Looking for a large case

Enclosures and acoustic damping to help quiet them.

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Animekiksazz
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Jul 30, 2003 2:07 pm

Looking for a large case

Post by Animekiksazz » Wed Oct 12, 2005 6:53 pm

Requirements:
10 Harddrives
EATX
Cooling for 2 Opterons, and of course the 10 harddrives
As quiet as possible.


I currently have a Yeong Yang YY-0221, an earlier version than the one currently available. No fan on the side for me, and the grills were much more restricting. Of course, the keyword, 'were' I cut the stamped grills out to allow more air to pass, as well as cut a whole in the top on the CPU side to try and help as an exhuast. Also, since this was originally my main case, and I was young, and wanted to pimp things out, I have a window cut in the side, done by myself as well. The case has one 92mm fan intake into the CPU side, with my added 80mm exhaust fan in the top. The HDD side has one 120mm fan held in by paperclips and twist ties at the front, where some 5 1/4 drives would be placed, acting as an intake fan. And two 80mm fans acting as exhaust fans.

I recently bought an Antec P180 case for my main system and would like to attempt to get my server to similar sound levels as it. As well as cool everything adequately. Currently the CPUs at full load hit 66/64C +/-2C (depending on my rooms temperature). I find this to be a bit warm, concidering I have two Zalman 7700-Cu's to cool them.

I've looked around at a few cases, but I'm not sure what's quiet or not. The Chenbro SR10768/SR10868 looks nice, doesn't do 10 HDDs, only 8. So it doesn't quite meet requirements. I have 7 Harddrives right now I believe, so it would work, and I 'could' mount stuff later int he 5 1/4s but it'd be nice to have more room available.

I've also looked at the Stacker, but I'm not big on it's design, but it does look like it'd do the job fairly well, though again, unsure of how quiet it is.

And that's pretty much where I stand right now, hopefully I can find something that will fill the requirements, or a solution to the current case I have now, that will also be fairly cheap. I don't have a set budget, but the cheapest possible solution would definately be nice :)

Thanks
Aka

PositiveSpin
Posts: 137
Joined: Sat Jul 24, 2004 5:03 am

Post by PositiveSpin » Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:00 pm

I have a Stacker with 10 drives in it. Works fine (get a GOOD powersupply!). Not particularly quiet (unsurprisingly - 10 x vibration from hard drives!) . Sits in server room, so noise not a huge issue.

The fans on the 4/3 modules keep the drives fairly cool. The case only comes with one module, so you have to buy two more, but they are not too expensive.

darthan
Posts: 237
Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2005 1:28 pm
Location: San Francisco

Post by darthan » Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:13 pm

I'd suggest the Lian-Li PCV-2000 or 2100 (you can get them in black too). They hold 12 hds, up to E-ATX motherboard (which I suspect could be important for you) are of very high quality design. The downside is that they are expensive, and aluminum so hd vibration may be a BIG problem. On the plus side, you have enough room in one of those cases to suspend at least seven hds, with just a little creativity and that would solve the vibration problem. I can't comment on the cooling personnaly, but the design looks pretty good in pictures. Fresh air for the PSU and a separate chamber for the hds+ PSU is always good plus usage of mostly 120mm fans.

I do have to say you shouldn't expect to get the same kind of quiet out of a dual Opteron, seven (or ten) hard drive system that you get out of a more normal system with one or two hds and a single processor for the same amount of investment of time and money. That server you describe uses more than twice as much power as most of the systems around here designed for quiet. And of course twice the power means twice the work to get rid of twice the heat which generally means you'll need to move twice the air to get the same temps and twice the air means twice the noise, usually.

Animekiksazz
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Jul 30, 2003 2:07 pm

Post by Animekiksazz » Thu Oct 13, 2005 6:03 am

Thanks for the replies.

I realize I'll never get it as quiet as a normal machine, or atleast not on the same budget. But I'd like to try anyway. The machine sits next to my bed along with my normal machine now. I don't have an extra room to place it in anymore.

I've already got my power supply. The machine is already running, cuz it's in the case described in the first post. I'd just like to find something with better air flow and that's quieter. I've thought of going out and buying a bunch of 400 GB drives (4) to make up the same storage space with less drives, but that's much too costly. So I'll have to deal with the 7.

3x250 GB Seagate SATA
1x200 GB Seagate PATA
2x120 GB WD PATA
1x160 GB WD PATA
1x100 GB Maxtor PATA

Right now those are split into 2 machines. the 3x250s are in my P180, and the rest are in the Server. I've done this because the server can't provide enough cooling for all the drives. Also, that 100 gig maxtor will be gone, it makes too much noise.

I'll look into the Lian-Li PCV-2000/2100s but they don't look like they'd be easy to keep the inside clean, or keep quiet. The machine sits on the floor, and currently sucks up any and all dust around it, filling the case up. Always annoying having to clean it out so often. I do realize dust filters block airflow, in my P180 if I remove them temps drove a degree or two.

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