. Front IO would be great since it sits next to my office.
The Sliger 4U cases are good option but they wont fit extra tall GPU’s. So if you are planning to run a GPU with a tall after market cooler. The Silverstone 5u would be a better option.
This is a good thing to point out. I will be using small form factor GPUs, so I should be fine with 4U. Also, Sliger has 3U chassis that can fit a horizontal GPU.
What do you think of Sliger’s 3U GPU option? I am a little concerned about the cooling.
Any info on the build quality of the Sliger cases?
In my experience the build quality of 4u Sliger cases is probably about the same quality as the silverstone. It might acutally be better. I haven’t built in a silverstone case in a while.
As far as the 3u with the horizonal gpu. I think it’s a better design than their other 3u cases. However i would probably recommend going with an SFX psu with those. As a ATX psu might have some airflow restrictions if you have a case on top of it in your rack.
I wish they had the colored front panels when i got mine.
Rosewill has some pretty decent stuff imo. I have a rosewill r4500 that I used to stuff to the gills with stuff. It’s basically the accommodations you would have if you converted a standard mid tower atx case into a rack case. 7 slots, eatx psu support, fan walls, mounting for lotsa hdds/ssds, etc. It will fit GPUs that are the length of an eatx board plus some. 9x 5.25 inch bays fit whatever you want, which you would have to use since the 2 front usb ports are gen 2 only. Easy and cheap to get lots of io from 5.25 inch bay expanders nowadays though. 3x 120mm noctuas and youre golden for sound. Have the r4000 as well, which I use for my testbench. Not bad either just has less space. It is a lot smaller than the r4500, a network rack size rather than the full server depth. I got it for free since it was pretty badly damaged, and it was missing the lid.
Biggest caveat for these is the rails lol. Heres people working em out: Rack Mounting the Rosewill RSV-L4500 - Hardware - serverbuilds.net Forums
I have a few sliding shelves that I use with the r4500 since I work on it often and it works out pretty well. Haven’t had to swap to rails otherwise I would know. Might do it soon for the fun of it, but would still probably keep it on the sliding shelf for convenience.
If you want pictures or have questions about either of these let me know. Theyre pretty good to work in and are usually rather cheap if you can find them locally, like I did with mine.
In Win also has some rack mountable / pedestal server chassis:
I got an old chenbro SR107 case that is also rackmountable from a local auction site for very cheap. It’s very a sturdy and heavy case, but the 3.5 hotswap bays are proprietary.
I do t have a direct comparison to silver stone but they are quality cases that are built like tanks. I have one of the 4U ATX cases and their 4U NAS case. I would wholeheartedly recommend both. The only thing about the NAS case is it has a proprietary backplane that is SATA only if you were looking for SAS.
I meant in terms of cost. Theyre a pretty good default for some companies in my area who use lots of consumer gear in a rack and needed a good box for it. Theyre pretty decently built. Not supermicro levels of build quality, but decent.
I dont have an hl15 but if you want that kind of quality feel, go with a supermicro chassis. The 846 (4u), the 836 (3u) and the 826 (2u) are incredibly high quality options with redundant PSUs with quiet options that can be found for cheap. They can be found decently commonly but the prices range wildly. They also dont have much front IO to spare, and likely arent what you want lol. They are mostly designed for rack use. The supermicro 747 is a huge chassis with lots of power support, drive space, and IO space. It’s unquestionably expensive and large, however it is incredibly high quality. They come in 9 and 11 slot variants. There are too many others to mention. The high end workstation/server supermicro chassis tend to be incredibly high quality as a rule if you care that much about it. If youre looking at the HL15 you might be going for drive space, which puts you in the ballpark of an 836 and 846 as far as storage goes. Might want to look into them.
If you want an overview of a neat and silent build in an 846 with 24 drives then you should go have a look at Building a NAS
Its good stuff. The 846 is incredibly easy to mod for these things btw. Most people swapping out the fans in an 836 or 846 just use zip ties for the mid fans, and most skip the front fan wall and 2x rear fans.
