Recommendation for case (8*3,5" + 2*2,5")

[ChrisRJ]

Hi,

Due to cooling issues I would like to replace my Fractal R6 case with something that requires less air pressure and therefore noise. Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Chris

 

[Constantin]

The Q26B from Lian Li was arguably the best Mini-ITX case ever made for SOHO NAS'. Great air flow, standard power supply, plenty of room to get it all in there, yet a very compact enclosure for one 2.5" and ten 3.5" drives. I highly recommend the backplanes for this rig, it makes swapping drives almost as easy as a tool-less system like the Mini XL. If you want to nerd our further, re-add all the missing capacitors to the back planes to make hot-swapping that much less stressful on the power supply.

Unfortunately, it's hard to come by these days since it's been out of production for several years. You might get lucky on eBay, like I did.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Have you considered adding aditional sound dampening material to your existing case?

https://www.amazon.com/Kilmat-Deadening-Automotive-Insulation-dampening/dp/B082Q2J2T4

Otherwise, Antec has some "silent" cases in their performance series, some of which (P10, P82, P101) have a fan speed switch on the case.

https://www.antec.com/product/case-

 

[Constantin]

Kilmat may work well to reduce rattling, some vibration, etc. but fan noise might be a lot harder to kill unless you either add another external enclosure (with baffling, etc) or find a different way to get air in and out of the case (duct + blower in a different room). Noise by fan also varies a lot. One of my 80mm Noctua fans is way louder than its 120mm brother next door. Comes down to fan speed, static pressure requirements, and so on.

Or install the server in a constantly-on AC supply duct and then turn the IPMI fan settings down.

 

[ChrisRJ]

Thanks, @Constantin and @elvisimprsntr . I don't think that dampening material will help, quite honestly. The problem with the R6 case is, when you populate most of the 3,5" slots, that airflow from the front fans is largely kept away from the hard disks by Define's sleds for mounting the hard disks. You can actually derive this from their web site. Go to https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/define/define-r6/blackout/ and search for "Modularity and open case layout". The 3,5" sleds on the left, unless you only use every second of them, leave less than 2 mm for the airflow between disks. And since the sleds completely cover the bottom of the disks, only their top side gets any airflow at all.

My NAS is placed in the basement that has a constant ambient temperature of 20 C. To keep the disk below 35 C, requires the use of high power fans (optimized for static pressure). The noise is louder than from my 1U Supermicro server under normal load and slightly below what it emits under full load (which rarely happens). I don't need a "silent" machine at all. But right now you can hear the NAS throughout the entire house.

The Lian Li case looks nice, but I have an ATX board (Supermicro X9SRi-F) which wouldn't fit. Other than it is probably what I am after.

 

[Constantin]

Have you considered the 2U or 3U series from SuperMicro? They can be had for relatively little money over here and then upgraded with less loud power supplies. Not sure how quiet they are after all that, however.

I have a Lian Li A76 here because the Q26 is only good for mini ATX, not even flex ATX. Whereas the 26 has nice thick side walls with captive fasteners, the 76’s are comparatively flimsy and require careful alignment to slide into their slots. For whatever reason, my drives also run cooler in the 26 than in the 76 despite having similar fan blowers.

 

[ChrisRJ]

@Constantin , yes such a SuperMicro case would be nice. However, right now they are hard to come by here in Germany. But I am in no real rush, so set up a search in eBay, just biding my time . Thanks!

 

[rvassar]

I use a gamer tower case. 6 x 3.5 bays in front of the dual 120mm fans, and 4 x 5.25 external bays (I use adapters), and an internal 2 x 2.5 bay for boot devices. It has lots of large fan mounts to support the dual GPU configs of the GTX 1080 era, which makes for great airflow with large low speed fans.

 

[QonoS]

Here you have some overview about Towers fitting (ATX Mainboard, 8x3.5, 2x2.5) :

Gehäuse PC-Gehäuse mit Formfaktor Mainboard: ATX, 2.5" intern max. ab (Lieferumfang): ab 2x, 3.5" intern max. ab (Lieferumfang): ab 8x Preisvergleich Geizhals EU

Preisvergleich und Bewertungen für Gehäuse PC-Gehäuse mit Formfaktor Mainboard: ATX, 2.5" intern max. ab (Lieferumfang): ab 2x, 3.5" intern max. ab (Lieferumfang): ab 8x

geizhals.eu

Antec P101 looks quite promising:

Antec P101 Silent ab € 114,53 (2024) | Preisvergleich Geizhals EU

✔ Preisvergleich für Antec P101 Silent ✔ Bewertungen ✔ Produktinfo ⇒ Extern: 1x 5.25" • Intern: 8x 2.5"/3.5" (quer, Laufwerksschienen), 2x 2.5" • Anschlüsse: 2x USB-A 3.0 (5G… ✔ PC-Gehäuse ✔ Testberichte ✔ Günstig kaufen

geizhals.eu

(since you are from germany i leave the EU link since it shows most results)

 

[Etorix]

In consumer cases, the Fractal Define Node 804 does not require high static pressure to cool the drives and noise should not be an issue if it's in the basement. But it is micro-ATX.

While I was experimenting with Chia farming, I noticed that the Nanoxia Deep Silence 8 Pro was much more convenient than the Fractal Define 7 to host many HDDs due to its tool-less drive caddies (incidentally, these look like the same caddies as in the Antec P101 above!). The caddies leave more than 2 mm between drives, but still present some obstruction to airflow. Unfortunately for @ChrisRJ, the experiment is over and both cases have been returned to (NVMe-only) desktop duties so I cannot even provide totally unscientific numbers as to how each case manages to cool a random assortment of spare and old HDDs with its pair of non-pressure optimised fans (not matched to those in the other case, because it would have come too close to a remotely valid comparison).
Thus, while the DS8 or the P101 may look promising, I have no idea whether they can cool drives to 35°C without high power fans.

 

[craigdt]

How about one of the new 2u form factor Silverstontek cases, one has 12 hotswap 3.5 bays (RM22-312), so you could put 8x 3.5 drives in there and using an adapter the other bays could have your 2x 2.5 drives and 2 spare?

I know we have stock of them here in Australia and we are not known as a country that get many imported options so I would hope you can source that brand in Germany ?

Oh and if you did decide to give that case a shot, you could do a nice review for us, oh and Silverstone do make dual redundant power supplies for them, from 600 to 1000w

I’m actually hoping they make a 24bay case soon, to replace the really poorly made TGC 24bay case I’m currently using.

 

[ChrisRJ]

That might indeed be an interesting option. Thanks, @craigdt