Hi there, can anyone recommend a case to house 12 or more drives? Currently have a Lian-Li V2000 that has seen better days. Thanks in advance.
The Lian Li PC-A77F has 12 5.25" bays. With four 3 bay HDD cages you could fit up to 16 hard drives. Case: http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php?pr_index=478&cl_index=1&sc_index=25&ss_index=61 4 x 3.5" HD's in 3 x 5.25" bay caddy/cage with 120mm fan: http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/produc...dex=279&cl_index=2&sc_index=5&ss_index=12&g=f 4 x 3.5" in 3 x 5.25" bay adapter (no fan): http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/produc...dex=559&cl_index=2&sc_index=5&ss_index=12&g=f The adapters in the last link can fit 2 x 2.5" HD's at the same time as 4 HDD's which means you could have up to 16 x 3.5" drives as well as up to 8 x 2.5" drives at the same time. If you can't find any of the above in the country you live, try caseking.de - they have a huge selection of Lian Li cases & accessories and will ship to the almost any country. They also have a table of shipping charges on their website.
I thought about a Lian Li PC-343B Modular Cube Case a while back but ended up getting a Mountian Mods case.. http://www.frozencpu.com/products/5...Modular_Aluminum_Cube_Case.html?tl=g1c295s740
Thanks for all your suggestions. The PC-A77F looks very tempting indeed. Housing 16 drives would be great. My current system consists of 12 drives as well as 2 optical drives. Will the PC-A77F really surpass this? How many 3.5 inch drives can be housed in the 3 drive bays that come as standard? Would I have to swap them out and replace them with the 4 x 3.5" in 3 x 5.25" bay adapters as suggested by Fingers66? Thanks for your time.
The standard hard drive cages that come with the A77F holds 3 HDD's per cage which would mean a maximum of 12 HDD's in the 12 5.25" bays. To get 16 HDD's you would need to replace the originals with either of the ones in the other links I posted. It won't be cheap though. If cost is an issue, go for the Antec 1200 as posted by Jipa, you would still need similar bay adapters to get 4 HDD's into 3 x 5.25" bays. There are also cheapers adapters available than the Lian Li ones: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Coolermaster-Full-Alloy-4-in-3-Devices-Module-Ideal-for-Most-cases. I have one of these myself but haven't fitted it yet. The front panel cover (with CoolerMaster logo) doesn't have to be used - you can use this internally as well and it comes with a fan. Another option is one of these: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Jou-Jye-ST-3051SS-525-(3-Bay)-Backplane-for-5x-35-SAS-SATA-HDD. This would allow you to fit 5 x 3.5" HDD's into 3 x 5.25" bays. In a 12 x 5.25" bay case (like the Lian Li A77-F or Antec 1200) you could fit 20 HDD's. There are also hot-swap versions available: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Icy-...sting-5-HDD-Drives-SATAII-Hotswap-Best-Seller or http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Icy-Box-IB-555SK-for-5x-35-SATA-SAS-HDD-Backplane-into-3x-525-bays. One question: what add-on cards are you planning to use to connect all these drives to? Simple SATA HBA cards or will you be going down the RAID route? Edit: To see what the Icy Dock bay adapters look like in a case, here are some links: 3 x Icy Dock 5 x 3.5" adapters in a Cooler Master Centurion 590 3 x Icy Dock 5 x 3.5" adapters in a Lian Li PC-A17B These give you an idea of what kind of space they require internally. As an aside, the SATA HBA used by LimeTech looks good value, its' not a RAID card though: http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?origin=gbase20.9&prodID=B108112.
Thanks a lot for the all the additional info. I plan on adding a Highpoint RocketRAID 2722 8x to a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Rev 2 motherboard.
Oops, I meant the Highpoint RocketRAID 2720(RR2720) 8 channel Internal PCI-e 2.0 x8 to SAS/SATA III RAID controller.
