Need a bit of help to a future project Im in the process of planning.
Im looking to build a dual xeon Unraid server for a few gaming VMs. (Helps my family with their PC gaming needs using a Lenovo Intel Celeron AIO currently *shudders)
I have found a Motherboard i would like to use for the system (ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS). The issue I am currently having is that the boards form factor is a SSI EBB. I cant seem to find many cases that support it officaily and the one I can find are lacking in the HDD support or are nearly £300 (nearly 400 dollars). Im currently looking for a minimum of 6 HDD cages with room for expansion.
Any advice welcome.
TL;DR: Need case that supports SSI EEB, min 6 HDD support and isnt too expensive
Well, most ATX cases can fit EATX just fine, as long as it’s not something like the new ish Fractal Design cases, where the cable management grommeted holes are curved so larger board just can’t fit.
But let’s say a larger case like Phanteks Enthoo Pro will be just fine…
Older Fractal Design cases like Arc Midi R2 and Define R4 will be fine.
Most new Cooler Master cases will also be fine. The cheap-ish MasterBox 5 even have second set of cable management holes so it can fit the board and not mess with the cable management. But it doesn’t have the HDD space…
ThermalTake F51 should also do just fine.
the first thing you should check is the mounting-holes.
I think Asus is complying with the standard ATX mounts, Supermicro on their dual boards not.
And as as far as i remember the last time i had that board in hadns, you should be good with ATX + a few cm in that -> direction, so basically E ATX.
So once you have check that i’m not wrong, you can either do one of the following two things.
Buy a case with the space and mounting-holes.
I think corsair had a few.
Fractal had a bigtower and the new defines should be OK too.
The LianLi o11 could also be a good one.
Or you get a case that you know fits it space wise and then you dremel away blocking things, and drill the mounting yourserlf.
Wendell did a video on that a while back somewhere.
I did modify my InWin 805 and two InWin 303s to fit SSI EEB / EATX / the Supermicro Mounting.
The IN WIN PL052 Tower Chasis might be suitable. It supports EEB motherboards and 5 x 3.5" drives in the bottom drive cage but you could install another drive cage in the 5.25" bay.
I used it for my server build and have a 3x3.5" SAS backplane in the 5.25" bay.
The Phanteks Enthoo Pro has official support (stated in the manual) for SSI EBB motherboards. It’s a bit of a dated design internally (doesen’t support front mounted radiators with hard drives and has 3 5.25" bays) but it’swell made, solid and spacious. Has support natively for 6 3.5" drives and you can use the 5.25" bays to accomodate more drives with adaptors. You can even run a fan behind the drive cages to pull air away from it to cool the drives better.
Radiator support is another one. I Would like to if possible either use AIOs or if I have to, do a custom loop. (Never done before kind of worried about getting it wrong.)
I think it has a good ariflow, but the 2x140mm fans I’ve put in the front are not directly in front of the CPU but only direct air to the GPU.
There’s also space for a 140 or 120mm fan in the bottom with the drive cages installed.
In the top there’s space for a 420mm radiator so 2x140mm AIOs should fit no problem (60mm total clearence between the top mounting and the motherboard so maximum 45mm thick radiators can be installed there).
My build doesen’t kick as much heat as your will but I can tell you that with two NF-A14 in the front, the 200mm stock fan in the top (I just needed to make pre existing holes bigger and it fits no problem) and the stock 140mm fan in the back my 4790K 1.15V 4.4GHz cooled by an NH-D15 reaches 65°C with OCCT small data set and the R9 285 79°C (needs paste and is aggresively overclocked)
Rosewill RSV-L4000/L4500/L4412 if you want drive space and max airflow, though it is a 4U server case. Just replace fans in midplane or the front with Noctua NF-A12x25s (remove the other fans as they would impede airflow). Should be sufficient for about 1500 watts of heat dissipation. Also need to remove the front door or at least the dust filter, as it seriously stifles airflow
With the amount of PCI slots available on those cases I feel there could be potential for the top two GPUs could be potentially starved of air flow. I dont own any blower style cards so is there are chance the exhaust air could potentially be blocked?
Also there is a worry of CPU temps with no real exhaust in the back of the case.
The L4000/4500 cases come with a midplane of 3 120mm fans (they’re not good). You can mount a 360 rad on the middle fanmounts 4 screwholes.
I have used those cases for crypto mining rig cases and can tell you how well the cards cool is going to depend on the heataink design. Some mini cards have a radial heataink (single fan gpus) which doesn’t do well, by about 10 degrees C hotter than others. Dual and triple fan heatsinks actually cool extremely well due to dumping their heat into the airflow path qhich pushes it immediately out of the case vs it raidiating up to the exhaust fan near the cpu on other cases.
3 Noctua NF-A12x25s at 1600 RPM (80%) keeps 5 1060s with 30% fanspeed under 65C. Total case wattage is around 600 watts from the wall. The key is high-static pressure fans to force the air through. The Noctua fans can operate at high speed for a long time and do it quietly, which is why I spent the extra dollars for them.
Server cases cool components much better due to their ability to replace the cases air volume many more times per minute than a normal case; I can basically guarantee 5-10C lower temps than a normal case.
Sorry if that was a bit all over the place, kinda tired from traveling a lot the last few days
