Cheap rackmount case 3.5" bays

[leadeater]

So I need a list of good chassis in 3.5" disk configuration. Cheaper the better, 2U or 3U, so used is fine. It also needs to support a PSU(s) that can supply two processors which actually rules out most of the rackmount cases from the likes of Procase/SilverStone etc.

 

Example of what I'm looking for would be a Dell C2100, I'd just get that if I could find someone that will actually ship to NZ or who doesn't change $500 USD to do it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

About how many Drives?

 

Standard atx psu or is propertiery ok?

 

Are you using drives over 2TB?

 

 

 

ALso do you have surplus stores in NZ? I have many suplus places near me that sell used servers cheap(but i also live in the bay area, and am near almost every large tech company)

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

About how many Drives?

 

Standard atx psu or is propertiery ok?

 

Are you using drives over 2TB?

 

ALso do you have surplus stores in NZ? I have many suplus places near me that sell used servers cheap(but i also live in the bay area, and am near almost every large tech company)

ATX is fine, dual PSU is nicer to have but louder so haven't made my mind up on that one yet.

 

I'll just be using the chassis btw, any parts in it even it it's a working server will be taken out. It actually works out way cheaper than buying even a shitty rackmount chassis new.

 

Used market in NZ is rubbish and horribly over priced.

[brwainer]

25 minutes ago, leadeater said:

ATX is fine, dual PSU is nicer to have but louder so haven't made my mind up on that one yet.

 

I'll just be using the chassis btw, any parts in it even it it's a working server will be taken out. It actually works out way cheaper than buying even a shitty rackmount chassis new.

 

Used market in NZ is rubbish and horribly over priced.

IDK how these things go, but what about the used market in Australia - the shipping has to be better than anything in the US and EU. Isn't @Windspeed36 involved in IT sales over there? Maybe he can help?

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, brwainer said:

IDK how these things go, but what about the used market in Australia - the shipping has to be better than anything in the US and EU. Isn't @Windspeed36 involved in IT sales over there? Maybe he can help?

Yea I'm just looking on ebay which has Aus listings too etc, really just looking for some good search term options. I mostly only know HP and IBM kit and as far as HP goes their 3.5" options that are older don't really exist or are SCSI.

[Guest]

Would something cheap and shitty work? Silverstone and TGC (carried by Anyware) are two brands that come to mind. 

[Guest]

http://www.anyware.com.au/brands/tgc.html

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, Windspeed36 said:

Would something cheap and shitty work? Silverstone and TGC (carried by Anyware) are two brands that come to mind. 

Had a look at SilverStone and the supported PSUs that go in them, that aren't 3 times the chassis price, only have single 8 Pin EPS connectors or an 8 Pin EPS and a single 4 Pin which won't power a dual socket motherboard. SilverStone was looking like a really good option until I couldn't find any acceptable PSUs for it.

[Guest]

52 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Had a look at SilverStone and the supported PSUs that go in them, that aren't 3 times the chassis price, only have single 8 Pin EPS connectors or an 8 Pin EPS and a single 4 Pin which won't power a dual socket motherboard. SilverStone was looking like a really good option until I couldn't find any acceptable PSUs for it.

You can put ATX or Zippy PSU's in some of them

[leadeater]

Anyone got opinions on Rosewill? http://www.rosewill.com/it-products/server-components/server-chasis/rosewill-rsv-l4412-4u-rackmount-server-case-or-chassis-12-sata-sas-hot-swap-drives-5-cooling-fans-included.html#product_tabs_Specifications

 

I can get them really cheap and looks like it supports standard ATX power supplies. Anything bad about them that stands out?

[Eniqmatic]

Looks nice, I would be interested in hearing your experience with this/whatever you decide to go as I have been casually looking a lot recently, hoping to buy in the near future. I was the same as you, was looking to the C2100 and the R510 12 bay version but again cost!

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Eniqmatic said:

Looks nice, I would be interested in hearing your experience with this/whatever you decide to go as I have been casually looking a lot recently, hoping to buy in the near future. I was the same as you, was looking to the C2100 and the R510 12 bay version but again cost!

Yea they range from $160 - $190 USD on ebay, turns out only the 15 bay internal not the 12 bay hotswap but that's not a killer. The rails are ~$90 USD so for a total of less than $200 USD it's the cheapest I have found by a long way, sure I have to add in a PSU but I have tons of those already.

 

It's this or used Supermicro servers that have dual PSU which is nice but loud. Pay more and get 8 - 12 SuperMicro and toss out the parts inside or use if decent or go with this, so torn right now. 

[Eniqmatic]

Just now, leadeater said:

Yea they range from $160 - $190 USD on ebay, turns out only the 15 bay internal not the 12 bay hotswap but that's not a killer. The rails are ~$90 USD so for a total of less than $200 USD it's the cheapest I have found by a long way, sure I have to add in a PSU but I have tons of those already.

 

It's this or used Supermicro servers that have dual PSU which is nice but loud. Pay more and get 8 - 12 SuperMicro and toss out the parts inside or use if decent or go with this, so torn right now. 

They seem to be slightly more here in the UK and there isn't a ton of options - makes me sad when I go on the US ebay and there is tons of choice for cheap

 

I too have been looking at used Supermicro servers, some are actually pretty interesting and do seem more reasonably priced! Let me know what you go for!

[scottyseng]

1 hour ago, Eniqmatic said:

I too have been looking at used Supermicro servers, some are actually pretty interesting and do seem more reasonably priced! Let me know what you go for!

For me, my used Supermicro server (4U / 24 bay) was $200. It was a SAS1 (3Gb/s Backplane).

 

I then bought a SAS2 (6Gb/s) backplane used for $300.

 

Then I bought a used SuperMicro Platinum power supply for $130 because I couldn't stand the original ones it came with (80+, idles like a typhoon). I still have yet to buy the other one...

 

Finally, I got a server rack, but I had to buy refurbished rails for the supermicro...that set me back another $80.

 

It's working great though. Do note, if you have a supermicro motherboard, on some of them, the default min fan speed is 50%...if you try to use the stock fans with the chassis, it turns into a jet at 50% at idle. I had to remove the standard server fans and ghetto placed a couple of bequiet fans in the same spots instead. Yeah, it probably runs hotter, but I haven't had any issues yet.

[Eniqmatic]

1 minute ago, scottyseng said:

For me, my used Supermicro server (4U / 24 bay) was $200. It was a SAS1 (3Gb/s Backplane).

 

I then bought a SAS2 (6Gb/s) backplane used for $300.

 

Then I bought a used SuperMicro Platinum power supply for $130 because I couldn't stand the original ones it came with (80+, idles like a typhoon). I still have yet to buy the other one...

 

Finally, I got a server rack, but I had to buy refurbished rails for the supermicro...that set me back another $80.

 

It's working great though. Do note, if you have a supermicro motherboard, on some of them, the default min fan speed is 50%...if you try to use the stock fans with the chassis, it turns into a jet at 50% at idle. I had to remove the standard server fans and ghetto placed a couple of bequiet fans in the same spots instead. Yeah, it probably runs hotter, but I haven't had any issues yet.

Backplane more expensive than the server haha! That's cool, good to know! What processor configuration did you end up getting and what is your use case? 24 bay sounds nice, now you've got me thinking...

[leadeater]

8 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Then I bought a used SuperMicro Platinum power supply for $130 because I couldn't stand the original ones it came with (80+, idles like a typhoon). I still have yet to buy the other one...

How quite are they and what's the compatibility like, any chassis of the same height?

[scottyseng]

1 minute ago, Eniqmatic said:

Backplane more expensive than the server haha! That's cool, good to know! What processor configuration did you end up getting and what is your use case? 24 bay sounds nice, now you've got me thinking...

Yeah, SAS2 backplanes cost even more now (They're low in stock at the moment). And I think a supermicro server with a SAS2 backplane used is still like 1k+

 

Ah, I went the DIY route, but I have a Xeon E5-2695V3 (It was a ES chip from ebay), supermicro motherboard, two 1070s, LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i CV, and a Sandisk Extreme Pro for the OS drive.

 

Well, originally it was just a storage NAS. I just went overkill on the CPU...just a little. The intent at the time was that I was going to use it to render as justification...two years later, I actually started to learn 3D modeling as a hobby and now I have seen the light with GPU based rendering. So it got upgraded to a 1070, and just recently, two of them. Originally it had a firepro V7900 (Thing ran too hot).

 

But yeah, it's rendering and nas now.

[scottyseng]

10 minutes ago, leadeater said:

How quite are they and what's the compatibility like, any chassis of the same height?

It's very quiet at idle. I can't even hear it, and my server uses 200-250W during normal use.

 

However, when I start GPU rendering (vray GPU rendering...550W...dual 1070 / CPU at 20%), you can hear the fan start to spool up, but it's still on par with the Eaton UPS (Which also ramps up at the same load). Not terrible.

 

And when I start really pushing it (iray rendering, CPU full load / 980 Ti...600W+), it turns into the screaming monster we know and love, but it's very hard to get it to spool up. Even at this load, it's still quieter than the original 80+ PSU was at idle.  

 

I'd contact supermicro support to double check. I was the one guy that thought all supermicro PSUs were the same...and got stuck with a platinum PSU for their Cloud server that I can't use...and then after talking to them, they told me the correct model to upgrade to...

[scottyseng]

32 minutes ago, leadeater said:

How quite are they and what's the compatibility like, any chassis of the same height?

Ah right, I also forgot, despite supermicro telling me it was a direct replacement, which it was, the old PSU model (PWS-902-1R) had the same two power tabs with the same traces as the new one (PWS-920P-SQ) did, but the old one had this small notch cutout on one tab. The new one did not go into the PSU backplane fully until I used my dremel to cut the notch to match on the one tab. Very strange, but worth pointing out.

 

The modern 4U SAS3 supermicro PSUs are a different model PSU (Titanium Plus). The current 920W SAS2 supermicro server uses the same platinum PSU I have. The current 1200W SAS2 model has a different Platinum PSU (different traces on the tabs as well) so I'm guessing it's model specific for PSUs.

[leadeater]

I can get this for $270 USD shipped with a single PSU, https://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/825/SC825TQ-563LPB

 

@scottyseng

I could if I want to swap out the backplane for a nicer one, miniSAS or an expander backplane, if I wanted to correct?

[scottyseng]

9 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I can get this for $270 USD shipped with a single PSU, https://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/825/SC825TQ-563LPB

 

@scottyseng

I could if I want to swap out the backplane for a nicer one, miniSAS or an expander backplane, if I wanted to correct?

Yeah, but for this model, it seems supermicro didn't make a SAS2 backplane for it. They have SAS3 backplanes in the current model, but those are very high dollar, but would fit.

 

In general though, you can swap the supermicro backplanes between gens as they use the same screw holes. I could upgrade to a SAS3 4U backplane in my box if I wanted (expensive though).

 

That server is kind of odd...I didn't know they made them like that. I thought they were stuck to being 12 (3 rows x 4) drives for 2U.

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Yeah, but for this model, it seems supermicro didn't make a SAS2 backplane for it. They have SAS3 backplanes in the current model, but those are very high dollar, but would fit.

 

In general though, you can swap the supermicro backplanes between gens as they use the same screw holes. I could upgrade to a SAS3 4U backplane in my box if I wanted (expensive though).

 

That server is kind of odd...I didn't know they made them like that. I thought they were stuck to being 12 (3 rows x 4) drives for 2U.

Yea there is a 12 disk model, not sure why the 8 exists. I like the Supermicro option more than the Rosewill mainly as I can get free rails and it just feels less err janky lol.

[scottyseng]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Yea there is a 12 disk model, not sure why the 8 exists. I like the Supermicro option more than the Rosewill mainly as I can get free rails and it just feels less err janky lol.

Yeah, I'm trying to think why the 8 drive version exists either.

 

I'm jealous you can get free rails...It makes me sad for my server the rails costs half of the server. haha.

 

Haha, it does feel less janky than the rosewill for sure.

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Yeah, I'm trying to think why the 8 drive version exists either.

 

I'm jealous you can get free rails...It makes me sad for my server the rails costs half of the server. haha.

 

Haha, it does feel less janky than the rosewill for sure.

Taking rails from decommissioned servers should be fine, I wouldn't even have this issue at all if I was allowed to buy the servers we throw out. We've got multiple unused and racked 2U/3U/4U supermicro servers doing nothing and we are often throwing out high spec perfectly functional HP servers, we are getting rid of DL380 Gen8's in both SFF and LFF configurations ffs. We'll be getting rid of some DL560 Gen8's soon too, ahh!!

 

Edit:

Yes we PAY to get rid of them.

[scottyseng]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Taking rails from decommissioned servers should be fine, I wouldn't even have this issue at all if I was allowed to buy the servers we throw out. We've got multiple unused and racked 2U/3U/4U supermicro servers doing nothing and we are often throwing out high spec perfectly functional HP servers, we are getting rid of DL380 Gen8's in both SFF and LFF configurations ffs. We'll be getting rid of some DL560 Gen8's soon too, ahh!!

Curious, not a server IT person, but why can't you buy / take the servers you plan to throw out? Is there some kind of safety thing or whatever that prevents you from getting them?

 

That's a shame for those servers...I guess that's how datacenter stuff ends up on ebay.