Medium sized tower for 4+ hdds

Enclosures and acoustic damping to help quiet them.

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xev
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Medium sized tower for 4+ hdds

Post by xev » Sat Feb 27, 2016 8:58 pm

I want to finally upgrade my pc and get a new tower.

I would like to fit it all in a box smaller than my current P180 so i would need a m-atx/itx compatible case.

But I have several hdds (currently 5 + ssd) but i will make it 4 + ssd and a dedicated gfx card (260gtx (length 10.5)

Are there any that have space for so many hdds?

quest_for_silence
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Re: Medium sized tower for 4+ hdds

Post by quest_for_silence » Sun Feb 28, 2016 4:01 am

xev wrote:and a dedicated gfx card (260gtx (length 10.5)
Side question: what's the point for a 260GTX in 2016?

xev
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Re: Medium sized tower for 4+ hdds

Post by xev » Sun Feb 28, 2016 8:14 am

quest_for_silence wrote:
xev wrote:and a dedicated gfx card (260gtx (length 10.5)
Side question: what's the point for a 260GTX in 2016?
It's the card i have now. I dont think integrated video is as powerful. Or is it?
Basically I'd like to recycle as many parts as possible. So my Seasonic 600, storage, and video would go into the new system.

I dont really play games, but if i decide to get one randomly, i'd like my system to be able to handle it somewhat, not on low settings

Abula
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Re: Medium sized tower for 4+ hdds

Post by Abula » Sun Feb 28, 2016 8:33 am

xev wrote:I would like to fit it all in a box smaller than my current P180 so i would need a m-atx/itx compatible case.

But I have several hdds (currently 5 + ssd) but i will make it 4 + ssd and a dedicated gfx card (260gtx (length 10.5)

Are there any that have space for so many hdds?
I would recommend to move the hdds to an external NAS and place it where you cant hear it, and access them via network. Synology and Qnap have a lot of options and their OS is very friendly and easy to learn, and their designs are small. This will allow you different options on a smaller destkop, for example

SilverStone FTZ01: Mini-ITX Fortress
SilverStone Raven RVZ02 Slim Tower (i would chose the none windowed)
NCASE M1: Crowdfunded Enthusiast Mini-ITX Case
Dans A4-SFX

Now if you dont want to persue the route of NAS + Desktop, some options for having your hdds inside in a smaller factor than ATX, check the follow,

SilverStone Temjin TJ08-E: MicroATX Evolved
It can fit 4x 3.5 hdd on the middle cage and one more on the bottom of the hdd cage, also has a bottom case mount for your ssd. Because of how the hdd are placed is recommended you get not so tall memory, standard or low profile is recommended (no tall heatsinks), and that you get a CPU cooler that grows flush from the CPU socket, like Thermalright Macho Rev B, also recommend you get a motherboard that can control well fans, the frontal AP181 needs a lot of undervolting to get it quiet, the switch is needed in low and then undervolt heavy, a good motherboard to do this would be Asus with FanXpert, ASUS Z170M-PLUS. If you wish to see more builds to get some ideas, check OCN Silverstone TJ08-E Owners Club. For this case i would build with a EVGA Supernova P2 650. Here is a picture to get a rough idea,

Image

LIAN LI PC-Q25B
Has a cage for 5x 3.5 hdd and you can remove the bottom one to fit you desired GPU, you can velcro your ssd to the bottom of the case. This is going to be hard to build, you will need to get creative with the cable management and very tight to fit your hands once the build advances, none the less is a viable option if you like Lian Li aluminium finishes.

Fractal Design Node 304 Mini-ITX Case
This is also a nice option, you can fit 6x 3.5 hdds but with a small GPU or 4x 3.5hdd with a big GPU, you can place the SSD on one of the sides. It will get tight at the end of the build as there is no cable management, and using long GPUs will close a lot of PSUs, one that works with big gpus are the Seasonic G550 and Seasonic G650, both have the none modual cables opposed to the GPU so it will be at the very end and their modular slots end up below the GPU. If you like this case, spend some time in OCN [Official] Fractal Design Node 304 Owners Club, you will find tons of builds.

Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 or Fractal Design Define Mini
If you are willing to take a bigger micro atx case, just slightly smaller than ATX, but easier to work with good cable management either of the two will work fine, both should fit your 5x 3.5 hdd + SSD.
I dont really play games, but if i decide to get one randomly, i'd like my system to be able to handle it somewhat, not on low settings
You better of selling it and grabing a MSI GTX750Ti, it will be like 4x more powerful, much quieter and consume a fraction of power.
Last edited by Abula on Sun Feb 28, 2016 9:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

quest_for_silence
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Re: Medium sized tower for 4+ hdds

Post by quest_for_silence » Sun Feb 28, 2016 8:55 am

xev wrote:It's the card i have now. I dont think integrated video is as powerful. Or is it?
Basically I'd like to recycle as many parts as possible. So my Seasonic 600, storage, and video would go into the new system.

I dont really play games, but if i decide to get one randomly, i'd like my system to be able to handle it somewhat, not on low settings

Current Intel HD 530 IGP may be about 15% (fifteen percent) slower than your current card, but it won't require 140W of heat and noise to be a tad slower (it's all well within the CPU power envelope): besides your card VRam amount is no more fine to run modern games at decent resolutions.

Do what you think best, but such a card seems to me a real waste with reference to noise/heat/energy.

Another side note: PSUs are like tyres, you have to replace them at some time, so whether your Seasonic is approaching a service age of 9 or 10 years, probably you should think to replacing it (it's inefficient for modern rigs, under performing by contemporary standards and not compatible to new low power cpu states), or at least to a serious check up of all its caps and fan.

xev
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Location: New York

Re: Medium sized tower for 4+ hdds

Post by xev » Mon Feb 29, 2016 9:52 pm

quest_for_silence wrote:
xev wrote:It's the card i have now. I dont think integrated video is as powerful. Or is it?
Basically I'd like to recycle as many parts as possible. So my Seasonic 600, storage, and video would go into the new system.

I dont really play games, but if i decide to get one randomly, i'd like my system to be able to handle it somewhat, not on low settings


Another side note: PSUs are like tyres, you have to replace them at some time, so whether your Seasonic is approaching a service age of 9 or 10 years, probably you should think to replacing it (it's inefficient for modern rigs, under performing by contemporary standards and not compatible to new low power cpu states), or at least to a serious check up of all its caps and fan.
The seasonic is about 3 years old but i will consider another 600w psu.
I will not use the dedicated video card since i wont really need it, and just buy a newer one thats shorter when the time comes to game.

quest_for_silence
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Re: Medium sized tower for 4+ hdds

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue Mar 01, 2016 1:32 am

xev wrote:The seasonic is about 3 years old but i will consider another 600w psu.

So is it an OEM grey box (SS-600ET?)?

xev wrote:I will not use the dedicated video card since i wont really need it, and just buy a newer one thats shorter when the time comes to game.

If you're not a gamer, I think you might even be surprised by latest IGP gaming performance.

BTW, about the case, whether you're going to hold on HDD bays requirements, you may also think to the Fractal Design Node 804 (whether it fits your downsizing likes).

SebRad
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Re: Medium sized tower for 4+ hdds

Post by SebRad » Tue Mar 01, 2016 6:05 am

Hi, may I suggest you take a look at eBay and see the sort of prices your existing components might fetch.
I think you could be surprised by the deluxe motherboard, RAM and to some extent the CPU. (In UK I would shoot for £50/£40/£40 mobo/ram/cpu)
Then compare with new parts, e.g. system I built for my brother a month ago:
Pentium G4500 $91 (or i3 6100 $130 if want fraction more clock speed and hyper threading)
GA-H110M-S2H $63
Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 $15
8GB DDR4 $34

The motherboard was the cheapest I could find that had DDR4 and two digital video outputs, you can of course chose differently.
The RAM can be as 2x4GB if you want max integrated GPU performance or 1x8GB if you want to be able to upgrade to 16GB+ later. I think the real-world CPU performance would be imperceptibly impacted by single/dual channel RAM
I used Arctic Cooling Alpine CPU cooler (as it was only £5 on sale) and it's really quiet at idle and quiet under load when using the BIOS/UEFI 'silent' fan profile, which is just as well as Speedfan doesn't work with this mobo yet, nor do Gigabyte offer and fan control utility that worked with it, that I could find anyway.
Don't by fast memory, only up to 2133 is supported, spend more for lower latencies if you must but it's not worth it!

Such an upgrade would give you much more single thread CPU performance and probably equal even on multi threaded (the i3 certainly would) in a modern system consuming a fraction of the power. The Intel HD530 graphics will easily drive all OS functions and video decoding etc, up to 4k over the HDMI port too.

If/when you get in to gaming you can give it a go on the IGP and if it doesn't work out then add a video card at what ever level you need/afford.
The 260 GTX was great in it's day but now it just consumes a lot of power for its performance, making it had to keep quiet. Looks like $20-30 on eBay

I meant to try this system on the old Seasonic S12 380w PSU, but forgot to see if it would work. Slightly less old S12II 330w is working great though so you have chance your existing PSU would be fine too.

Consolidating your hard drives to 1 or 2 modern ones would give you more speed and less noise, unless they are needed to work independently.
Old drives will fetch a little money 2nd hand too.

With low power system and less HDDs you can then get away with almost any case, especially if you suspend the HDDs.
I build a system a while back in to Antec VSK3000 (a Haswell Pentium) and it was fine, yes light and thin metal, but reasonable well made for $25. With an SSD and quiet Samsung HDD that was a quiet little machine on a shoe string budget.

Good luck,
Seb

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