What to do with a (slightly meme) 3.5" external bay

[BHJohnson]

I'm rebuilding a computer for the first time in literal years. I'm downsizing from a View 71 to an 80$ Rosewill Challenger. I'm using Jay'z motto of "where there's a Dremel, there's a way", and putting a 420mm radiator on it, and shoving a 5900X and a 3070 Ti in it, at least until I can get a 6800XT for a decent price and the 3070 Ti will move to the HTPC. Also getting a bunch of hard drives in the interal drive slots, an Aquaero 6 in one of the 5.25" bays, a dual 5.25" reservoir with a D5 pump, and a card reader/USB-C hub in one of the external 3.5" slots. That leaves one external 3.5" slot empty, and that feels wrong.

 

Currently, I'm thinking of just putting this in and just making it a single 2.5" SSD scratch drive. The nVME drive is 1TB, but it might be nice to put a 2TB SATA SSD to act as a middle ground for game installs and active working files between the spinning rust array and the zoomzoom drive. Aside from that, my other thought is maybe another USB hub, but that doesn't seem super useful. I haven't found anything else that's particularly fun looking, and I'm wondering what other cool stuff people have found for 3.5" external drives. And no, I'm not putting a floppy on it. That's on the Bulldozer computer. I don't need two.

 

Budget (including currency): 100$ for dumb things, up to 500$ scaling with the usefulness.

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Normal daily driver gaming and video editing.

 

[NF-A12x25]

4 minutes ago, BHJohnson said:

80$ Rosewill Challenger.

why. just why. the 4000D Airflow is just a far superior case for not much more, with plenty of rad support.

[brob]

Fan controller?

[BHJohnson]

13 minutes ago, NF-A12x25 said:

why. just why. the 4000D Airflow is just a far superior case for not much more, with plenty of rad support.

Because the build is honestly most of the fun. Gonna do some angle iron, some grinding, it'll be a good time. My favorite build I've done was in an old school Antec Dark Fleet from 2012, and I'm trying to take that build one step further in the modding challenges. And the 4000D is boring. Great for someone looking to build a computer in half an hour flat, boring for someone who already has a View 71 and just wants something different to work on.

 

11 minutes ago, brob said:

Fan controller?

Aquaero 6. I am not aware of a better fan controller. And definitely not one that fits in a 3.5" bay.

[Chiyawa]

Hmm, well aside from memory card reader and USB-C hub, I don't think there's much things you can do...

 

Anyway, I found this:

StarTech.com 2 Drive 2.5in Trayless Hot Swap SATA Mobile Rack Backplane - Dual Drive SATA Mobile Rack Enclosure for 3.5 HDD (HSB220SAT25B) (https://a.co/d/0Q7ROFC)

It's a 2 2.5 inch hot swappable drive bays that fits 3.5 inch external drive bay. Maybe you can take a look.

[BHJohnson]

This seems at least interesting to look at. I might even find a use in doing external backups to cheap 2.5" hard drives? Idk, it's cheap enough and will fill the slot while adding some possible use maybe in the future. Thanks!