Gauging interest in a miniITX case for 8x 3.5 hot swap bays plus 2x

S

Spotswood

Gawd
Joined
Sep 5, 2009
Messages
711
I'm gauging interest in a case to house a miniITX motherboard, SFX power supply, 8x 3.5" hotswap and 2x SSDs.

Click on the image for an animation of the model:

 
Well, here's a suggestion, make it matx instead. It'd still take a mitx board if you wanted to but at least you'd have the choice.
 
Make sure it has handles on top and can fit full size psu.
 
That looks to me like it could easily be made to accommodate a full ATX motherboard without a significant gain in size. You'd need some sort of support for the expansion card area at that point, though.

I have a couple of cases in my possession that are made out of 80/20 like your design. It sort of works, but you make a lot of sacrifices in the name of flexibility by going that route. Waterjet cut and bent aluminum panels would be my suggestion, a la Mountain Mods, for a scratch design.
 
Cool animation & a nice design overall...but it looks eerily similar to my current Corsair Carbide Air 540, and it's little brother the 240, with it's dual chamber design & all..... just the general concept might be enough to catch the attention of Corsair's Legal dept though, IF you ever went public with the design.....just a thought :)

I doubt that many people here would like to have the psu mounted directly over the top of the cpu, simply because this would severely limit your cpu cooling options. Moving it over to the other side (like Corsair did) would eliminate this issue though....as would including mount points on the top of the case for dual fans/rads etc....

I do believe that the monster disk array with flow-thru cooling fans would appeal to some folks though, with the ever-growing storage needs like they are nowadays....as would the ATX size suggestion.
 
Here's another option, make the right side all 5.25" bays. 7 would give enough for a rom drive for media ripping and 2 4in3 or 5in3 hot swap enclosures, or allow non swap enclosures for cost savings.
 
I assume this is intended only as a storage server. (Or NAS, if you prefer meaningless buzzwords.)

Doesn't make much sense to me to have hotswap bays behind fans. If you're going to do that, then you may as well scrap the hotswap idea. Your design looks like it has far more fans than it needs, the layout has a lot of unused space, and the overall size is larger than it needs to be.

There's definitely a market for cases that can be used to build small, quiet storage servers that home users can set off in a corner and not worry about. The Fractal Designs Node 304 case is an example, although it only houses six non-hotswap dives and really isn't that great of a design.

As far as form-factor and layout, try duplicating one of the tower designs from someone like Synology or QNAP. Your miniITX motherboard and SFX power supply are probably larger than anything used in those designs, but for DIY, they shouldn't add too much to the overall size to make it unworkable. Of course, you also have to allow for a PCIe riser and a disk controller card, or you can't go much beyond four hard drives using native SATA ports.
 
With no exterior access those drive bays are not hot-swap.

And why have four fans at the front? One large one would be much more sensible.
 
Thanks for all of the comments/suggestions. The design was dictated by the Intel hotswap bays, miniITX motherboard and SFX power supply.

The front fans will be easily removable.

SmallBizCaseV4.jpg
 
Why do you think you need two banks of fans, front and rear, to cool the hard drives? I have a storage server with 15 x 3.5" drives that doesn't have half as many fans.

Again... knowing the intention of the case would help a lot. As I said above, I assume it's a storage server, as few people today want or need 8 drives in a desktop computer. If it _is_ intended as a desktop computer then I can safely say that I have zero interest.
 
JJ Johnson said:
Why do you think you need two banks of fans, front and rear, to cool the hard drives? I have a storage server with 15 x 3.5" drives that doesn't have half as many fans.

Again... knowing the intention of the case would help a lot. As I said above, I assume it's a storage server, as few people today want or need 8 drives in a desktop computer. If it _is_ intended as a desktop computer then I can safely say that I have zero interest.
Click to expand...

The case is intended as a storage server. Installing fans in all of the possible locations is not required. A push/pull fan setup can often provide the same amount of cooling as one fan, but at a much lower RPM.
 
Where are the filters?
Why not fix the most glaring error of most current designs and incorporate effective easy to clean filters?
 
RazorWind said:
Are there going to be exterior panels included?
Click to expand...
Yes, either acrylic/aluminum glued to the grooves of the extrusions or applied over them:

Proto360RadBoxwCLRadMount-640.jpg


SmallHDBox-640.jpg


LargeRadBox5.jpg



stormy1 said:
Where are the filters?
Why not fix the most glaring error of most current designs and incorporate effective easy to clean filters?
Click to expand...

The DemciFilter 120.2 filter will fit perfectly to the extrusions that frame the fans:

DF0032.jpg
 
Thanks everyone, but I think I will save this design and move onto flushing-out more variations of my IKEA Helmer replacment drawers/cases. For example, you can fit a full-size ATX rig with 12x hotswap drives in a five "drawer high" case:

IKEA%20Helmer%205%20drawer%20storage%20case%20v4.jpg
 
Might have been a better idea to mount the SFX psu to the bottom--you can always mount the SSDs to the side panel, or double them up in front of the psu on the floor. There would still be plenty of cooling for the SSDs, and more room for cooling the CPU (if necessary).

If you're not worried about your CPU's cooler height (i.e., you can get away with a short cooler, possibly fanless since those four front fans are blowing on it), you could squeeze the mb behind the hotswap bays (in any orientation, as long as there's room for expansion cards, really). That'd leave additional room for another single 5-bay hotswap unit, cable management, or whatever.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top