Good 4U NAS case

[ShadowTech01]

I'm gonna be building a nas for my studio. I'm gonna be going with the Ryzen 3000 series thanks to PCIe 4. I need a good case to store my hard drives. I want to go with a server rack system cause I'll be getting some other server stuff later so might as well have it all in one place. I can't seem to find a good 4U case for my NAS though, granted this is the first time I'm looking for something like this.

 

The case has to accommodate a ATX motherboard(but I might stick with a mATX, depends on my budget and needs), a full sized power supply, about 8-12 drives but more is better, and it has to have 3 5.25 bays in the front or at least 2 and have a 3.5 bay. Either way it must have 3 front bays. I need those for the optical drives, some hotswap bays, and my floppy drive(yes I know it's out of style but Windows 10 still supports it and I still use it on occasion). I don't know anything about any daughter boards I'll need for the multiple drives so some info for that would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Have you considered a used rack mound server? they work pretty well here.

 

PCIe 4 won't help you  here. your going to be disk or network limited, not pcie limited

 

Id just get a supermicro case, they make good 4u hot swap cases. Then use the optical and floppy drive on your dkesotp, not the server.

 

How may tb do you need?

 

Also do you really want windows 10 on a nas, something like freenas, or linux will work much better here for most uses.

[ShadowTech01]

17 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Have you considered a used rack mound server? they work pretty well here.

 

PCIe 4 won't help you  here. your going to be disk or network limited, not pcie limited

 

Id just get a supermicro case, they make good 4u hot swap cases. Then use the optical and floppy drive on your dkesotp, not the server.

 

How may tb do you need?

 

Also do you really want windows 10 on a nas, something like freenas, or linux will work much better here for most uses.

I need the PCIe 4 cause I'm gonna be using the gen 4 ssds for a cache for the drives. It's also gonna be on a 10Gb network so the faster the better. Plus by the time I'm ready to build the NAS is when B650 might be released, so I can get a used or discounted B550. The reason for Windows 10 is that I got some programs that the nas needs to run while storing the data. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, ShadowTech01 said:

I need the PCIe 4 cause I'm gonna be using the gen 4 ssds for a cache for the drives. It's also gonna be on a 10Gb network so the faster the better. Plus by the time I'm ready to build the NAS is when B650 might be released, so I can get a used or discounted B550. The reason for Windows 10 is that I got some programs that the nas needs to run while storing the data. 

Gen 4 ssds really won't help here, your gonna be network limited. Id save the money, and wait till there are more mature gen 4 ssds.

 

How about vms? Why not run something like proxmox and then run windows in a vm, so you get the best of both worlds.

 

How many tb do you need? Total budget?

 

If your not building for a while, ask these questions later, parts and best options will always change.